Mythogenesis and Anthropogenesis

In the period of the 19th – beginning of the 21th century in the study of mythol­ogy three paradigms of the study of mythogenesis have consistently dominated – historical, non-historical and historical-cognitive. The historical-cognitive para­digm is based on the latest scientific results in the field of archeology, anthro­pology and cognitive science. The modern model of anthropogenesis assumes the existence of general regularities of development of three types of Homo – Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans. There are reasons that are not only Homo sapiens, but also the Neanderthals and Denisovans had high cognitive ca­pabilities and signs of modern human behavior. The most important foundations of mythogenesis are the functioning of language and the activity of the imagina­tion. All three populations of ancient mankind reached a cognitive minimum, which opened the way to mythogenesis. Signs of mythogenesis are clearly recorded no later than the time of the transition from the Middle to Upper Pale­olithic, during the Early Aurignacian, but the beginning of this process goes back to an earlier period.

Modern Human Behavior

In evolutionary terms, a modern human is a member of our own species, Homo sapiens. Fossil skeletal remains assigned to Homo sapiens appear possibly as far back as 300,000 or 200,000 years ago in Africa. The first modern human skeletal remains outside of that continent are found at two sites in modern Israel, the Mugharet es Skhūl and Jebel Qafzeh; these date between 90,000 and 120,000 years ago. But this just represents a short, precocious excursion out of Africa in an unusually pleasant environmental phase. All humans who are not of direct sub-Saharan African ancestry are descended from one or more populations who left Africa around 50,000 years ago and went on to colonize the globe. Surprisingly, they successfully interbred with other kinds of humans outside of Africa, leaving traces of their archaic genomes still present in living people. Modern human behavior, however, implies people with innovative technologies, usually defined by those seen with the earliest Upper Paleolithic people in Eurasia. Some of these innovations also appear at various times in earlier African sites, but the entire Upper Paleolithic package, once known as the Human Revolution, does not. Researchers have had to split the origin of modern biology and anatomy from the beginnings of modern cultural behavior. The first clearly evolves much earlier than the latter. Or does it?