A Cosmic Hunt in the Berber sky : a phylogenetic reconstruction of a Palaeolithic mythology Julien d’Huy* Les mythes, comme les espèce, évoluent par descendance modifiée. Nous avons ici construit différents arbres phylogénétiques pour une même famille de mythes. Les résultats montrent que les mythes se transmettent essentiellement de façon verticale,ce qui permet de remonter à une diffusion paléolithique et reconstruire une proto-version. De plus, il semblerait que les mythes évoluent par ponctuations.
As species, myths are evolving entities. Here, we built phylogenetics trees of a mythological family. The results clearly support low horizontal transmissions (borrowings), Palaeolithic diffusions and punctuated evolution. Additionaly, a probable Palaeolithic version of the story has been reconstructed.
1 – Introduction Biology and mythology have historical depth, and we need history to understand them. Yet how do current myths and species account for past changes ? What is their origin ? When and how have they evolved ? Could we reconstruct their primary state ? How can we tell the difference between chance and common ancestry to explain similarities between two versions or two species ? What is the extent of vertical inheritance and horizontal borrowings ? To achieve success on these issues in the biological field, scientists have developped a set of methods called phylogenetics. We have already applied many of these methods to mythological corpus. Indeed, evolution in organisms and myths occurs through pro-
gressive changes in heritable traits (genes / mythems) over successive transmissions (Lévi-Strauss 1971 : 603-604). Two taxa are more closely related when they share a more recent common ancestor, and this similarity can be used to reconstruct evolutionary histories. We have had some conclusive results in mythology (d’Huy 2012 a, b, c, d ; d’Huy 2013a, b). For instance, we have studied the mythological motif of the Cosmic Hunt linked to the Big Dipper. This motif is peculiar to Northern and Central Eurasia and to the Americas but it seems to be lacking nowhere in the planet. Ordinarily, three stars of the handle of the Big Dipper are hunters and the dipper itself is an animal (a deer or a bear) ; Alcor is a dog or a cooking pot (Berezkin 2005).
Fig. 1. Reconstructed phylogeny of the Cosmic Hunt’s versions linked to the Big Dipper. We have analysed 19 versions of these tales using bio Neighbor Joining (10.000 bootstrap replications, d’Huy 2012d). * Doctorant au CEMAf (Centre d’Étude des Mondes africains), UMR 8171 CNRS.
[email protected] Received Oct. 15th 2012.
Les Cahiers de l’AARS — 16 (2013) : 93-106.
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Julien d’Huy What about the Saharan versions of Cosmic Hunt ? Tuareg know Ursa Minor and Ursa Major as a young camel and its mother (Tuareg 1). The North Star is sometimes a black woman that holds the reins of the young camel as its mother is milked (Duveyrier 1864 : 424) or the post to which the young camel is tied (Bernus & Sidiyene 1989 : 155) or the head of the mother (Benhazera 1908 : 61 ; Stefanini 1926 : 127). When the North Star is a black woman, she believes that the stars ψ, λ, μ, ν, ξ want to kill her, so she stays still (Duveyrier 1864 : 424 ; Pottier 1946 : 244-245). It’s easy to recognize here the Cosmic Hunt motif with a move from