‘A new Paradise myth?
An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s thesis of the
South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths,
including most of the mythological contents of Genesis
1-11’, proposed paper for: THE DEEP HISTORY OF STORIES:
Annual Conference, International Association for
Comparative Mythology, Edinburgh 28-30 August, 2007 by Wim van Binsbergen |
THE DEEP
HISTORY OF STORIES
Annual Conference,
International
Association for Comparative Mythology
Edinburgh
28-30 August, 2007
theme
I: The spread of stories throughout the world from the earliest
times and the meaning of any suggested fundamental narrative
element
Title:
‘A new Paradise myth? An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s
thesis of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths,
including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11’
Author:
Wim van Binsbergen
Abstract: An examination, from the complementary perspectives of archaeology, linguistics, genetics, ethnography and comparative mythology, of Oppenheimer’s (1998) Sunda thesis, and especially an assessment of his claim of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths, including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11. My argument will examine the Sunda thesis from complementary archaeological, linguistic, genetic, ethnographic, and comparative mythological perspectives. The outcome will be patchy, but by and large surprisingly positive.
Expanded
abstract: In 1998, the paediatrician/geneticist Stephen
Oppenheimer sought to rock the world of comparative myth,
archaeology, linguistics and long-range studies in general, with
his book Eden of the East. This was conceived as a
popular book, with personal narrative and extensive editorial
input reminiscent of (allegedly) non-fiction best-sellers by e.g.
Graham Hancock. Yet the book’s serious and scholarly contents
make a claim that its author considers, obviously, a further step
in the timely struggle against Eurocentrism, and hence in the
decolonisation of global knowledge (cf. Afrocentrism, the Black
Athena debate, the South Asian postcolonial theory, Mudimbe’s
work, etc.).
What is, today, the hydrographically fragmented Indonesian
archipelago is argued by Oppenheimer to have been a contiguous,
and culturally highly advanced, sub-continent (‘Sundaland’),
up to the onset of the Holocene (c. 10 ka BP). At that moment,
melting of the polar caps produced dramatic flooding which chased
the Sunda people from their lands, forced them to become
seaborne, and permanently raised the global sea level by 200 m.
Apart from the claim of Sundaland’s cultural advance, the
scenario so far is in line with widely accepted views. However,
Oppenheimer goes on to claim that the main evidence for his Sunda
scenario is of a mythological nature. The core of West Asian
mythology, including the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11
(Paradise, the first human couple, the Fall of Man, Cain and
Abel, the Flood, the Tower etc.), as well as these elements’
subsequent ramification in Graeco-Roman myth and European
mythologies at large, are argued to derive from South East Asian
/ Oceanian prototypes, ultimately hailing from the lost
Sundaland.
My argument will examine the Sunda thesis from complementary
archaeological, linguistic, genetic, ethnographic, and
comparative mythological perspectives. The outcome will be
patchy, but by and large surprisingly positive. Although
Oppenheimer has received positive comments from archaeologists
specialising on South East Asia, yet his transcontinental reading
of the archaeological evidence does not stand up to scrutiny.
Pedersen, however, has recently advanced interesting linguistic
support for the Sunda thesis. I am surprised that Oppenheimer
(who since the publication of Eden of the East has
developed to become one of the main public faces of long-range
genetics in Britain) did not bring more of the available,
supportive genetic evidence to his Sunda thesis, especially from
Africa. Also from Africa I will adduce considerable ethnographic
support for the idea of a Sunda-related transcontinental cultural
revolution. So, in its general form, the Sunda hypothesis
deserves to be taken seriously, and is not just another scholarly
myth.
However, when we narrow down the assessment to comparative mythology, we will see that most of Oppenheimer’s ingenious and original mythological analysis does not survive
1. the methodological objections (how can myths attested in Asia and Oceania from only the 19th century CE on, be proven to be parental to myths attested from West Asia from the third millennium BCE on?),
2. the theoretical difficulties (pace Levi-Strauss, Eliade, etc.) of confidently comparing mythologies that not only are millennia and continents apart, but that also look rather different from one another, at least on the surface
3. nor the obvious objections against any kind of monocentric view of the more recent cultural history of Anatomically Modern Humans, from the Upper Palaeolithic onwards
4. nor the suspicions attending any recourse to natural catastrophe in order to explain the course of cultural history (cf. Bernal on the Thera eruption).
In fact, of the many mythological themes Oppenheimer presses into service, only one appears to make a serious case for transcontinental diffusion on the wings of Sunda expansion:
· not, of course, the (far too widespread) flood theme in general,
· but a particular, very specific, complex version of the Flood theme (with the specific sequence of human transgression, divine wrath, selective divine warning, selective survival, evocations of heaven-earth connections such as rainbow, ladder and tower), as found in Oceania, East and South East Asia, Ancient Near East, Southern and North-western Europe, and throughout Africa, especially where evidence suggesting Sunda impact is also available from other sources than myth.
This paper is in continuity with the ones I presented at our most
recent conferences on comparative mythology (Kyoto 2005, Beijing 2006). There I presented a
coherent view of long-range history of (mainly) Old World
mythology in terms of complex and multicentred transmission,
transformations and innovations that seems to have greater
explanatory potential than the rigid monocentrism of the Sunda
thesis; while in both papers the transcontinental spread and
transformation of the flood theme is discussed, in connection
with mitochondrial DNA type B which turns out to have strong
Sunda connotations.
January
2007
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