Part I: On the Creature Called Man, Chapter V: Man and Mythologies Summary and Analysis

Many anthropologists believe that all, or at least most, of the world's mythologies derived from a small set of beliefs that managed to disseminate throughout the world. To support this theory, they point to certain parallels in the myths; or, at least, they point to parallels which they believe exist. For example, they will find the common theme of an "external soul" in a story about wizard whose heart was lost in a cave and the story of a giant whose spirit was trapped in a box. While certainly there are bound to be some similarities between myths—after all, the men who created them were all human and often had similar environments—these theorists go wrong...