Joseph Campbell's Single-Source Theory The most important contemporary commentator on myth is Joseph Campbell. His many well-illustrated books and videos show mythic developments throughout history and the world. One of the more radical and important of Campbell's beliefs is that the myths of the world show such similar roots at their beginnings that it is possible, perhaps even probable, that the myths of all ancient cultures developed from a single mythic source.

Campbell argues, for example, that most developed ancient cultures had a primary mother goddess, a primary father goddess, a fertility goddess, a messenger god, a fire god, and others. It is quite obvious, he says--and this part of his argument is well accepted by now--that the gods and goddesses of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, Germany, and even India bear such striking resemblances that an intermixing of attributes or even a common source is likely. In addition, nearby accessible countries such as China, Japan, Iceland, and those in Africa also developed some of their primary mythologies from this intermixing or common source.

However, says Campbell, the evidence suggests that even disparate mythologies from other parts of the world, such as North and South America, apparently bear origins similar to the Egyptian, Indonesian, and European ones. There are too many unusual similarities, says Campbell, between gods who are completely divided from each other geographically. For example, he says, how did an American Indian trickster god who also was a messenger god--one who also stole from other gods--develop in complete separation from the trickster messenger god of Europe-- Hermes/Mercury/Loki--who also stole? Campbell's answer is that there are too many similarities to be more coincidental. He develops a good deal of evidence to support his theory.

Campbell's theory is similar to the belief by some linguists that almost all languages throughout the world are based on a single ancient language called "proto-Indo-European." This linguistic theory, well accepted by many current linguists, shows how a set of several hundred basic sounds were the source of most words developed in ancient languages throughout most of the world. If Campbell's theory is true, it means that at one time all human beings came from a single source, one that had a high culture--developed enough to not only create and develop stories of gods and goddesses but also a culture sufficiently developed to pass these stories down from generation to generation. Such a culture must have had a well-developed sense of language, of symbolic meaning, and of the importance of developing a stable, functional society. If Campbell is correct, this cultural development would have had to occur before humans left the Eurasian and African continents and spread into North and South America. In other words, civilization and culture first may have existed in some organized, intelligent form not just several thousand years ago, as is now commonly believed, but possibly ten, twenty, or even thirty or forty thousand years ago.

No matter how we choose to understand mythology, it is clear that the tracks it leaves through time--both historically and in the present--help us interpret the nature of culture, society, and what it means to be human. Without mythology, our history as a human race and indeed, for many of us, our present, would be less rich. Mythology gives us a common set of symbols for complex human actions and emotions, a set of symbols that stretches across many cultures and time periods. Indeed, it is through the power and content of myth that we often can directly and empathetically relate to peoples who have gone before us, even if they lived thousands of years ago. The making of myth is so common to so many cultures of all times that we can argue that myth is one of the deepest, widest, and most important ways that the human race itself creates meaning.

Summarize Joseph Campbell’s “Single Source Theory.”