(July 15, 2023 at 5:39 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(July 15, 2023 at 11:22 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: At the Wailing Wall, vendors' section:

He: Lady! I got John the Baptist's skull, genuine article!
She: I thought his skull was in the Vatican?
He: That's his adult skull, this is his baby skull.

didn’t you know saints molt like insects and leave behind a discarded skull every time their heads grew too big for their skulls?

That great documentary, "The First Men In The Moon", covered that.

Same as the plausibility of the universe being farted into existence by the Flatulent Gay Unicorn of Dimension 4.

It's possible but extremely unlikely.

He made me promise not to tell whether he did or not.

(July 15, 2023 at 10:49 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: The whole alien thing has been a wonderful natural experiment in culture creation.  Culture doesn't have to make sense itself, it's job is to make sense of other things.  I'd put ufology right alongside cargo cults as an example of the creation of a religion in modern times, with cameras rolling.  Honestly, I think ufology is a cargo cult.

At least cargo cultists had real airplanes bringing real cargo from entirely unknown areas. We've got shipping records and plane manifests and flight schedules. They interpreted it wrong, sure, but it was definitely based on factual events So I think cargo cults have a little more solid grounding, though still very wrong in interpretation.

(July 15, 2023 at 7:41 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(July 15, 2023 at 10:49 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: The whole alien thing has been a wonderful natural experiment in culture creation.  Culture doesn't have to make sense itself, it's job is to make sense of other things.  I'd put ufology right alongside cargo cults as an example of the creation of a religion in modern times, with cameras rolling.  Honestly, I think ufology is a cargo cult.

At least cargo cultists had real airplanes bringing real cargo from entirely unknown areas. We've got shipping records and plane manifests and flight schedules. They interpreted it wrong, sure, but it was definitely based on factual events So I think cargo cults have a little more solid grounding, though still very wrong in interpretation.

I presented an explanation for the famous "John Frum".

(July 12, 2023 at 9:58 pm)Sicnoo0 Wrote: The very same "gods" were described across multiple cultures all over the planet.

Yeah, if you close one eye and squint the other just right it's all the same, ain't it.

(July 15, 2023 at 7:44 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(July 12, 2023 at 9:58 pm)Sicnoo0 Wrote: The very same "gods" were described across multiple cultures all over the planet.

Yeah, if you close one eye and squint the other just right it's all the same, ain't it.

There are many different reasons why there can be resemblances between myths of different cultures that any mere resemblance could hardly be pinned down to any specific cause.     Some of the possible causes are:

1.  Culture contact and diffusion, either directly or through any number of intermediaries.    We have direct evidence that at least as early as the early Bronze Age there had been trade networks that exchanged people, raw material and products spanning almost the whole width of Euroasian continent, both in the southern areas with incipient urbanism, and north nomadic steppes.

2.  Shared origins in a common ancient founder myth.   We know some myths can be extremely enduring.  The leopard goddess culture seems to have had a central role in various Anatolian culture over a a period of 9000 years spanning from start of early Neolithic incipient agricultural cultures 12,000 years ago all the way to the fall of the Iron Age Hittite empire around 3000 years ago.    So resemblance between myths could point to the myths being very old and originated from an otherwise unremembered common founder myth.    

3.  Forms following function.    Myths that don’t tell a true story were concocted to meet a need.    If the needs were similar between two societies, then one would think the resulting myth designed to serve the need would also have heightened chance of exhibiting resemblances.

4. Humans make up shit but aren't very original.

Skinwalker Ranch keeps showing up on my list of things to watch, and I'm like Nope.

(July 15, 2023 at 8:48 pm)Tomato Wrote: Skinwalker Ranch keeps showing up on my list of things to watch, and I'm like Nope.

Good one!