Tracing the Myth's Origins
In her analysis of Earth Diver creation myths in the New World, Rooth observed that they occur all over North America except in AZ and NM. In addition, Earth Diver myths occur in the Old World ranging from northern Asia (with a few variants in eastern and southern Asia) to eastern and southern Europe as far west as the East Baltic states and Slavonic parts of Germany.
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She concluded that evidence from geographical continuation, style and form, and detail motifs points to these myths being "genetically related" rather than "individually developed on different continents." Further, based on their geographical distribution and the concept of a primeval ocean (which would not be intuitive in a landlocked area), Rooth concluded that the myth's origin was most likely in an eastern Asiatic coastal area, from which it then spread westward across Siberia and eastward across North America (Rooth 1957, 498-500).
In her studies of Earth Diver creation myths from around the world, anthropologist and folklorist Elli Kaija Köngäs noted that, while Earth Diver "has been referred to as the most widely distributed of all North American myths", it's range extends to South America, the Pacific Islands, Australia, and Eastern Europe (ex. East Prussia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Finland) as well.
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In agreement with Rooth, Köngäs notes that, despite a wide geographical range, the myth's distribution is continuous and contains "striking similarities both in essential and secondary traits" leading her to conclude that similarities are the result of spread and not the result of independent parallelisms as earlier scholars thought (Köngäs 1960, 151-152). To explore Köngäs's analysis of Earth Diver's "essential elements", continue on the next slide ...
I wonder ... As someone with a great interest in human evolution and migration, will we ever be able to use the spread of myths to infer the physical migration routes of people across and around the world? Or does the distribution of such myths merely indicate communication and cultural transmission between neighboring peoples? Or is there yet another possibility (ex. an occasional wanderer)?