Archaeological Euhemerism: Why the Oldest Method of Reading Myth Is Also the Newest

Archaeological Euhemerism: Why the Oldest Method of Reading Myth Is Also the Newest Published by the Van Kush Family Research Institute & Van Kush Family Syncretic Temple of Angels Rev. Ryan Sasha-Shai Van Kush, Founding Director Every generation of scholars has decided what mythology really is. It was the sun. It was trees. It was totems. It was a disease of language. It was the collective unconscious. Each of these answers was announced with confidence, held for a season, and abandoned. Only one approach to myth has ever put a shovel in the ground and found the city it was told to look for. That approach is Euhemerism, and this post explains what it is, what was done to it, what We have made of it, and why the newest evidence coming out of the genetics laboratories vindicates the method rather than burying it. I. The Method and Its Pedigree Euhemerism takes its name from Euhemerus of Messene, who wrote around 300 BCE and argued that the gods had been human beings — kings, founders, benefactors — whose deeds were magnified across generations until the men became divine. The claim is simple: myth is history that has been retold too many times by people who loved it. What distinguishes this from every rival theory is that it can be checked. And when it has been checked, it has produced results: Snorri Sturluson wrote the Norse gods as men — a migrating people descended from Trojan refugees — and preserved a genealogy rather than a bestiary. Heinrich Schliemann read Homer as a document rather than a poem, went to the mound at Hisarlik, and found Troy. … Read the full post on melek.salon: https://melek.salon/melek/@melek/archaeological-euhemerism-why-the-oldest-method-of-reading-myth-is-also-the-newest