UNIVERSAL MYTHS: THE FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURE
UNIVERSAL MYTHS: THE FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURE

Summary/Abstract: The highly complex socio-human process that is culture has accompanied all stages of society since the very formation of the premises for human social organization. It can thus be stated that the premises of humanity’s social organization were not social in themselves, but cultural — or, more precisely, cultic, ritualistic. In synchrony, we can speak of established, or high culture, traditional oral or folkloric culture, and popular culture. Culture must also be viewed from a diachronic perspective, which allows us to have a historical view of its development. The origin myth represents the very primordial, original state of culture — the one that establishes, sustains, and maintains the paradigm of mytho-symbolic prototypicality, to which, later on, at the level of legend, the myth’s successor — the folk legend — will conform. The myth is the narration of a sacred history, enacted by exceptional, exemplary, primordial beings who existed in illo tempore. From this perspective, myths recount not only the creation of the world, but also how the world was later enriched or diminished, myths can thus be considered as forming the foundation of universal culture.

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