Viral Mythology

by Marie D. Jones

  With the ease by which we today can communicate over global distances, instantaneously, thanks to cell phone and computer technology, and the ease by which we can expand our little corner of the world all the way to the four corners via social networking sites that let us befriend people we never would have contact with before, there is a growing, and exponentially growing at that, body of information that someone will have to eventually weed through. God bless ’em.

  They, the ancient ones, left us marks on a cave wall, and edifices and monuments, and old texts and scrolls, many of which are missing huge segments. They left us songs and art and churches and stories. They gave us what they had and what we got was simply that which survived long enough. And we do the best we can to make sense of it.

  Because in the end, information is king, and the more that we have to work with, the more we know.

  Conclusion

  There’s a story behind every find. A human story...

  —Doctoral candidate Shlomit Bechar to CNN

  after the discovery in August 2013 of an

  Egyptian sphinx unearthed in Israel

  As cold as it might seem, we really are nothing but bundles of information, interacting with other bundles and creating new information to be conveyed and expressed to those around us, and to future generations. Our entire lives are meant to inform others as to who we are and who we want to become, not just as individuals, but as a collective—as a species.

  Perhaps the ancients, from primitive times forward, utilized all of the theories and ideas suggested in this book as a means of spreading their ideas, their beliefs, and the stories of their lives. Perhaps each theory is a piece of the puzzle of who we were and who we have become. Maybe information spread in all these ways, and others we haven’t thought of, simply because we don’t entirely know the motives and agendas of those who left these clues behind. We can only guess, based upon our own experiences and ideas, what they might have wanted to tell us, and to show us, with their legends and their art and their architecture.

  Ironically, we may have come full circle in the way we express information, as pointed out recently on a social networking site by author/researcher Laird Scranton:

  Evidence in many cultures shows that cosmology preceded written language, and the cosmology was cast in mnemonic symbols and symbolic acts, by which concepts came to be associated with images and objects. Later, when written language was implemented, many of these pre-defined shapes and their associated concepts seem to have been adopted wholesale as written glyphs. But, in fact, our own society has come back around to the point where symbols represent word/acronyms such as NBC (National Broadcasting Agency) or CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).

  Funny how what goes around comes around.

  Information is like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up more and more snow as it descends, growing bigger and bigger all the time. Information spreads, adapts, adopts, regroups, shifts, changes, morphs, adds, edits, deletes, and even hides itself at times, but it always manages to keep on rolling down that hill, even as we struggle to properly interpret it. Then again, maybe we should be blaming our mothers, and our grandmothers and their grandmothers, for who we are and what we believe. In an article titled “Grandma’s Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes” (Discover Magazine, June 11, 2013), writer Dan Hurley documents the meeting of two young scientists, Moshe Szyf, a molecular biologist and geneticist, and Michael Meany, a neurobiologist, who got into an animated conversation about genetics while in Madrid and ended up 20 years later enmeshed in the study of how our ancestors’ experiences could genetically pass on to us, influencing our own behavior and altering the epigenetic expressions of our genes in the brain.

  Meaney had looked seriously into how rearing habits of mother rats might cause lifelong changes in their offspring in ways that in laboratory studies could actually be quantified. When he met Szyf, the two of them ended up performing a series of experiments with mother rats that were either attentive or inattentive. When their pups had grown into adult rats, they then examined their hippocampus regions where the stress response is regulated, and found some stunning differences in the genes that regulate sensitivity to stress hormones, which were more methylated in the neglected rats than those who were under the care of attentive moms. The team went on to perform additional experiments to back up their findings, which continued to show that the epigenetic changes that occurred in the rats’ brains had a direct link to how they were raised and how their parent rat behaved. Their landmark paper, “Epigenetic Programming by Maternal Behavior” was published in 2004 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, and in dozens of papers afterward, proving that baby rats can gain genetic attachments based entirely on their upbringing.

  The team went on, in 2008, to publish a paper comparing the brains of people who had committed suicide with those who died suddenly of other causes, finding the same changes in the hippocampus region that they saw with rats raised with neglect or stress, with the excess methylation of genes.

  Can we then, because of these stunning studies, say that we should blame all our bad behaviors, habits, and brain patters on our moms, or any of our ancestors? Even studies with orphans showed the same excess methylation, so it can’t just be bad-mommy syndrome driving the development of human behavioral evolution. The same team continues to pile up the studies showing similar epigenetic changes, suggesting that there is really something to the idea that epigenetic changes to genes active in specific brain regions are behind our emotional and intellectual capacities.

  Still, we are more than our reactions to stress, and more than our built-in behaviors and how we choose to express, learn, and pass on knowledge. We still, despite the behaviors of our ancestors, can change and evolve and get therapy. The transmission of knowledge is not entirely dependent up on how we feel, or behave, under any specific circumstances, and is only one more piece of the puzzle.

