The First Myth

At what point did mankind start to develop myths and have dreams? What were the myths and dreams of the first people that walked out of Africa? What did they dream? Did they have any ideas about where the first person came from? And what about God?

Did those people that walked out of Africa dream using the same archetypal symbols that are so common in dreams throughout written history? Cattle. Snakes.

Is there an innate character to an entire tribe or group of people that develops unique myths and dreams? From my first trip to the Omo, I learned that when the Konso dream of red cattle, they will have a plentiful harvest. I don’t know how old that myth might be. But Joseph’s interpretation of the pharaoh’s dream of fat and lean cattle to mean seven years of good harvest and seven years of bad harvest. I find it interesting that the interpretation from two different groups is so similar.

But then other stories are interpreted differently by different groups. For example, the Servant Songs in the Bible’s Second Isaiah was intrepreted by early Christians as a prediction of the coming of Christ. Obviously, Jews read the same passage differently. They see the servant as any individual or an ideal that reflects the innate character of the Jewish people.

So, if we as people who populate the earth came from the same seed, presumably with the same myths, legends, stories, religions and dreams, then during the last 150,000 or so years it seems we built different windows through which to see life. The question I keep asking: can the religions, myths and stories get along now?