Objective
Traditionally the reconstruction of prehistoric cultures is mainly understood as retrieving material culture by means of archaeological investigations. The approach applied within the project allows to reconstruct ancient elements of spiritual culture that as a rule do not leave material traces, and to study their dynamics. Suggested methodology is based on comparative analysis of world mythological traditions and takes into consideration genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data on prehistoric human migrations.
The goal of the project is to identify the Eurasian mythological motif complexes that existed before the development of literary culture and world religions. For this purpose mythological motifs which belong to different mythological traditions of Eurasia, will be compiled into electronic database and a statistical analysis of their areal distribution will be undertaken. It allows to reveal regularities in areal distribution of sets of motifs and to accomplish a large-scale mapping of selected motifs.
Then the revealed distribution of mythological motif complexes will be compared with areal distribution of genetic lineages in Eurasia in order to identify their connection with already known migration waves detected by genetic, linguistic and archaeological methods. Some of more ancient Eurasian motifs that were brought to the New World with the earliest migration waves have been already revealed by means of systematic comparison of Eurasian and New World mythologies made on the basis of the electronic Catalogue of Mythological Motifs of the New World. In the framework of the proposed project, this Catalogue will be complemented by data from mythological traditions of Europe, Western, Central and Southern Asia.
The data will be presented both in textual and coded forms which makes it possible to perform formal statistical analysis. Results of comparative analysis will be verified with genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data on ancient contacts and migrations (among other things the verification allows to exclude later admixtures). The project participants are experienced in comparative mythology and formal statistical analysis of narratives (Dr.Walter Dr.Rangochev and NIS teams). Unique mythological materials and databases belonging to each team will be unified in the consortium. One of the worldwide largest databases of Eurasian genetic lineages created by Dr.Villems team will be used in the project framework.
The identification of large-scale areal trends in the distribution of mythological motifs in conjunction with the data on genetic relations between studied human groups will help to reconstruct some elements of cultural prehistory of Eurasia, to date tentatively the formation of some particular mythological motifs and their complexes, and to localize possible areas of their origin, as well as to trace main routes of their dissemination within Eurasia, thus contributing to the general study of Eurasian prehistory.
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Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding Scheme
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Coordinator
SOFIA
Bulgaria
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