> “Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul,” Jung argued. But the dissemination of Cosmic Hunt stories around the world cannot be explained by a universal psychic structure. If that were the case, Cosmic Hunt stories would pop up everywhere. Instead they are nearly absent in Indonesia and New Guinea and very rare in Australia but present on both sides of the Bering Strait, which geologic and archaeological evidence indicates was above water between 28,000 and 13,000 B.C.
(So, the absence of Cosmic Hunt stories in New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia would seem to be a counter to your hypothesis, unless for some reason we could explain why people in those regions thought less about stars and hunting.)
So we know at least they will spontaneously appear. And if it's a good meme why didn't it spread?
The stars are a huge part of any lore. Hunting is a huge part of a mans life (Along with women)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronom...
Stories like this sound pretty close to me -
http://members.optusnet.com.au/virgothomas/space/abobeliefs2... (Two Brothers & The Pointer Stars)
All primitive societies obviously have stories of the stars being people and animals.
Men were hunters, the animals will be game.
Finding a exact narrative the fits your model from thousands of data points feels possible to me.
[edit] From the authors paper read "What about the Saharan versions of Cosmic Hunt" and tell me they are not just making stuff up
What about it seems as if they are "making stuff up"?
They summarize several versions of some such stories, with differentiating details, and even give the papers and studies where they were collected by anthropologists, etc.
Following the genetics metaphor, the distinctiveness of the myth story in that region of the world is due to the isolation of the Australian continent that doesn't allow for a free-flow of genetic information from the rest of the world and therefore shows a loss of "cultural variation" because only a few "founders" whose consciousness at the time of their progeniting is not representative of the diversity of the global human consciousness. (Founder effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect)
Applying Biology/genetics as a metaphor for the transmission of human culture and ideas is actually an very dangerous and subversive idea, for instance, following this logic, the most popular religion or dominant culture is not necessarily the most useful to the host genome, but the best viral "meme" that can replicate itself while balancing its own replication vs. the viability of the host (e.g., a malaria that allowed the host and its transmission vector to slightly evolve partial defenses against it so that it too can survive and replicate or the benign Herpes simplex virus that has 90% penetration rate).
Human culture/consciousness has lots of garbage, "non-coding" regions that a virus can replicate its repeat sequences onto the collective consciousness like say Kim Kardashian's sex tape in our non-coding region for entertainment, but mutating the essential "coding" regions is trickier, like knocking out the urge to procreate (see the downfall of the Shakers variant).
Perhaps a much more hopeful idea is that should a virus really turn from benign to virulent, evolutionary pressure bears down on an otherwise complacent population to select for the best defense against it; until this cultural idea is eliminated or the specie is and thus the cycle repeats as Nature allows for the next host or the virus take over the vacated niche.
I hope that in this day and age, the danger is mostly passed and individuals can take part in free inquiry without fear.
It should be obvious that evolution plays a role here. After all, it has the three main ingredients: replication, mutation, and selection.
doesn't sound obviously wrong
Many religions (in particular Islam and Christianity) strike me as being just that. They have features that make them viral (through proselytising, and sometimes forced conversions), and make it hard for their hosts to get rid of them (due to social pressure and penalties against apostates). These features are integral to the success of the religion, and are hidden under mythological/theological disguise.
The myths act as a vector, and these "features", which are behaviours that can be very complex (running a religious court system, enforcing those laws, proselytising), are effectively the payload of the virus. They turn society into a machine to spread the religion further and protect it, even if this comes at the cost of other achievements (technological progress, greater equality between demographic groups...).
If that was the case, the stories would be found in most/all places that there was hunting groups (e.g. maybe not in the Alaska). But they are not, they are in specific places where people seem to have migrated and brought them with them.
Besides, there are far more common themes, resemblances and details (that change as the story passes on) apart from "there is hunting and some constellations" involved.
Finally, while hunting might have been a big part of daily life, the idea that there were few things to do than "look at stars and hunt" seems a little off.
Of course, sometimes the whole tribe dies from disease or starvation or war, but those are relatively rare events.