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| Introduction | |
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| What is myth, how do we study and compare it? | |
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| Definition; study of myth in the past | |
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| Comparative mythology | |
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| Laurasian mythology: establishing the common origin of the mythologies of Eurasia and the Americas | |
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| Earlier explanations of myth | |
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| Ur-forms, history, and archaeology | |
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| Summary | |
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| Comparison and Theory | |
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| Theory and practice of comparisons | |
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| Reconstructing Laurasian mythology | |
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| Similarities | |
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| Regular correspondences and establishment of a unified narrative scheme | |
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| Oldest texts to be used | |
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| Geographically dispersed items | |
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| Reconstruction of the Laurasian common story line and individual myths | |
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| Enhancing the reconstruction: local, regional, macro-regional, and subcontinental variations | |
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| Reconstructing the Laurasian mythological system and inherent problems | |
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| Structure and content in some macro-areas of Laurasian myth | |
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| Macro-areas | |
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| The Four ages in the Eurasian and Meso-American macro-areas | |
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| Later centers of innovations | |
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| Late borrowings (diffusion) | |
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| Some objections to the approach of historical comparative mythology | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Creation Myths: The Laurasian Story Line, Our First Novel | |
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| Primordial Creation | |
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| Chaos and darkness | |
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| Water | |
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| Earth diver and floating earth | |
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| Giant | |
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| Bull | |
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| Egg | |
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| Combined versions | |
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| Father Heaven, Mother Earth | |
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| Separation of heaven and earth, the prop | |
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| Creation of land | |
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| The demiurge or trickster | |
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| reation of light | |
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| The slaying of the dragon | |
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| The theft of fire and of the heavenly drink | |
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| Generations, Four Ages and five suns | |
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| The creation of humans | |
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| Descent of 'noble' lineages | |
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| The flood | |
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| Heroes | |
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| The final destruction | |
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| Summary | |
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| The Contributions of Other Sciences: comparison of language, physical anthropology, genetics, archaeology | |
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| Linguistics | |
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| Physical anthropology | |
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| Genetics | |
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| Recent advances in human population genetics | |
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| Overview of recent developments | |
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| Out of Africa | |
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| Movement northward after the last two Ice Ages | |
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| Genetics, language and mythology | |
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| Summary and outlook | |
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| Archaeology | |
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| Cave paintings and plastic art | |
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| Sacrifice in Late Palaeolithic art | |
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| Food production | |
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| Domestic animals and pastoralism | |
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| Other items of comparison: children's songs and games; ancient music and regional styles; use of colors; gestures and their regional variations | |
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| Conclusions resulting from the comparison of the sciences involved | |
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| The Countercheck: Australia, Melanesia, sub-Saharan Africa | |
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| Possible ways to countercheck | |
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| Method | |
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| Criteria for testing the theory | |
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| Diffusion vs genetic relationship | |
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| Later additions | |
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| Beyond Laurasia: Gondwana mythology | |
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| Gondwana mythologies | |
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| Sub-Saharan Africa, the Andamans, New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania -- an overview | |
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| Australia | |
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| Tasmania | |
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| Melanesia | |
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| Negritos and other southern remnant populations | |
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| Andaman Islands | |
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| Africa | |
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| Remnant populations: San and Pygmies | |
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| Sub-Saharan Africa | |
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| Northern influences: the western North-South highway | |
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| The eastern North-South Highway | |
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| Summary | |
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| Individual Gondwana myth types and their common characteristics | |
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| Secondary influences on Gondwana mythology | |
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| Conflicting myths in Gondwanaland | |
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| Gondwana element in Laurasian myth | |
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| Laurasian elements in Gondwana myth | |
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| Countercheck of Laurasian mythology based on Gondwana mythology | |
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| Essential features of Gondwana and Laurasian mythology | |
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| The flood myth in world wide perspective | |
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| First Tales: Pan-Gaean Mythology | |
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| Beyond Laurasia and Gondwana: common myths | |
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| Our first tales | |
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| Laurasian Mythology in Historical Development | |
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| Late Palaeolithic religion | |
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| Late Palaeolithic shamanism | |
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| Sacrifice | |
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| Changes from Palaeolithic to state societies | |
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| Dating Gondwana and Laurasian mythology | |
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| Outlook | |
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| The meaning of Laurasian Mythology | |
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| Beyond Laurasia, Gondwana and Pan-Gaia | |
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| Persistence of myth | |
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| Some reasons | |
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| Epilogue | |