  No matter how many clues our ancestors have left us, we still cannot find that one precious final puzzle piece that will complete the picture of our past, simply because we weren’t there to witness it firsthand. And that is the most frustrating thing—unless we can all go back in time to the birth of an idea, to the birth of knowledge, and literally ask the individuals in question why they wrote the myths and told the tales, why they built the pyramids and henges and edifices, why they etched the glyphs and chose the symbols, why they worshipped the deities they chose, why, why, why they did any of the things that have come down the historical pike to us today, we will never truly know.

  It is up to us to figure out how to interpret that information once it works its way down.

  Today we have the potential means to go to Mars and set up a human colony, and yet we still struggle to truly understand what the primitive peoples were trying to tell us with their rock art, their petroglyphs, their symbols, and their structures. We still struggle to identify the one solid answer to the questions of why ancient cultures built their edifices and monuments the way they did, why they told their myths and stories, and what they wanted us, their distant offspring, to know about who they were and what their place was in the cosmic scheme of things.

  Long ago, people sat around fires and told stories. Long ago, people used images to try to express complex thoughts they didn’t yet have the words to describe. Long ago, people built things to do more than just create shelter and protect themselves from the elements; they built things to honor the skies and the earth and the seas and the Gods and the deities they believed in and revered. Long ago, people looked at nature and, not yet understanding the science behind it, made up amazing and fantastical stories, legends, and lore to describe what they were seeing.

  How much different is this than what we do today? Today, we sit around our cell phones and look at silly images. We watch TV huddled together as breaking news stories unfold. We listen to radio and sing songs we all know the words to. We go into a darkened theater and lose ourselves in a movie, or we escape into the world of a
rt in a museum. We continue to use information not only to experience the world as we see it, and to expand upon that experience, but also to add our own chunks of snow to that ever-growing snowball that will one day be our mark upon the historical landscape.

  Will we be remembered one day for Sharknado at the same time excavations dig up evidence of rioting and looting after a major disaster? Will car bumpers be dug up by the future archeology students, only to reveal that we “Brake for Garage Sales,” that “Jesus Is Coming...Look Busy,” and that “My Other Car Is A Broom”? Will scholars of tomorrow find ancient Led Zeppelin T-shirts alongside newer Juicy brand yoga pants, Justin Bieber posters and Taylor Swift lunchboxes buried with sports team memorabilia and video game boxes, Star Wars Halloween costumes and Star Trek toy phasers, Grumpy Cat calendars and Duck Dynasty baseball caps, Playboy magazines, and Jenga and pet rocks and Barbie dolls and Legos, and wonder if these were critical to our way of life and who we were as a collective?

  Novels like Moby Dick will sit alongside 50 Shades of Grey in museums of the future, where Kindles will be on display next to Droids and iPhones as representations of our crude and primitive forms of communication. (One thousand years from now we will no doubt be talking telepathically!) Old broadcasts of Lost, The Office, and American Idol will be viewed with great scrutiny, along with movies like Get Shorty, Pulp Fiction, Out of Africa, and Dawn of the Dead. Our computers and cars and bullet trains and McMansions, our cars and motorcycles and clothing and accessories, our makeup and toiletries and jewelry and tattoos—all will serve to tell someone, someday, about us, as representations of who we were as individuals, and as a species.

  Just as we look back at the writings, symbols, art, and architecture of yesterday and try to understand where we came from, we leave a constant trail of clues today as to who we are. The Nike logos on our shoes, the McDonald’s arches on tons of trash in our landfills, the IBM and Mac and Microsoft marks on our technology—all will be examined under curious eyes one day.

  Yet none of those things will tell a complete story of who we were, and most of it will be open to the interpretation, however correct or incorrect, of those future generations who may, by then, be so far advanced that they cannot comprehend how we survived such a crude existence. We don’t think much about the trail we leave, because we are too immersed in living our lives. We leave what we leave, which is exactly what our ancestors may have done. With the exception of secret societies and individuals devoted to making sure certain pieces of knowledge and information got passed on to future generations, most people probably didn’t give it a second thought.

  Maybe we should be a bit more concerned with looking at what we are leaving behind for this point forward, lest we be thought of as the most primitive and uneducated culture of them all. But maybe we should focus instead on making sure our lives are well lived, no matter the trails we leave, or the clues we plant for some future Nancy Drew or Indiana Jones to mull over. Maybe we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.

  Our civilization will hopefully be remembered for the bigger things, the greater things we have achieved: space travel, running water, eradication of major diseases, achievements in science, literature, art, medicine, and education, cutting-edge technology, telescopes that see into the cosmos, particle colliders that peer into the hidden quantum world....

  Throw in a few hilarious cat videos, and we are one hell of a culture for those who will come after us to try to understand and learn from.

  They will sift through the legends and stories and art and symbols and buildings and monuments and all that we have left behind, and look for clues to try to discern the truth of why we did what we did in the way we did it.

  And they will wonder.

  Answers to the three alien images questions from Chapter 7

  Image 7-1

  A female figurine from 500 to 800 AD from Teotihuacan, Mexico. Image courtesy of WikiCommons.

