The Prehistoric Origin of Mythology and Religion by Gregory Fegel gregoryfegel@hevanet.com Copyright by Gregory Fegel, November 10, 2018. Myths, or legends, are the oldest surviving narratives of human cultures. Myths served as explanations for the existence of the Cosmos, for the history of the Cosmos, and for the properties and functions of the Cosmos. The myths described everything within the Cosmos, including the solar system, the earth and its inhabitants, and the various spirit- beings that were imagined to to inhabit the Cosmos. Myths were the first cosmology, and the first religion, and the first science. The science of the ancient authors of the myths was primitive, because they were the pioneers, and the beginners of the journey. A collection of the myths from a particular culture is a mythology, and a collection of the myths from the entire world is called World Mythology. Add some ethical values, and some spiritual practices, to a mythology, and you have a religion. A religion is always based on a system of mythology. Mythology was the original, primitive science, because it described the properties and functions of the Cosmos, in a primitive manner. The myths were composed in the form of metaphors, because metaphors were the way that cosmology, astronomy, and natural history were described in ancient times. The Cosmos was described with terms and analogies that were familiar. The Cosmos was described as a cave, with the sun, stars, and planets rotating around the millstone of the earth’s Axis. The stock metaphors of mythology spread throughout the world with the migrations of humankind, and a thorough knowledge and understanding of those ancient metaphors, symbols, and terminology is the key to interpreting all of World Mythology. There are remarkable similarities in the mythologies of cultures throughout the world, and I think those similarities are a result of all the mythologies having a common origin in the Upper Paleolithic human cultures of Africa and Eurasia. Mythology, like genetics, languages, and technology, forms a developmental taxonomic tree with a trunk emerging from Africa, and branches that spread all over the world. Whenever the humans migrated into new territories, they modified their mythology to suit their environment – but they always retained key elements of the mythology inherited from their ancient ancestors. The myth of the world-encircling serpent is found throughout the world – the Egyptian and Greek Ouroboros, the Norse Midgard Serpent, the Hindu Ananta-Sesha or Vasuki, the Aboriginal Australian Rainbow Serpent, and the Mesoamerican Feathered Serpent. The world-encircling serpent myth probably came from Africa, and the early modern humans spread it everywhere in their migrations. The world-encircling serpent myths, and other myths with a global distribution, are the trunk of the taxonomic tree of World Mythology. The migration of humans into Australia, and into the Americas, where they became isolated, started new branches of the global mythology, while keeping the trunk.