While I’m on off-topic stuff, I’ve been watching this bloke’s videos recently on mythology, specialising in proto-indo-european. I’ve found it a little bit of a minefield looking up this sort of topic (or norse mythology) on YouTube - I’ve been half dozing, watching a video about indo-european mythology before, and suddenly it starts talking about Evola - I looked into the youtuber and sure enough, he’s a Neo-nazi (or at least adjacent) (doesn’t mean the rest of it was wrong, but I don’t want no nazi hypnopaedia) I still get his vids in my list (called ‘survive the jive’, bit of a hint there?)).

Anyway, I looked this one up too, and he’s a professor at least and sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, and no fashy stuff yet. Fascinating stuff about how stories and concepts last so long and spread so far - eg in one he talks about how there’s a common myth among various North American Indian tribes which has a huge amount of similarities to the myth of orpheus in the underworld - leading to the hypothesis that they both came from an original in Siberia about 20,000 years ago. Some of this sort of probabilistic backwards analysis of language is a bit speculative for some I guess, but it’s all academic work with sources and that if that helps.

Either way, I find it sort of charming that when they do trace back to find the original stories that lead to so many grandiose religious and cultural traditions across the world, ultimately they often come from stories about cattle being stolen and then getting them back (and a bit later how this means god said we’re allowed to pinch your cattle)

















(can't remember which one the bit about orpheus was in (might be above or one of his others)