This one baffles me, and is intriguing at the same time. Before any means of communication could exist between continents and civilizations, commonalities between cultures are startling from an anthropology perspective. Are there theories to explain the same archetypes, architecture (think pyramids), and other similarities without getting into any woo explanations?
A bit of an aside: I thoroughly enjoyed Jean Shinoda Bolen's 'Goddesses in Every Woman' which is her own creation of archetypical psychology based off the Greek pantheon. I was fascinated and identified with a lot of the material, gleefully identifying "my goddesses".
Then I settled down and wondered if it wasn't a bit (or a lot) like astrology.
I don't know how helpful it is to approach psychological problems with a tool like that in hand. I'm not sure how much is woo and how much is legit. As a lay reader I found it stimulating and informative.
Archetypes like "mother", "father", "teacher", "hero" etc. tend to be consistent across cultures because these types of human experiences and relationships differ little.
From a structural engineering POV, there are only so many ways to build a wall or divert water or whathaveyou. Similarities are bound to arise.
Pyramids of Egypt,Mexico and South America.
Deserts of Middle East, Southwest
Would be interesting to know more about the ones in China still a big secret. I have heard that the construction is extremely different of South American and Egyptian the major differences are the steps the interesting thing is they all face the same direction and the construction pattern of the combined pyramids match up.
Look at animals that are unrelated living under similar conditions but from different parts of the world with the same traits and even looks ie tigers and lions or marsupial mice and normal mice. we are all connected and necessity decides how we live.
Seems to me that a pyramid is a natural choice to build a tall structure with simple construction technics. Other parallels can also be associated to commonness of agricultural communities to keep track of planting and harvest times, requiring structures that easily allow the determination of the solstices and equinoxes. commonalities in mythologies are often totally unrelated to any thing other than seeing the constellations rise at given times of year. Other things like common great flood stories speak more to fear of events rather than actual events.
The one that really baffles me though is the Big Dipper being called the great bear by civilizations on opposite sides of the earth 15 to 20,000 years apart; does that speak to one of mans oldest stories?
As far as archetypes; does not every civilization require the same rolls within it, the mother , the father, the warrior, the heal, the shaman, the trickster, etc.?
I have pondered this myself and have come to a very simple solution. As human beings our brains function similarly. In fact we often use the same methodology of reasoning simply by our nature. The very fact that we are so similar as we are all from the same descendants our brains function the same. We are capable of unique thoughts but the mechanisms of those thoughts derive from the same biological chemical and electrical processes.
So it is much like a computer we can have individual programs but the computers are limited according to function. So it is no surprise to me that the outputs of the computers will be similar no matter what the program.
In short, we are humans and I would expect humans to do what humans do and for what humans do, do to be similar.
Ya, I can see that... we all have the same operating system in essence.
Carl Jung describes something called collective unconscious. Archetypes were part of this. But there are lot of criticism to this theory. In this theory, basically he rejects the idea of earlier psychologist of tabula rasa or plain(blank) slate which means you are born with no knowledge or content. Here Jung states there are some images, concepts in the unconscious which get passed on from generations to generations.
Where on the scale between hypothesis and fact does he place this explanation?
@Hominid Is he speaking as you put it better of the operating system?