  Image 7-2

  A Medieval foliat head carving of the Green Man set in the west wall of the St. Michael’s church. Image courtesy of Richard Croft.

  Image 7-3

  A giant Bronze Age sculpture called the Giant of Monte Prima in Sinis, Sardinia, Italy. Image courtesy of DedaloNur.

  Bibliography

  “Ancient Graffiti Sheds Light on Daily Life.” Archeology News Network, April 19, 2013.

  Baer, Drake. “Harvard Professor Finds That Innovative Ideas Spread Like the Flu: Here’s How to Catch Them.” Fast Company, 2013.

  Balter, Michael. “Prehistoric Painters Planned Ahead.” Science Now, October 13, 2011.

  Brodie, Richard. Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (Carlsbad, Calif.: Hay House, 1996).

  Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1998).

  ———. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2003).

  Bullfinch, Thomas. Bullfinch’s Mythology (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

  Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam Books, 1978).

  ———. The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988).

  ———. The Way of the Seeded Earth (New York: Perennial, 1988).

  Christy-Vitale, Joseph. Watermark: The Disaster That Changed the World and Humanity 12,000 Years Ago. (New York: Paraview Pocket Books, 2004).

  Coppens, Philip. The Ancient Alien Question: A New Inquiry Into the Existence, Evidence and Influence of Ancient Visitors (Franklin Lakes, N.J.: New Page Books, 2011).

  De Santillana, Giorgio, and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth (Boston, Mass.: David R. Godine, 1992).

  DiSalvo, David. “Your Brain on Buzz: Why Some Ideas Go Viral and Others Go Nowhere.” Forbes, July 6, 2013.

  Dundes, Alan. Folklore Matters (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1993).

  ———. Interpreting Folklore (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1980).

  Eliade, Mircea. Translated by Philip Mairet. Images and Symbols (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).

  Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality: Religious Traditions of the World (Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, Inc., 1998).

  Elliot, Alexander. The Universal Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters and Others (Harrisburg, Va.: Meridian, 1976).

  Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough (New York: Touchstone, 1922).

  The Folk Lore Society. “First Annual Report of the Council,” featured in The Folk Lore Record 2, No. 1, 1879.

  Frazier, Kendrick, Editor. The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal (New York: Prometheus Books, 1991).

  Godin, Seth. Unleashing the Ideavirus (New York: Hyperion Books, 2001).

  Halpern, Derek. “Creating Viral Content? The Secret is Get Contagious.” SocialTriggers.com, June 2013.

  Hamilton, Edith. Mythology (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, 1942).

  Hancock, Graham. Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1996).

  Haze, Xaviant. Aliens in Ancient Egypt: The Brotherhood of the Serpent and the Secrets of the Nile Civilization (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2013).

  Hieronimus, Robert, and Laura Cortner. The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America’s Most Familiar Art, Architecture, and Logos (Franklin Lakes, N.J.: New Page Books, 2008).

  Hurley, Dan. “Grandma’s Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes.” Discover Magazine, June 11, 2013.

  Jacquet, Jennifer. “How Culture Drove Human Evolution: A Conversation With Joseph Henrich.” Edge Magazine, 2012.

  James, E.O. Creation and Cosmology: A Historical and Comparative Inquiry (Boston, Mass.: Brill Academic Publishing, 1997).

  Jarus, Owen. “Visible Only From Above, Mystifying Nazca Lines Discovered in Mideast.” LiveScience, September 2011.

  Kenyon, J. Douglas, editor.
Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization (Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Co., 2005).

  LaViolette, Paul A. Genesis of the Cosmos: The Ancient Science of Creation (Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Co., 2004).

  Lockett, Dr. Michael. “The History of Storytelling.” From The Basics of Storytelling, www.mikelockett.com, 2007.

  Lynch, Aaron. Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

  Lynn, Dr. Heather. Anthrotheology: Searching for God in Man (Midnight Crescent Publishing, 2013).

  Naudon, Paul. The Secret History of Freemasonry: Its Origins and Connection to the Knights Templar (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2005).

  Possel, Markus, and Ron Amundson. “Senior Researcher Comments on the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon in Japan.” Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 1996.

  Pye, Michael, and Kirsten Dalley, eds. Exposed, Uncovered and Declassified: Lost Civilizations and Secrets of the Past (Pompton Plains, N.J.: New Page Books, 2012).

  Roberts, Scott Alan. The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim: The Untold Story of Fallen Angels, Giants on the Earth, and Their Extraterrestrial Origin (Pompton Plains, N.J.: New Page Books, 2012).

  Rogers, Everett. Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Edition (New York: Free Press, 2003).

  Sams, Gregory. Sun of God: Discovering the Self-Organizing Consciousness That Underlies Everything (San Francisco, Calif.: Weiser Books, 2009).

  Scranton, Laird. The Cosmological Origins of Myth and Symbol: From the Dogon and Ancient Egypt to India, Tibet and China (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2010).

  ———. Sacred Symbols of the Dogon: The Key to Advanced Science in the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2007).