THE COMMON ORIGIN OF CULTURE: MYTHOLOGY AND EUHEMERISM

THE interest in the origin of nations (origines gentium), in the origins of culture, in its stages of progress, and in the ways in which cultural traits were transmitted and diffused was shared by many ancient peoples, and the problem of how man acquired the arts became a focus of reflection. Greek (and Latin) authors examined the conditions which favoured the genesis and progress of culture and civilization, linguistic and cultural patterns, and the connection between habitat and habits, national character and institutions, and the variety and diversity of humanity. Ethnography was regarded as an access to history. Even though they never used the term 'culture’ in the modern sense, there is no doubt that they had great interest in the phenomenon of culture and in cultural history.

Aeschylus (if he is the author) describes in Prometheus Bound the stages of cultural development: the gift of fire, the use of animals for transport, the invention of the sailing-ship, the discovery of medicine, of divination, of metals. In Antigone the figure of Prometheus disappears and Man is now truly a self-taught inventor. In Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, v. 1241-57, the genesis and evolution of culture is the product of necessity, skill, and a sense of utility. Isocrates stated that ‘… we have come together and founded cities and invented arts …’. Man has done the work for himself; 'he taught himself’ each new knowledge. In the words of Xenophanes in the sixth century BC: