The Bullroarer: A Worldwide Ritual Instrument and the Case for Ancient Cultural Diffusion

Introduction#

The bullroarer is a deceptively simple device: a flat slat or board attached to a cord, which when spun through the air produces a distinctive roaring or whirring sound [^1]. Such a humble object would seem an unlikely key to human prehistory. Yet the bullroarer’s global distribution and strikingly consistent ritual functions pose a classic puzzle in anthropology. From the Australian Outback to the Amazon rainforest, from the African savanna to ancient Greece, variations of the bullroarer have been documented across over a hundred cultures worldwide [^2]. Remarkably, wherever it appears, this instrument is bound up with sacred traditions: it is “the voice of god” or of ancestral spirits, a secret ritual object used especially in male initiation ceremonies, and typically taboo for women and uninitiated boys to see [^3]. In many cultures, tribal lore even holds that the first bullroarer was invented by women and later stolen by men – an uncanny recurring myth of primordial gender conflict [^4]. Such complex parallels beg explanation.

Two broad interpretations have historically been offered. One is that the bullroarer’s worldwide presence is a case of independent invention – that human minds in different times and places, facing similar needs, hit on the same solution (a whirled noise-maker) and even attached similar meanings to it by virtue of our shared psychology (“the psychic unity of mankind”). The other view is cultural diffusion from a common origin – that the bullroarer and its attendant myths began once (or in a small number of places) deep in human history and spread across the world via migrations and intercultural contacts [^5]. This latter scenario implies a far-reaching continuity: perhaps a prehistoric cult or ritual complex shared by humanity’s ancestors, only fragmentarily preserved in far-flung traditional societies today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the bullroarer figured centrally in the debate between these models of independent origin vs. diffusion [^6]. Early anthropologists recognized that “to study the bull-roarer is to take a lesson in folklore”, as Andrew Lang wrote in 1885, noting its “widest diffusion, and the most extraordinary history” of any ritual object [^7]. But they split on how to account for this distribution: Lang and others argued that “similar minds, working with simple means towards similar ends, might evolve the bull-roarer and its mystic uses anywhere”, making any hypothesis of common origin “unnecessary” [^8]. By contrast, diffusionists marshaled evidence that the bullroarer is too consistently similar across cultures to be coincidence [^9]. As we shall see, by the mid-20th century a scholarly consensus (even in journals like Nature) leaned toward the diffusionist explanation: that a “bullroarer complex” of rituals and myths originated in a single ancient cultural stratum and was transmitted globally [^10].

In recent decades, however, this topic has largely faded from academic consciousness [^11]. Discussion of large-scale diffusionist hypotheses became unfashionable in anthropology after mid-century, due to theoretical biases and fears of aligning with discredited “hyper-diffusionist” theories [^12]. Today, the bullroarer is seldom mentioned in scholarly debates on prehistory, even as an increasingly rich record – ethnographic, mythological, and archaeological – continues to support its ancient and connected history [^13]. This paper revisits the worldwide enigma of the bullroarer and argues that its distribution, functions and symbolism are best explained by diffusion from a common cultural origin. We will first survey the bullroarer’s remarkable global spread and consistent ritual roles, highlighting patterns that demand explanation. We then examine the historical debate between independent invention and diffusion, reviewing classic arguments and the accumulation of evidence favoring a diffusionist account. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, comparative mythology, linguistics, and cognitive science, we situate the bullroarer within broader frameworks of cultural transmission. Finally, we consider why the diffusion hypothesis – once seriously entertained – later came to be ignored or even ridiculed in academia. Issues of ideology, nationalism, and disciplinary paradigm shifts have all played a part in sidelining diffusionist interpretations, and we explore how these biases have impeded objective analysis of data. By synthesizing a century of scholarship (much of it neglected today) and incorporating recent findings, we aim to demonstrate that diffusion from an archaic core culture offers the most parsimonious explanation for the bullroarer complex – and that resisting this conclusion entails far greater stretches of the imagination (and of “psychic unity”) than accepting the idea of deep prehistoric connectivity [^14].

Throughout this discussion, we treat our audience as familiar with anthropological concepts and capable of following a tightly reasoned argument. The significance of the topic is immense: it touches on the origins of religion, the spread of mythic motifs, and the very question of whether early human culture was unified or disparate. In focusing on the bullroarer itself – its use in ritual and myth – we find a microcosm of humanity’s first spiritual endeavors. By tracing its footprint across continents and millennia, we confront the possibility that beneath the diversity of world cultures lies an early common substratum of ideas and practices. In this sense, understanding the bullroarer is a step toward understanding “who we are, and where we came from,” which was “the charter of Anthropology” before such grand questions fell out of vogue [^15]. The argument developed here is that the bullroarer’s worldwide sacred role is no mere convergence, but rather a lingering echo of mankind’s earliest ritual heritage – one that diffused widely in the Paleolithic and left indelible marks on spiritual traditions from Australia to Amazonia. We proceed now to examine the evidence in detail.

The Bullroarer Across Cultures: Distribution and Common Ritual Functions

Geographic Spread#

The bullroarer is found on every inhabited continent except perhaps Antarctica. Ethnographers and archaeologists have documented it (under various local names) among Indigenous Australians, many groups in Melanesia and New Guinea, across much of sub-Saharan Africa, in South and North America, and in parts of Asia and Europe [^16]. Already by 1898, anthropologist Alfred C. Haddon compiled a “comparative series” of bullroarers from around the world, illustrating specimens from Bushmen of southern Africa, Eskimo of the Arctic, Apache and Pima of North America, Bororo and Nahuaqué of Brazil, Malay and Sumatra, New Zealand Māori, New Guinea (Toaripi), Torres Straits Islanders, and numerous Aboriginal Australian tribes (Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri, etc.) [^17]. This breadth led Haddon to call the bullroarer “the most ancient, widely spread, and sacred religious symbol in the world.” [^18] Subsequent surveys only expanded the known range. By mid-20th century, the German ethnologist Otto Zerries catalogued bullroarer use in 40 different South American cultures in addition to countless examples from elsewhere [^19]. Theodore Seder (1952) observed that “this simple instrument was used almost everywhere in the world,” noting only a few apparent gaps (Finland, far northeast Asia, and the easternmost parts of North America) [^20]. Even those gaps have shrunk with new data: for example, the Sámi people of Lapland (now in Finland) have their own bullroarer tradition, and a bullroarer was recorded among the Mattaponi in Eastern North America [^21]. Virtually every major culture area has known the bullroarer in some form, from the Australian tjurunga to the Greek rhombos to the Aztec māhuīztli.

Archaeological Antiquity#

Supporting its global spread, bullroarer-like artifacts have turned up in archaeological sites of surprising age. In Europe, Ice Age contexts have yielded objects identified as bullroarers. The Abbé Henri Breuil famously reported a carved ivory piece from Magdalenian-age deposits (~15,000–13,000 BC) in France that he identified as the first known Paleolithic “bull-roarer”. It bore geometric engravings (lines and concentric circles) “resembling those on Australian churinga” (sacred bullroarer boards) [^22]. Breuil hypothesized that “in Magdalenian times a similar veneration may have been observed,” meaning the object might have been sacred and hidden from women just as in Aboriginal Australia [^23]. This find was later joined by others: fragments from Ukrainian sites ~17,000 years old have been interpreted as bullroarers [^24], and Mesolithic specimens in Scandinavia (e.g. a bone bullroarer ~8,500 years old) are the oldest known musical instruments in that region [^25]. In the Near East, Neolithic settlements have produced tantalizing evidence. At Çatalhöyük in Turkey (c. 7000 BC), bullroarers are reported among ritual artifacts [^26]. Even more strikingly, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic shrine site Göbekli Tepe (c. 9500 BC) has yielded decorated oval-shaped bone pieces with holes, closely matching ethnographic bullroarers [^27]. One such piece from nearby Körtik Tepe is incised with a snake motif along its length [^28] – a detail that recalls the frequent association of bullroarers with serpents in later cultures (from Aboriginal myths of the Rainbow Serpent to snake-emblazoned bullroarers in Amazonia) [^29]. While the excavators cautiously label these objects “bone spatulae” and hesitate on function [^30], they openly note the similarity to bullroarers and the possibility that these Neolithic communities had such instruments [^31]. In Pharaonic Egypt, too, possible bullroarers have been found – for example, illustrations suggest objects akin to bullroarers in Tutankhamun’s tomb (14th century BC) [^32], which if confirmed would indicate their presence in the ancient Mediterranean. Taken together, the archaeological record hints that the bullroarer is not only ethnographically widespread but also one of humanity’s oldest ritual implements, dating back to the Late Paleolithic in multiple regions [^33].

Core Ritual Uses and Meanings#

Core Ritual Uses and Meanings: Beyond its physical spread, what truly defines the bullroarer complex are the remarkably consistent uses and symbolic associations attached to it. Anthropologists as early as E.B. Tylor and Andrew Lang were astonished that peoples as distant as the Greek and the Hopi, or the Australian and the Brazilian, were using the bullroarer for the same ritual purposes [^34]. The common pattern can be summarized as follows: • Sacred “Voice of the Deity/Spirit”: In nearly all cases, the humming roar of the spinning board is interpreted as the voice of a powerful spirit or ancestral being. For example, Aboriginal Australians say the sound is the calls of Daramulan or other creator-beings [^35]; New Guinea tribes likewise assert the noise is made by a terrifying spirit monster (often believed to literally devour the initiates) [^36]; in many parts of Africa and the Americas, the sound is similarly explained as a spirit or ghost [^37]. Among the Bororo of Brazil, the bullroarer’s name me-galo literally means “ghost” or “shade” [^38]. In Navajo cosmology, bullroarers are identified with the holy Diyin Dine’é (Holy People) who created the world [^39]. Across Oceania, terms for bullroarer often double as names of mythic beings: e.g. in Papua New Guinea’s Yabim and Kai languages, the bullroarer and the initiation monster share the name balum or ngosa, which also means “spirit of the dead” or “grandfather” [^40]. This voice-of-god aspect is typically evoked during ceremonies: the unseen whirring in the forest or behind a veil signals the presence of the divine. Notably, ancient Greek mystery cults also used bullroarers to imitate the sound of the gods – in the Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries, the rombos (bullroarer) was spun along with drums and chants [^41]. Classicist James Frazer described how New Guinea tribes used the bullroarer in harvest rites in exactly the same spirit as the ecstatic rites of Dionysus in Greece [^42], underscoring the continuity of interpretation: whether in a Mediterranean temple or an Amazonian men’s house, the hum of the bullroarer heralds the numinous presence of otherworldly power. • Men’s Secret Initiation Cults: The bullroarer is virtually everywhere linked to male initiation ceremonies or secret societies. The standard scenario: at puberty rites or induction into a cult, boys are secluded and subjected to trials or teachings accompanied by the sound of bullroarers. Women and children are banished from the area, under dire threats. Through the ritual, the boys symbolically “die” as children and are reborn as men – often explicitly dramatized by myths of a monster swallowing them (the bullroarer sound representing its roar or the noise of the swallowing) and then being revived [^43]. Frazer recorded striking Australian examples: in Queensland, during initiation “the humming sound of the bullroarer… is said to be the noise made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing them up again as young men.” And another tribe explains that a ghost kills the boy and “brings him to life again as a man.” [^44] This theme of death-and-rebirth at initiation, with the bullroarer as the sonic instrument of transformation, recurs from Australia and New Guinea to southern Africa and Brazil [^45]. As one summary puts it, wherever bullroarers are integral to initiation, we also find “a form of tribal marking (scarification, circumcision), a death-and-resurrection ceremony, and an impersonation of ghosts or spirits” as part of the same complex [^46]. The instrument itself often is personified as the cult’s primordial ancestor or spirit. Among the Arunta of Australia, each child’s spirit is believed to be linked to a bullroarer (called churinga) that magically appears when the child is conceived – a tangible embodiment of the soul, which the male elders then seek and guard [^47]. In the Arunta Dreaming myths, the first Ancestors carried bullroarers as containers of their spirits [^48]. Similarly, in New Guinea’s Yabim culture, the bullroarer is named after Balum, the ancestor-spirit that devours initiates [^49]. The instrument is thus not a mere noisemaker, but a sacred token of identity and continuity with the ancestral/deity realm. • Taboo and Secrecy – “Women must not see”: Nearly universally, traditional societies decree that women (and often uninitiated boys) must neither see the bullroarer nor know the truth of its sound, on pain of extreme punishment [^50]. This injunction is enforced with remarkable severity and consistency. In Aboriginal Australia, the rule is famously strict: if a woman catches sight of the bullroarer, she could be gang-raped or killed according to tribal law [^51]. R.H. Mathews in 1898 noted that every account from across Australia agreed that “the uninitiated or the women are not permitted to see it or use it under pain of death.” [^52] In the New Guinea and Melanesian men’s societies, early observers reported that any female who even hears the bullroarer risks deadly retaliation [^53]. Among the Elema of Papua, for instance, women who peek during bullroarer ceremonies were said to be gang-raped by the men as punishment [^54] – eerily paralleling the Australian threat and the logic of domination. In sub-Saharan Africa, numerous secret cults (the Poro society in West Africa, for example) used bullroarers and forbade women’s presence, likewise buttressing male ritual authority with terror. Native North America is no exception: among tribes like the Navajo, Pomo, and Ute, ethnographers found that bullroarers were kept hidden from women and only whirled in women’s absence [^55]. Some Pueblo groups locked up their children if the sound was heard, to prevent accidental revelation [^56]. Even in the ancient Mediterranean, there are echoes of such taboos – Pliny the Elder noted a Roman belief that women must not spin thread in the open during certain festival days, ostensibly because it could threaten the harvest [^57]. This may be a distorted memory of earlier prohibitions against women imitating the whirring noise (spinning objects) reserved for Mysteries. The secrecy surrounding the bullroarer is so widespread that early-20th-century scholars like Robert Lowie pointed to it as the crux of the diffusion puzzle: “Why do Brazilians and Central Australians deem it death for a woman to see the bullroarer? … I know of no psychological principle that would urge the Ekoi [West Africa] and the Bororo [Brazil] mind to bar women from knowledge about bull-roarers.” [^58] Unless one posits an inherited tradition, it is difficult to explain how so specific a custom (women’s exclusion on pain of death) arose independently in so many disconnected cultures. Indeed, Lowie argued that this consistent taboo “cannot be regarded as due to an independent origin” absent any known human universal that would necessitate it [^59]. • Mythology of a Stolen Sacred Object: As noted, one of the most fascinating recurrent motifs is the story that women were the original owners or inventors of the bullroarer (or associated sacred flutes), until men took it from them. This mythic trope is documented in Australia, Melanesia, and across Amazonian South America, as well as in New Guinea highlands traditions [^60]. For example, many Papua New Guinea groups tell of a time when women held the sacred knowledge and tools (including bullroarers and masks), but men conspired to steal them, often by frightening the women with the bullroarer’s sound and then overpowering them [^61]. In Aboriginal Australia, the Djungawal sisters myth says two ancestral sisters had the sacred bora rites and bullroarers until men seized them, instituting male-only ceremonies thereafter [^62]. In the Amazon, the Mehinaku and neighboring tribes recount that in primordial times women lived separately and had the sacred flutes (kauka) and full control of society, while men were impoverished and impotent; the men eventually crafted bullroarers to scare the women and “filch the flutes and other sacred objects”, thus overthrowing the women’s rule [^63]. Anthropologist Thomas Gregor recorded a detailed Mehinaku narrative: the women had built the first men’s house and played the instruments, and if a man intruded, the women would gang-rape him; the men then secretly made bullroarers, whose “terrible drone” sent the women fleeing in fear, enabling the men to capture the flutes and violently subjugate the women [^64]. After this inversion, “today… if a woman comes in here and sees our flutes we rape her”, say the Mehinaku men, and women have been confined to domestic tasks ever since [^65]. The brutality of these myths is striking, yet they are told with a matter-of-fact tone as the charter for why men hold ritual power. Significantly, versions of the same story are found among unrelated cultures. A survey of 14 origin-myths for the bullroarer in New Guinea found that “all but two associate its first appearance with women,” the sole exception being a myth where a man invents it out of envy when a woman invents something else [^66]. In Amazonia and Melanesia alike, scholars have noted this convergence and linked it to the idea of an overthrown “primordial matriarchy.” Early theorist J.J. Bachofen (in 1861) speculated, based on Greek mythology, that human society went through a matriarchal stage before patriarchal religions took over [^67]. He tied the rise of male secret cults (like Dionysian mysteries) to an imagined coup d’etat by men against female governance [^68]. At the time, Bachofen’s ideas were mostly conjectural for non-Western cultures, but later fieldwork essentially confirmed his “out-of-sample” prediction: countless indigenous myths explicitly say “our bullroarer (or masked) cult was invented by women, from whom we stole it.” [^69]. Even anthropologists critical of the matriarchy theory acknowledge the ubiquity of these myths as a “difficult-to-explain set of facts.” [^70] In other words, independent societies across the world independently elaborating such similar origin legends is itself a phenomenon needing explanation. Either one must attribute it to a recurring psycho-social dynamic (some see these myths as symbolic expressions of male envy of female reproductive power, as we discuss later [^71]), or to some historical diffusion of the myth-theme along with the bullroarer cult. The diffusionist view would hold that these legends are cultural memories – distorted but meaningful echoes of an ancient transition when male ceremonialism emerged and perhaps supplanted earlier female-centric ritual. We will return to this point when considering the implications for prehistory. • Other Functions: While initiation and mystery-cult use dominates, bullroarers have occasionally been used for more mundane or secular purposes in some societies, especially after their original sacred role faded. For instance, in parts of Europe by the modern era the bullroarer survived mainly as a children’s toy or a shepherd’s tool. However, telling vestiges of its former significance often lingered. In rural Scotland, 19th-century children played with a bullroarer called the “thunder-spell” or “bullroarer”, and local folklore held it was a “sacred thing” that could ward off storms [^72]. Scottish cowherds up to the 1880s used a bullroarer (known as Srannan, said to have fallen from the sky) to protect cattle from lightning [^73]. In the Basque Country, the traditional furrunfarru or zumbador is a wooden bullroarer with carved spiral motifs; shepherds spin it at night to scare off predators or stray animals, a practice thought to derive from an older nocturnal ritual use [^74]. In some parts of Melanesia and Africa where the classic initiation cults waned under cultural change, the bullroarer became a mere noise-maker for fun or was kept as a curiosity – yet even then it might be reserved for males or used only in certain seasons, suggesting a memory of taboos [^75]. Healing and weather magic were other secondary uses: Native American shamans among the Navajo, Yokuts, and others would spin bullroarers to summon curing spirits or to invoke rain and wind [^76]. The instrument’s ability to produce an uncanny drone made it apt for any purpose requiring a link to the spirit world or influence over nature. Notably, the “buzzing” disk (or whizzer), a related instrument that makes a similar sound by spinning a disk on a cord, often co-occurs with bullroarers and shares some of these functions (e.g. used by Zuni war priests as a warning sound, or in Rocky Mountains tribes as a weather charm) [^77]. These variant uses indicate the bullroarer’s integration into multiple spheres of life, yet they all stem from the fundamental notion of the mystical sound and its power. When bullroarers became toys, it was typically in cultures where their sacred role had long since lapsed (as happened in some East African groups like the Kikuyu [^78]). This contrast – sacred instrument in one culture, plaything in another – is itself evidence of historical change over time. It strongly suggests that where the bullroarer is a mere toy, it likely was sacred in the past (as oral testimonies in Ireland and Madagascar indeed hint [^79]), rather than being a novel independent invention as a toy. Haddon pointedly recorded an Irish woman’s memory calling the bullroarer “sacred” even though local boys treated it as a game [^80]. Likewise, in Madagascar the bullroarer by the 20th century was “merely a child’s toy, reserved, however, for boys” [^81] – implying that even in play, it was gender-restricted. These facts align with the diffusionist expectation that a once-universal sacred object would degenerate into a secular form on the margins of its old range (e.g. Europe) or under cultural disintegration, rather than being spontaneously reinvented with identical taboos.

In summary, the bullroarer exhibits a constellation of distinctive features wherever it is found: it is tied to male-secret rituals (especially initiations involving symbolic death/rebirth), it embodies the “voice” or presence of divinity/spirits, it is surrounded by secrecy with women’s exclusion, and it carries mythical associations often involving serpents, ancestors, or a time when women ruled. The consistency of this complex was recognized by anthropologists over a century ago. Baldwin Spencer, describing Australian tribes in 1899, noted that “considerable mystery is attached to [the bullroarer’s] use – a mystery which probably had its origin in the desire of the men to impress the women with the idea of male supremacy.” [^82] Even this early functionalist guess – that men everywhere independently used the bullroarer to mystify and dominate women – concedes the cross-cultural similarity of the gender dynamic. By 1929, ethnologist E.M. Loeb could confidently assert, after surveying initiation rites worldwide, that “the case for diffusion is even stronger than stated by Lowie. Not only is the bull-roarer tabooed to women… and almost invariably the voice of spirits, but it also almost invariably travels with [the same cluster of initiation elements: tribal marks, death-and-resurrection, ghost impersonation]… There is no psychological principle which would necessarily group these elements together, and they therefore must be regarded as having been fortuitously grouped in one locality… then disseminated as a complex.” [^83] This statement neatly encapsulates why the bullroarer is so crucial to the diffusion vs. independent-invention debate: if all these traits occurred together just by chance in dozens of societies, it stretches credulity. Far more plausible is that they go together because they were historically connected – in other words, they were inherited from a common cultural source that established this complex of practices.

Having outlined the core ethnographic and historical data on the bullroarer, we now turn to interpretive frameworks. How have scholars sought to explain this global pattern? And what does the cumulative evidence suggest about when and where the bullroarer cult first arose? In addressing these questions, we will see why an early diffusion from an ancestral culture (likely in the late Paleolithic) provides a compelling solution, and how alternative explanations – whether appeals to universal psychology or coincidence – fall short.

Independent Invention or Ancient Diffusion? Competing Explanations in Anthropological Perspective#

From the late 19th century onward, the bullroarer was a test case for two major paradigms in anthropology: evolutionary parallelism (or the “psychic unity of mankind”) versus historical diffusion. This debate was part of a larger intellectual contest over how to interpret similar cultural phenomena found around the world. Here we review the classic arguments on each side as applied to the bullroarer, then assess which theory better accounts for the data.

The Evolutionist/Psychic-Unity Argument (Independent Invention)#

Victorian anthropologists such as E.B. Tylor and Andrew Lang, working under a broadly evolutionist framework, proposed that human cultures tend to pass through similar stages (from “savagery” to “civilization”) and thus often independently arrive at similar institutions. They posited a “psychic unity” – i.e. that all human minds have roughly the same capacities and will respond to similar needs with similar ideas [^84]. In this view, the bullroarer’s wide occurrence is not because of a historical connection, but because any group of people setting up secret male rites might invent a whirled noise-maker as a practical “alarm” and imbue it with mystique. Andrew Lang’s 1885 essay “The Bull-Roarer: A Study of the Mysteries” is a foundational statement of this position. After marveling at the bullroarer’s diffusion – “found among the most widely severed peoples, savage and civilised… used in the mysteries of Zunis, Kamilaroi, Maoris, South Africans, and Greeks” [^85] – Lang explicitly rejects a common origin. “There is no need for a hypothesis of common origin, or of borrowing, to account for this widely diffused sacred object,” he writes [^86]. Instead, he argues, the bullroarer is a “very simple invention. Anyone might find out that a bit of sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes a roaring noise when whirred.” [^87] Given that “all tribes have their mysteries” and “all want a signal to summon the right persons and warn the wrong persons to keep away”, it is natural that many would independently adopt the bullroarer as a handy “church bell” in societies lacking metal bells [^88]. Likewise, if the ritual is a “boy’s club” (male-only), “it could naturally develop” that women are barred and even executed for intruding [^89]. Lang thus attempts to show that each element of the bullroarer complex could plausibly arise from common human practicalities: secret assemblies need an audible signal; a whirring board is an obvious solution; to maintain awe, one hides the device and concocts a spiritual explanation; if women are excluded from the cult, one reinforces the taboo by threatening them with death. In his words, “similar minds, working with simple means towards similar ends, might evolve the bull-roarer and its mystic uses anywhere.” [^90] He extended this logic to the historical question of Greece. The presence of bullroarer rites in ancient Greek mysteries (e.g. the cult of Cybele or Dionysus) did not, for Lang, indicate any diffusion from “savages” or vice versa; rather, he thought the Greeks themselves had retained the bullroarer from their own bygone “savage stage” of cultural evolution [^91]. In his conclusion, Lang essentially posits that every culture at a “primitive” stage might invent such a ritual object, and that civilized Greeks simply kept theirs as a survival from prehistory [^92].

Later scholars who favored independent invention echoed Lang. The German ethnographer Karl von den Steinen, after observing bullroarers among Brazilian tribes in the 1890s, similarly commented that “so simple a contrivance… can hardly be regarded as so severe a tax on human ingenuity as to require the hypothesis of a single invention throughout the history of civilization.” [^93] In short, if a bullroarer is easy to invent, why invoke diffusion? More recently, folklorist Alan Dundes (1978) offered a psychoanalytic twist on independent origin: he argued that bullroarers sound like farting and look like a penis, symbolizing male sexuality, and thus “boys will be boys” – i.e. different male groups would reinvent this “flatulent phallus” in their initiation rituals as an expression of unconscious drives [^94]. Dundes’ somewhat tongue-in-cheek thesis suggested that the bullroarer’s recurrence could be due to universal Freudian dynamics: males everywhere envy women’s creative (birthing) power and sublimate this via a noisy phallic device to “emulate female reproductive abilities”, as well as to literally make a lot of wind (anal aggression) in their ceremonies [^95]. While this interpretation is far from mainstream, it represents an extreme form of a psychic unity argument – positing deep-seated psychological motives that would cause independent invention of the same ritual instrument across cultures.

Proponents of independent invention also often downplay the significance of distribution. If an item is very simple, it is easier to imagine it being dreamed up multiple times. Haddon in 1898, though he documented global bullroarers, leaned this way: “The implement itself is so simple that there is no reason why it should not have been independently invented in many places and at diverse times.” [^96]. To explain the shared mystic status, Haddon suggested that once invented, a bullroarer tends to become sacred and “very ancient” in each locale because its awe-inspiring sound lends itself to ritual importance [^97]. Thus in his view perhaps several independent groups early on adopted it and kept it ever since, transmitting it to descendants (and maybe to neighbors) – a sort of limited diffusion on a regional scale, but not a single point of origin for all [^98]. This is a more moderate stance: it accepts some diffusion (so as not to require dozens of separate inventions) but still imagines multiple “centers” of origin for the bullroarer.

In summary, the independent-invention camp (in its various forms) sees nothing mysterious about the bullroarer’s wide occurrence. They argue it’s functionally obvious (a noise signal) and psychologically natural (to dramatize mystery and male authority), so it could readily emerge wherever early ritual systems needed it. If one also assumes early humans everywhere had similar mindsets, the parallel development of bullroarer cults might be as unsurprising as, say, the parallel invention of fire-making or the bow. But does this argument hold up to scrutiny? Its plausibility hinges on whether the specific cluster of features around the bullroarer truly would arise independently under similar conditions – or whether these features are in fact arbitrary and historically contingent.

Critics quickly pointed out the shortcomings. As Robert Lowie argued in 1920, the instrument itself may be simple, but the associated elaborate taboos and myths are not so readily explained by environment or psyche [^99]. Lowie noted that in his own fieldwork among the Hopi, he witnessed bullroarers used in ceremonies but without the strict exclusion of women – indicating that merely having a noisemaker doesn’t automatically generate the full complex of secrecy and danger [^100]. Something more was needed to explain why in some cultures (Australia, Brazil, PNG, Africa) the bullroarer was embedded in a much larger gendered ritual system, whereas in others it was not. Lowie flatly stated: “I know of no psychological principle that would urge the Ekoi [Africa] and the Bororo [Brazil] mind to bar women… until such a principle is brought to light I do not hesitate to accept diffusion from a common center as the more probable assumption.” [^101]. This is a crucial point: independent invention arguments must assume that human minds would not only invent the same gadget but also spontaneously link it with the same meaning structure (male secrecy, rebirth rituals, etc.). Yet as Lowie observed, there is nothing inherent in swinging a piece of wood that demands a myth of women originally owning it, or requires a “death-and-resurrection” ritual to accompany it. Those specific content elements do not obviously flow from any universal human need – they appear to be arbitrary (one could imagine, say, a culture where a whirring toy was just a weather charm and never part of initiation, etc.). The independent camp struggled to identify any universal factor beyond vague “male psychology” or “practical necessity” to account for the full complex. Dundes’ Freudian solution – that all males have “anal phallic” anxieties – was an attempt to fill that gap with a universal psychological mechanism [^102]. But even if one entertained that, it fails to explain, for instance, the specific mythic motif of women’s prior ownership. Are we to believe that every society, through unconscious convergent thinking, concocted essentially the same storyline of men stealing the cult from women? The likelihood strains credulity. Indeed, even scholars skeptical of diffusion admit the motif’s pervasiveness is “intriguing” and “difficult-to-explain” without historical connection [^103].

The Diffusionist Argument (Common Origin)#

On the other side, diffusionists contend that the simplest explanation for such a tightly correlated set of practices across the globe is a historical diffusion from a single source or cultural tradition. If one ancient culture complex featured the bullroarer as a sacred instrument in men’s initiation ceremonies (with all the attendant motifs of rebirth, ancestral voices, and gender antagonism), then as that culture’s descendants spread or as the idea was transmitted through migrations, it could give rise to all the instances we see. Early diffusionists suggested various scenarios for this. Some, like anthropologist Heinrich Schurtz (1902) or Hutton Webster (1908), explicitly argued that the male secret-society complex in Australia, New Guinea, and the Americas was so similar that it likely descended from a single ancestral cult [^104]. Lowie – though generally a Boasian relativist – after reviewing the bullroarer evidence in 1920 concluded that an “ancient common culture based on the separation of the sexes” had to be assumed [^105]. He wrote: “until [a psychological principle for independent development] is brought to light I do not hesitate to accept diffusion from a common center as the more probable assumption,” implying one origin for the male-initiation+bullroarer institution spanning Australia, New Guinea, Melanesia, and Africa [^106]. In Lowie’s view, this also meant that the very idea of gender-segregated initiation cults (as opposed to spontaneous gender division) was historically particular, not inevitable: “sex dichotomy [in ritual] is not a universal phenomenon springing spontaneously from human nature but an ethnographical feature originating in a single center and thence transmitted to other regions.” [^107]. Later, E.M. Loeb marshaled even more data, adding North and South America to the connected regions, and emphasized that the full package of bullroarer + impersonation of spirits + initiatory “death” + genital mutilation must have been invented once and spread, since there is “no psychological principle” binding those elements together except historical accident [^108]. A 1929 editorial in Nature (hardly a fringe outlet) agreed, stating that given the distribution, “earlier theories [of independent origin] are to be regarded as untenable.” It concluded: “As there is no psychological principle which debars women from the sight of the instrument in Oceania, Africa, and the New World, it cannot be regarded as due to an independent origin and it must be inferred that it has been diffused from a common centre.” [^109]. The Nature editors even suggested the complex was likely Palaeolithic in origin, given its wide range, rather than a recent diffusion [^110]. In the U.S., the eminent anthropologist A.L. Kroeber – normally cautious about grand history – acknowledged that Loeb’s worldwide distribution analysis was illuminating and that “on a continental or world-wide basis” one might indeed reconstruct a single ancient diffusion of the bullroarer-initiation complex [^111]. Kroeber observed that such a broad perspective could “conceivably take one further” in understanding local cases (like California tribes’ Kuksu cults) than treating them in isolation [^112]. In other words, he admitted that a general diffusionist scheme might make sense of data that were otherwise hard to interpret. Notably, many of these diffusionist analysts were not marginal figures – they included some of the era’s leading anthropologists, showing that at the time this hypothesis was taken very seriously in mainstream scholarship [^113].

Diffusionist explanations often hypothesize an identifiable source or path. Several clues emerge from the bullroarer case: (1) the earliest archaeological finds (Europe ~20k–15k BP, Near East ~10k BP) suggest great antiquity in the Old World [^114]; (2) the presence of the complex in both the Old and New Worlds implies it dates to before or during early human migrations to the Americas (so Palaeolithic or at latest early Holocene) [^115]; (3) striking parallels between South America and Australia/Melanesia especially fascinated researchers, given those regions’ vast separation. Some, like anthropologist Wilhelm Koppers (1930), speculated on direct ancient contacts (e.g. maybe via seafarers or now-submerged lands) between Australia and South America [^116]. But a more conservative diffusion route is via Intermediate regions: For example, populations carrying the bullroarer tradition could have spread westward into Africa and Europe and eastward into Asia/Australia, and also across the Bering land bridge into the Americas. Anthropologist Harold Gladwin in 1937 noted a suite of traits common to Australia/Melanesia and parts of the Americas (spear-throwers, certain ritual mutilations, bullroarers, etc.) and suggested these might have been brought to the New World by early migrations via Beringia [^117]. He lamented the refusal of American archaeologists to consider diffusion from Asia as an explanation, attributing it to a knee-jerk defense of “the sanctity of American native inventiveness.” [^118]. Gladwin quipped that “the lady doth protest too much” – implying that the extreme insistence on independent origin was itself suspicious [^119]. He sensibly pointed out that one need not invoke lost continents or recent transoceanic voyages: it could simply be that the very earliest hunter-gatherers entering the Americas (who likely came via Siberia ~15,000+ years ago) already carried certain cultural traits with them [^120]. If those pioneers descended from an old Eurasian culture that used bullroarers, they could easily have introduced the practice to the Americas. Indeed, the domesticated dog is a perfect parallel: dogs were domesticated in Eurasia at least ~20,000 years ago and then accompanied human bands to Australia and the New World, such that every culture on Earth had dogs [^121]. If something as concrete as a domestic animal diffused globally in the late Pleistocene, why not a ritual tradition? Recent genetic evidence confirms that dogs arrived in the Americas with the first humans [^122]. The bullroarer, being portable and conceptually simple, could likewise have been part of the cultural “toolkit” of late Ice Age hunter-gatherers migrating into new lands [^123]. Gregor (1985) explicitly notes that “today we know that the bullroarer is a very ancient object,” citing Paleolithic specimens, and that archaeologists like Gordon Willey now admit it likely came to the Americas with the earliest migrants [^124]. This is “recent evidence in accord with diffusionist predictions,” as Gregor wryly remarks [^125].

Thus, a diffusionist reconstruction would propose that the bullroarer was known to some late Ice Age culture (possibly an early Upper Paleolithic culture in Eurasia) which gave rise to multiple descendant traditions. Some diffusionists have even linked this to the idea of an archaic “totemic” or shamanic culture at the dawn of religion. Joseph Campbell, for example, saw the bullroarer as evidence of a shared substratum of myth-ritual complexes across continents. In The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1959), Campbell compared Greek, Indonesian, and Australian myths and found “not only a shared body of ritualized motifs but also signs of a shared past” – specifically noting that “the hum of the bull-roarer was used just as in the rites of the cannibals of Indonesia” and Australian rites [^126]. He concluded unequivocally: “There can be no doubt that the two mythologies [Greek and Indonesian] are derived from a single base…supported by [Adolf] Jensen, the ethnologist chiefly responsible for the Indonesian material.” [^127] He then added that it is “surely no mere accident, nor consequence of parallel development, that has brought the bull-roarers on the scene for both the Greek and the Australian occasion.” [^128] Campbell and Jensen traced this common base to what Jensen called the “slain god” culture – an early Neolithic (or late Paleolithic) worldview centered on death-and-rebirth rites, often involving agricultural symbols and serpents [^129]. Jensen (1966) argued that such mystery-cult rites “spread near the dawn of agriculture when man first ritualized death and rebirth.” [^130] He directly addressed the bullroarer, challenging the idea that multiple independent societies would all create identical initiation structures. He wrote: “Imagine that Indians, Papuans, and Africans alike came to the realization of the connection between death and procreation. Can one seriously think that in Africa, New Guinea, and South America, initiation rites [would be] created [independently] in which boys are isolated, taught myths, kept from women, use a bullroarer to announce themselves, invent a devouring spirit whose voice is the bullroarer, and [all the other similarities]?” [^131]. Jensen’s rhetorical question underscores diffusionists’ incredulity at the coincidence required for independent origin. Instead, he posited that the complex of male initiation with bullroarer and mythology likely arose once in human history – plausibly among early food-producing societies – and then diffused widely. He believed this happened “when death and rebirth” first became ritualized concepts, i.e. as prehistoric people grappled with cycles of life (perhaps connected to planting and harvesting) [^132]. If true, this places the origin in the late Mesolithic or early Neolithic, which aligns with archaeological hints of bullroarers near the transition to agriculture (e.g. decorated Neolithic bullroarers at Göbekli Tepe and Hallan Çemi, circa 10,000–9,000 BC, complete with snake iconography) [^133]. The Nature editorial (1929) had even suggested a Palaeolithic origin [^134], which could correspond to the Upper Paleolithic (Magdalenian) finds and possibly to a Gravettian culture (ca. 25,000–20,000 BC) hypothesized by some as spreading certain symbolic traditions globally [^135]. Indeed, the Gravettian period in Europe, known for abundant female figurines (Venus statuettes) and evidence of shamanistic practice, has been speculated to reflect a strong female-centric ritual emphasis. The absence of male figurines and prevalence of female icons led scholars like Marija Gimbutas and Jacques Cauvin to envision a sort of prehistoric goddess-culture or women’s prominence in ritual [^136]. If the bullroarer was present in that milieu (as the Ukrainian 17kya find suggests [^137]), one might conjecture that women originally held ritual power in that culture (hence the later myths of female-first ownership could be faint echoes). Chris Knight (1995), in “Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture,” takes exactly this line: he interprets worldwide bullroarer rituals as a cultural memory of a primeval “sex-strike” by women ~50,000 years ago that launched human symbolic culture [^138]. Knight sees the bullroarer myth (men scaring women and reversing roles) as a dramatised inversion of an earlier reality where women’s solidarity created the first taboos and rituals. While Knight’s timeline (50kya) is speculative and his focus is on menstrual synchrony and sex roles, his work exemplifies an interdisciplinary approach – combining anthropology, folklore, and evolutionary theory – to argue that such global myths are rooted in real events or conditions in the Stone Age. He explicitly reads the Amazonian myth (cited above) as describing a time when “women occupied the men’s houses and played the sacred flutes… [men] took care of children… In those days, children even nursed at our [men’s] breasts” – an obviously mythic image, but Knight treats it as symbolic inversion of women’s nurturance and men’s lack thereof [^139]. Ultimately, Knight suggests the bullroarer rituals encode an ancient gender bargaining system, and he endorses diffusion: “worldwide bullroarer rituals” are for him a legacy of that Paleolithic “covenant” that spread with early humans [^140].

Without venturing too far into speculative territory, we can condense the diffusionist thesis: Sometime in the prehistoric past, a cultural complex took shape involving male initiation ceremonies, secrecy from women, and a loud whirled instrument symbolizing ancestral or divine voices. This complex may have co-evolved with early religious or social innovations (shamanism, totemism, or the establishment of men’s houses as institutions). From one or a few centers, it spread extensively – by demic diffusion (population migrations) and/or by cultural contact. Over thousands of years, it was carried to nearly every corner of the world, such that by the time of the ethnographic present, even very isolated cultures (like Australian Aboriginal tribes, Amazonian villagers, etc.) retained versions of it. In some regions, it later eroded or transformed (e.g. Europe, where later patriarchal religions like Christianity suppressed mystery cults, leaving bullroarers only as toys or folk charms; or parts of Africa where colonial influence weakened secret societies). But enough distinctive commonalities remain that its shared origin can be inferred. This narrative aligns well with the data outlined in the previous section. It also dovetails with other lines of evidence: for example, the distribution of certain mythic motifs like the global flood myth or earth-diver creation myth is often attributed to ancient diffusion vs. independent invention, especially when similar details occur in far-flung versions. The bullroarer myth of stolen rites is one such motif at a very global scale, adding weight to the diffusion interpretation.

Evaluating Parsimony#

The principle of parsimony in scientific explanation suggests we should prefer the hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions. In the case of the bullroarer, the diffusionist hypothesis requires one assumption: that a tradition originating in one society was transmitted to others (something we know happens in general). The independent-invention hypothesis requires believing in multiple coincidences: that each aspect of the bullroarer complex (secret male initiation, spirit-voice interpretation, death-rebirth ritual schema, female-ownership myth) emerged independently in numerous unrelated cultures. As Nature put it in 1929, only if we cherry-pick the bullroarer’s simpler uses (as a toy or generic magic device) could we imagine multiple origins – but “in connexion with initiation and secret societies, it is always associated” with the full complex, “and invariably represented as the voice of spirits; but when found outside the area of initiation rites… it is neither.” [^141]. This means the sacred complex and the distribution go hand in hand; one cannot explain the distribution by ignoring the functional uniformity. It would be an astounding case of convergent evolution for all those elements to spontaneously coalesce time and again. By analogy, independent-invention across continents might explain something very basic like pottery or fire-making (since those address universal practical needs). But something as specific as the bullroarer cult is more like a complex cultural technology – akin to, say, musical notation or alchemy – which, if found in disparate places, we normally suspect was shared rather than reinvented wholesale. Curt Sachs, a pioneer ethnomusicologist, articulated this well: having studied instruments worldwide, Sachs noted that extremely specific forms with the same symbolic and functional roles appearing in distant locales implies historical relatedness. He wrote that after observing “the rarest cultural forms, often with totally incidental structural features, occur in widely scattered parts of the world” with symbolism intact, one forms “a great picture of a world-circling cultural kinship, created over thousands of years by man himself, through migrations and sea-voyages, despite all natural obstacles.” [^142]. Sachs was actually referring in part to bullroarers here, agreeing with Jaap Kunst’s 1960 statement: “No ethnomusicologist… would stand for plurigenesis as regards the bull-roarers, which even in decorative detail are often alike and are used for the same purpose wherever… found (where it has not become a toy through lapse of time).” [^143]. This is a strong professional judgment that independent origin (plurigenesis) is implausible for the bullroarer. It highlights the telling fact that even decorative designs on bullroarers show similarities across far-flung cultures [^144]. For instance, the concentric circle or spiral pattern is common on bullroarers from Paleolithic Europe, Aboriginal Australia, and elsewhere, often symbolizing something (perhaps the whirling motion or an eye of a spirit) [^145]. While such a design could be coincidental, it adds to the cumulative case.

To bolster diffusion, one can also point to associated cultural patterns. Bullroarer-based male cults tend to appear in societies with certain kinship and social structures – e.g. an emphasis on men’s communal houses, a degree of male solidarity vis-à-vis women, and often patrilineal or patri-centered organization. Schurtz (1902) in “Alterklassen und Männerbünde” noted the parallels between Melanesian and Amazonian men’s house societies [^146]. If these social institutions themselves had a common origin, the bullroarer may simply be one ritual manifestation of that. It is interesting that the geographic distribution of strict “male secret society” cultures broadly overlaps where bullroarers are sacrosanct (Australia, Melanesia, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Native North and South America). Regions where bullroarers are absent or trivial often had different social structures (for example, much of East Asia and Europe after the Bronze Age did not have pan-tribal male initiation cults in the same way, and indeed bullroarers are largely absent there, aside from historical remnants). This correlation again hints at historical linkage – perhaps the bullroarer complex spread as part of a cultural package of patriarchal-ritual institutions. Indeed, Loeb (1929) and others spoke of the “Limited possibilities of cultural configuration”: there might have been only a few ways early societies structured gender and initiation, and one of those ways (the men’s secret cult with bullroarer and myth) happened to be so successful or stable that it proliferated widely. This is less a matter of universal human nature than of historical momentum – an idea that caught on and was transmitted.

It is worth noting that no evidence of contradictory cases has emerged to challenge the diffusion model. That is, we don’t find, say, a culture that has identical male-cult practices except with a completely different instrument in place of the bullroarer. Nor do we find bullroarers being used in fundamentally different ways (the few exceptions, like being used purely as toys or weather charms, are clearly derivative or fragmentary usages). The pattern is coherent. If multiple independent inventions occurred, one might expect some cultures to use a dissimilar device for the same purpose (for example, in some places a drum or whistle could have served the function of “sacred sound to scare women” – and indeed some cultures do also use hollow bamboo trumpets or whistling tubes in men’s rites, but tellingly, these often coexist with bullroarers or are mythically linked, rather than being a totally separate invention) [^147]. For instance, on Ambrym Island (Vanuatu), men used both bullroarers and resonating bamboo trunks to produce the “voice of the demon” in their ceremonies [^148]. In Amazonia, sacred flutes (called yuruparí in some regions) are used similarly to bullroarers and share the myth of women once owning them – but notably, many tribes have both flutes and bullroarers, or use bullroarers to enforce the secrecy of the flutes [^149]. This suggests the complex can incorporate multiple instruments, but the bullroarer often remains integral as a portable signaling device and symbol of the cult. The occurrence of these linked forms across continents again implies an ancient connection rather than repeated parallel invention of multiple instrument types with identical myths.

In light of all this, the diffusion hypothesis not only seems more economical but indeed predictive. It predicted, for example, that archaeology would eventually find bullroarers in very ancient sites, which it did (e.g. Paleolithic bullroarers in France and Ukraine, Mesolithic in Scandinavia) [^150]. It predicted that if myth collections were made in places like New Guinea and Amazonia, they would show the female-first motif recurrently (and fieldwork did later confirm this, as Hays and others found) [^151]. It predicted that even fringe parallels (like possible links between Australian Aboriginal symbols and Neolithic Anatolian symbols) might come to light – and indeed, a recent comparative study noted “striking similarities” between certain Australian sacred iconography and carvings at Göbekli Tepe (12,000-year-old pillars in Turkey) [^152]. One example highlighted is a specific symbol found on both an Australian churinga (sacred bullroarer board) and a Göbekli Tepe pillar depicting a deity – implying that a particular design had sacred meaning in both contexts [^153]. While such popular comparisons must be taken cautiously, they intriguingly align with the notion of a long diffusion. The diffusion model even anticipated that the Atlantis/Lost Civilization enthusiasts would eventually stumble on the bullroarer, given their hunt for global links – yet as the Vectors of Mind author wryly notes, so far they have oddly “failed to mention the bullroarer, the best evidence of cultural diffusion,” focusing instead on superficial artifacts like carved “handbags” in ancient art [^154]. In other words, the strongest evidence for worldwide ancient connections has been largely overlooked in favor of less substantive clues.

To sum up, when weighing independent invention vs. diffusion for the bullroarer, the diffusionist case is compelling: it accounts for the highly specific cross-cultural commonalities by one cause (inheritance), whereas independent invention has to postulate a host of unlikely parallel accidents. Diffusion also coheres with what we know of human prehistory – that humans migrated widely and took their cultural practices with them. There is nothing implausible about a ritual idea traveling as far as the people who practice it. By contrast, expecting the same complex idea to sprout spontaneously in unconnected populations – multiple times – is, as Kroeber put it, akin to invoking “spontaneous generation” in biology [^155]. Kroeber argued it is far more fruitful to work with a “working hypothesis of connection” that can be tested and refined, rather than assume independent origin which “generally amounts to falling back on a principle so vague that it checks further inquiry.” [^156] In the study of the bullroarer, assuming connection encouraged scholars to look for actual migratory paths, shared linguistic terms, and deeper mythological ties – which they found. Assuming independent origin, in contrast, often led to no further questions (just “it happened by itself everywhere”) and thus a stagnation of research on origins.

In the next section, we explore why, given the strong evidence and once-serious acceptance of diffusion in this case, the topic fell out of favor. Understanding the ideological and institutional resistance to diffusionist thinking will shed light on broader trends in anthropology and how certain interpretations become marginalized. This will help explain why the bullroarer’s significance is not widely known today, even though early anthropologists considered it “the most compelling case for a connection among the ancients worldwide.”  .

The Diffusionist View Marginalized: Ideological and Institutional Resistance#

Despite the persuasive case outlined above, by the mid-20th century the diffusion hypothesis for the bullroarer (and for many other global cultural parallels) was largely abandoned or even ridiculed in mainstream anthropology. The shift was not due to new evidence disproving diffusion – on the contrary, as we have seen, evidence continued to accumulate quietly in favor of ancient connections [^157]. Instead, the causes were intellectual, political, and methodological. In this section, we analyze why the diffusionist perspective became unfashionable, and how certain biases and fears led scholars to downplay or ignore the bullroarer complex. This is a cautionary tale in the sociology of academia: it shows how an explanation can be sidelined not because it fails empirically, but because it conflicts with prevailing ideologies or scholarly identities. Several key factors contributed:

1. Reaction against Hyper-Diffusionism and Evolutionism: Early 20th-century anthropology witnessed extreme forms of diffusionism – notably the theories of Grafton Elliot Smith and W.J. Perry, who attempted to trace all major cultural inventions (pyramids, metallurgy, agriculture, etc.) to a single source (e.g. ancient Egypt). These “hyper-diffusionist” claims, often tied to ideas of lost continents (Mu, Atlantis) or grand schemes like a “Heliolithic culture” spreading from the Near East, eventually lost credibility due to over-speculation and lack of solid evidence [^158]. By mid-century, diffusionism as a whole became tainted by association. American archaeologists in particular were eager to distance themselves from anything that might “lend countenance to the extravagant theories” of Elliot Smith or the like [^159]. Harold Gladwin noted in 1937 that a “rather logical explanation” (diffusion from Asia to explain trait parallels between Australia/Melanesia and the Americas) was reflexively dismissed because it might seem to give comfort to extreme diffusionists [^160]. He quotes the common attitude: “immediately, at the first sound of the alarm, comes the solid body of American archaeologists to uphold the sanctity of American native inventiveness.” [^161] In other words, any diffusion argument was viewed with suspicion as potentially endorsing discredited ideas. The pendulum swung to an opposite extreme: a staunch insistence on autochthonous development (everything arising independently in each region). The bullroarer, unfortunately, fell victim to this pendulum swing. Although it had been a strong candidate for a genuine diffusion, its champions (Lowie, Loeb, etc.) were associated with the earlier era. When Boasian particularism and American cultural nationalism took hold, the bullroarer debate was essentially shelved. By the 1940s–50s, very few anthropologists were still pursuing global comparisons; energy shifted to detailed area studies, describing cultures on their own terms rather than seeking ancient links.

2. Nationalism and Regional Loyalism: As alluded, there was a defensive pride, especially in New World archaeology and ethnology, about the independence of indigenous civilizations. Margaret Mead in 1949 stated flatly that “most scholars agree that the civilizations of the New World developed independently from those of the Old World.” [^162] This became almost an article of faith. Suggesting Old World influence on Native American culture was seen as diminishing the creativity of Native peoples (and also complicating the narrative of pristine evolution in the Americas). Thus, even strong parallels (like those between initiation rites in Amazonia and Melanesia) were tiptoed around or attributed to coincidental functional adaptation. In his 2001 volume, Gregor notes that for a long period “anthropologists continued informally to remark upon the similarities” between Amazonia and Melanesia, but “diffusionist anthropology waned” and with it formal interest in explaining those resemblances [^163]. Researchers focusing on one region often lacked incentive to postulate links to another – it was safer and simpler to assume independent trajectories. Within academia, there was also departmentalization: specialists in Australian Aboriginal culture seldom interacted with those studying Amazonian tribes or African secret societies. Comparative work spanning continents fell out of favor, viewed as too speculative or reminiscent of Victorian armchair anthropology. The bullroarer’s story, precisely because it spanned continents, cut against the grain of increasingly localized, present-focused field studies.

3. Ideological Shifts – Anti-“Primitivism” and Relativism: As anthropology developed a reflexive critique of its own concepts, terms like “primitive” or “savage” (common in 1900) were rightly questioned. The notion of searching for the origins of culture in contemporary tribal societies came under fire for being evolutionist and potentially demeaning. By the 1960s–70s, a post-colonial sensitivity made anthropologists reluctant to posit that any living people were a window onto the Paleolithic. Yet the bullroarer debate had often been framed in exactly those terms: as Lang wrote, it was about whether Greek rites retained “survivals of savagery” or whether “savage rites” globally indicated a connection [^164]. That framing became distasteful. Modern anthropologists tended to treat each culture’s practices as unique in meaning, not as fossils of an earlier stage. This historical agnosticism meant a phenomenon like the bullroarer could be documented in, say, New Guinea ethnography without any discussion of parallel cases elsewhere or its possible antiquity. In effect, the diffusion hypothesis required thinking in deep time and drawing lines between “primitive” cultures – exactly the kind of thinking that mid-century relativism discouraged. As one commentator put it, anthropologists “abdicated the search” for human origins and deep connections because the concepts of “primitive” and “advanced” became problematic [^165]. It became easier to “look away” than to engage with artifacts like the bullroarer that pointed to primordial religion [^166]. Consequently, even though the bullroarer complex persisted among many studied societies, its broader significance was often unremarked in ethnographies post-1950. It was described as one ritual element among others, without comparative analysis. Over time, it indeed faded from disciplinary consciousness, as Cormier & Jones note: “The enigma of the bullroarer complex has largely faded from the consciousness of contemporary anthropology”, despite being so central to early theorists [^167].

4. Association with Fringe and Occult Ideas: Another curious stigma is that diffusionism (particularly global diffusion) came to be seen as the province of amateur theorists and pseudo-historians (e.g. cult archaeological writers or esotericists). The bullroarer, for example, might today more likely be encountered in a Graham Hancock or Ancient Aliens style discourse than in a refereed journal – not because those authors discuss it (ironically, they usually ignore it [^168]), but because anything positing ancient worldwide links evokes that milieu. The author of Vectors of Mind points out this ironic gap: fringe theorists are obsessed with megaliths and mythic symbols, yet “somehow they rarely mention the bullroarer, the best evidence of cultural diffusion” [^169]. If they did highlight it, academics might even more vigorously avoid it, simply out of a reflex to distance themselves from pseudo-science. There is also a subtle undertone: racism and ethnocentrism were historically entangled with some diffusionist claims (e.g. the idea that one superior civilization spread knowledge to all others). Modern scholars, quite rightly, reject any notion that, say, indigenous Australians or Amazonians couldn’t have developed their own rituals. So any diffusion argument must tread carefully to avoid implying a “civilizing mission” of culture bearers. In the bullroarer case, however, the diffusion likely happened before any historical “civilizations” – it was a diffusion among hunter-gatherer or early farming peoples, not an imposition by advanced outsiders. There is no claim of a Plato’s Atlantis giving bullroarers to the world; rather, it’s likely the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and others themselves carried the tradition as they migrated. But this nuance can be lost. Many anthropologists possibly felt that engaging in diffusionist reconstruction opened a Pandora’s box of politically charged interpretations, and thus better left alone. (We see a mild form of this in Haddon’s hesitation: he said a single origin was “impossible to prove” and might have happened so long ago as to be moot [^170].)

5. Paradigm of Specialization and Empiricism: After Boas, anthropology placed heavy emphasis on gathering detailed empirical data in specific contexts (historical particularism). Grand syntheses or comparisons fell out of favor unless backed by overwhelming data. By the time enough data existed globally to robustly revisit diffusion questions (arguably by late 20th century), the academic incentive structure did not favor such cross-cultural syntheses. The bullroarer, spanning multiple continents, fell between the cracks of area studies. Its study required familiarity with Aboriginal Australian lore, Papua New Guinea ethnography, Amazonian ethnology, African initiation systems, classical studies (for Greece), and archaeology – an almost impossibly broad range for any one scholar. Early 1900s anthropologists were generalists who attempted this, but later ones were specialists. As a result, the bullroarer got scattered treatment. For example, an Africanist might note bullroarer use in a single tribe’s ritual, but might not compare it to Amazonian cases. A music archaeologist might publish a find of a Neolithic “instrument” but shy away from linking it to living cultures. Without integration, the significance remained buried in disparate literatures. By 2015, when Cormier & Jones wrote “The Domesticated Penis”, they had to pull hundreds of references together across disciplines to provide an evenhanded summary of the bullroarer complex [^171] – a sign that no comprehensive treatment had been widely recognized in decades. They observe that “the central facts are not debated and require an explanation, but anthropologists no longer have the appetite.” [^172] In short, the field’s focus had moved on, leaving the bullroarer an orphaned puzzle: acknowledged as intriguing, yet considered anachronistic to debate.

6. Mischaracterizing Diffusion as Deterministic or Monocausal: Another bias was the assumption that diffusionism meant denying human creativity or insisting culture only changes by borrowing. This false dichotomy pitted diffusion vs. independent invention as mutually exclusive and totalizing. In reality, both processes happen and can complement each other. But mid-century theorists, eager to assert agency of each culture, downplayed diffusion almost on principle. Kroeber’s plea in 1920 to consider connection as a productive hypothesis was largely ignored [^173]. Instead, “independent origin” became the default unless borrowing was explicitly documented by historical records. In the case of something prehistoric like the bullroarer, this set an unreasonably high bar: of course no written record proves diffusion in 10,000 BC, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. Still, absent “smoking gun” proof, many preferred to just say “we don’t know” or assume multiple origins. This shows a certain conservatism in scholarship – avoiding broad conclusions if not absolutely certain. While caution is good, it can lead to paralysis of interpretation, whereby obvious patterns remain unaccounted for. Kroeber warned that simply invoking “parallel invention” is so vague it stops inquiry [^174]. Indeed, what further research does one do if one assumes independent origin? Likely none – it becomes a non-question. Whereas diffusion being a possibility spurred investigations into routes, timing, etc. The bullroarer’s neglect thus reflects an intellectual climate where asking “how did this spread so far?” was considered naive or speculative – so better not to ask at all.

In summary, the marginalization of the bullroarer diffusion hypothesis was less about data than about disciplinary fashion and fears. As the Vectors of Mind author aptly put it, the straightforward explanation “runs afoul of cherished biases in the field.” [^175] It was “not a good career move for an anthropologist” to chase such connections [^176]. He notes that current anthropologists “want nothing to do with beginnings” because that requires discussing “primitive”, a term under taboo [^177]. Additionally, he jests that a common retort – “You know who else thought good ideas started in one place and spread? Nazis!” – has been used to smear diffusion by associating it with Nazi Aryan origin theories [^178]. In reality, many diffusionist scholars were far from Nazis (Sachs, as noted, was a Jewish refugee; Jensen opposed Nazis; Loeb and Lowie were progressive thinkers) [^179]. But the stigma by association lingered. Diffusion got conflated with discredited or unsavory ideologies, making it an easy target. The end result was an “unforced error” – anthropologists left a rich line of evidence (like the bullroarer) under-examined, even as pseudo-historians wasted time on weaker evidences [^180]. The Vectors of Mind piece laments that both the academy and the “Atlantis consortium” (fringe) overlooked the bullroarer: academics due to bias, fringe due to ignorance – “they don’t even take a swing” at an easy pitch [^181].

Discussion: Reintegrating Diffusionism and Independent Invention – Toward a Synthesis#

Having made the case that diffusion from a common origin best explains the bullroarer’s global pattern, it is important to acknowledge that independent invention and diffusion are not mutually exclusive processes in culture history. The extreme positions of the past – either everything is invented everywhere anew, or everything comes from one source – are both simplifications. A more nuanced view recognizes that certain basic human behaviors or simple tools can emerge in parallel (e.g. whistle language or drum signaling might be invented in multiple places). However, the bullroarer complex is not a trivial invention: it’s a multifaceted institution. One can allow that perhaps a spinning noise-maker could be independently discovered, but the specific complex of meaning attached to it very likely was transmitted historically. In technical terms, we might say the form (the physical bullroarer) has low “idea difficulty,” but the context (the initiation cult and myth) has high “configuration complexity.” It’s the configuration that strongly signals common origin [^182]. Thus, a synthesis approach could be: multiple discovery of the bullroarer’s form is possible, but the widespread similarity of its ritual context is due to diffusion. In practice, even the form might trace back to one innovation (given the time depth), but we remain open to hybrid scenarios. For example, perhaps bullroarers were invented independently in a couple of regions (say, Upper Paleolithic Europe and Upper Paleolithic Australia). Over millennia, due to human interactions (indirect via intermediate cultures or even convergent integration), those uses merged into one tradition that then spread further. Culture history often involves such fusion and re-diffusion of ideas.

Additionally, while we emphasize a common core, we also acknowledge local variations and adaptations. Not every culture’s bullroarer myth is identical; some emphasize different nuances (e.g. Dogon use in a funeral context saying “I swallow all” [^183], or Kiwai linking it to agriculture with sexual magic [^184]). These likely represent local innovations or accretions on top of the base layer. Diffusion doesn’t mean static cloning; when an idea travels, it is often reinterpreted or syncretized with pre-existing beliefs. For instance, the Greeks syncretized the bullroarer into their mystery cults (the rombos being attributed to Dionysus or Cybele’s rites) [^185]. Medieval Europeans, under Christianity, reconceived it as a Holy Spirit emblem or a thunder charm [^186]. Those are distinct flavors, yet an underlying continuity can be traced. Recognizing this interplay of diffusion and independent elaboration is important to avoid a simplistic “one-size-fits-all” portrayal of the bullroarer’s meaning. Each culture built upon the inherited concept in its own way – but the inherited core is evident in the recurring themes of secrecy, sound = spirit voice, and gender dynamics.

From an interdisciplinary standpoint, engaging with cognitive science can refine our understanding of what aspects of the bullroarer complex might arise independently. Human cognition does have some universals: loud uncanny sounds often evoke awe or fear, darkness and secrecy commonly generate exclusionary rituals, adolescent initiations occur in many societies as a functional need. So could multiple societies have independently decided to scare initiates with a loud sound and keep women away? Possibly, yes – but the specific choice of a whirring board and the richly layered myth associated with it points beyond mere cognitive tendency into cultural genealogy. Cognitive scientists today talk about “attractors” in cultural evolution – certain ideas or symbols that human minds gravitate towards (e.g. snake symbolism for danger or renewal). The bullroarer’s consistent association with serpents in many cultures might reflect such an attractor: spinning it creates a snake-like hissing roar, thus inviting linkage to snake imagery (the Australian Rainbow Serpent, the New Guinea snake-man Maigidubu teaching its use [^187], the snake engravings on bullroarers from Neolithic sites [^188], etc.). So not every commonality need be via diffusion – some could be convergent associations guided by our shared cognition. The diffusionist need not claim every detail was present at the origin; perhaps only the framework was diffused, and parallel embellishments (like serpent motifs) occurred because snakes universally evoke similar feelings. In this way, we synthesize: Diffusion provided the scaffolding; human psychology and local conditions filled in details in similar manners. Such a model is quite parsimonious and realistic.

It is also valuable to consider linguistic evidence: are there related words for bullroarer across languages that would hint at spread? On the surface, terms differ widely (e.g. wirirri in some Australian languages, tabuya in parts of New Guinea, mby’á in Guaraní, etc.). However, many terms are descriptive or onomatopoeic to the local ear (e.g. a word meaning “whirrer” or “buzzer”). The exception is when the word is the same as that for a spirit or ancestor (like Yabim balum for both ghost and bullroarer [^189], or the Apinayé calling the toy meː galo “soul” [^190]). Those tell us about meaning but not direct linguistic descent. If the bullroarer complex spread in very deep prehistory, any original term would long have changed in daughter languages. Thus, linguistic evidence is likely “washed out” by time. We rely instead on mythological and functional parallels as the markers of diffusion.

Finally, in reintegrating diffusionism, we must emphasize it is not an affront to the ingenuity of any particular culture – instead, it highlights the ingenious achievements of our shared ancestors. Recognizing that Australian Aboriginal rites and Amazonian rites share a common heritage does not diminish either; rather, it reveals the profound antiquity and resilience of those cultural ideas. It suggests a thread of continuity linking peoples that have been isolated for tens of millennia, which is a deeply awe-inspiring realization about human cultural unity. It also invites a respectful re-examination of so-called “primitive” practices as possibly holding clues to the first chapters of religious expression. As Deborah Gewertz’s collection “Myths of Matriarchy Reconsidered” (1988) shows, even scholars critical of earlier grand narratives admit the widespread motif of female-first sacred instruments cannot be easily dismissed [^191]. In that volume, Terence Hays acknowledges the data (women originally possessed bullroarers in virtually all PNG myths) and calls it part of a “wider tradition” where women are seen as first owners of culture’s sacred elements [^192]. Pernet Henry (1992) similarly notes this “great many societies” tradition of women as first owners of bullroarers, masks, rituals, etc. [^193]. While he stops short of endorsing diffusion outright, he finds Kroeber’s methodological advice apt – that assuming independent origins everywhere is akin to believing in spontaneous generation and halts inquiry [^194]. Henry leans that a diffusion hypothesis is at least a very good working model [^195]. This suggests a shift back towards openness in recent decades among some anthropologists: a realization that not everything can be explained away by functionalism or psychology. The bullroarer complex stands as a reminder of an earlier Holistic Anthropology that combined ethnography, folklore, archaeology, and comparative religion to tackle the big picture of human cultural history. Reintegrating that holistic vision, with modern rigor and without the old biases, can enrich the field.

Conclusion#

The journey of the bullroarer from the Pleistocene to the present, spanning six continents, is a remarkable testament to both the continuity and creativity of human culture. In assembling the evidence – ethnographic reports, mythological narratives, and archaeological finds – we have seen overwhelming support for the idea that this peculiar ritual instrument and its attendant symbolic complex diffused from a common origin in deep prehistory. The bullroarer was not invented anew by dozens of isolated groups by sheer coincidence; rather, it was carried and taught, adapted and ritualized, across countless generations, leaving a trail of shared motifs and practices. In an era when global connections are often assumed to be a recent phenomenon, the bullroarer reminds us that a form of globalization existed in the Stone Age: a globalization of ideas, spread by the slow migrations of tribal peoples and by exchanges across proto-cultural networks long before writing or cities.

We have argued that diffusionism, properly applied, is not a colonialist or reductive stance, but a scientifically parsimonious one for explaining such patterns. It does not diminish the richness of individual cultures – the Warlpiri of Australia or the Mehinaku of Brazil have made the bullroarer distinctly their own – but it situates that richness within a grand narrative of human spiritual endeavor. It appears that some of the very first religious or ceremonial behaviors developed by Homo sapiens included the establishment of secret initiatory societies, the ritual segregation of men and women, and the use of sound-making devices to represent the presence of the sacred. The bullroarer, with its unearthly drone, was ideally suited to this purpose and therefore became a key part of that primeval ritual “toolkit.” From the caves of Ice Age Europe (where an ivory bullroarer was carefully incised with abstract patterns [^196]) to the rock-shelters of Australia’s Dreamtime (where to this day elders say the sound is the Rainbow Serpent’s roar [^197]), from the initiation camps of New Guinea (where boys believe a great spirit-eater growls from the forest) to the plazas of the Amazon (where men swing bullroarers to re-enact the moment of seizing sacred power from women [^198]), this tradition persisted. It is profoundly moving to realize that when an Aboriginal elder in Arnhem Land spins his bullroarer, and an Amazonian shaman does the same, they are – unbeknownst to each other – participants in a single cultural lineage that may stretch back 15,000 or more years. They are speaking, as it were, the same ritual language, inherited from a common ancestor culture. This is not just coincidence; it is community across time.

Why then has this compelling story been neglected? We have seen that academic fashions and fears led to an unfortunate neglect of diffusionist reasoning. The case of the bullroarer demonstrates that evidence should trump ideology. The parsimony of diffusion is clear when confronted by the absurd implausibility of multiple independent identical inventions [^199]. It is intellectually honest to acknowledge the likelihood of a common source, rather than insist on parallelism for the sake of theoretical purity. As Kroeber admonished, rejecting diffusion outright is akin to invoking miracles (spontaneous generation) rather than seeking historical explanations [^200]. In the science of culture, as in biology, we should be willing to trace lineages and inheritance. The bullroarer offers a clear lineage to trace – if we have the courage to do so.

In moving forward, a balanced approach is warranted. We can incorporate the insights of independent-invention theorists by recognizing psychological universals that shape how a diffused practice is interpreted (for instance, understanding the bullroarer as a surrogate “male womb” or phallic voice might be informed by Jungian or Freudian analysis, as Dundes attempted [^201]). But these psychological factors likely worked in concert with historical diffusion, not in isolation. The male envy or need for solidarity may explain why the bullroarer cult was compelling and endured, but not how it sprang up in so many places without contact. The data show contact – albeit ancient contact – must be part of the equation [^202].

The broader implication for anthropology is that diffusionism vs. independent invention is a false dichotomy. Human culture evolves through a mix of both. The story of the bullroarer exemplifies this: an invention (perhaps unique) diffused widely, then locally reinvented in meaning again and again. In the comparative study of myths and symbols, we should therefore avoid two pitfalls: on one hand, denying any ancient connectivity out of a misguided relativism; on the other hand, constructing overly simplistic one-way diffusion narratives that ignore local creativity. The bullroarer likely diffused as part of a package of practices (initiation rites with specific form), but each society integrated that package differently, sometimes even forgetting parts (e.g. some lost the myth but kept the instrument as a toy, others kept the myth even if the instrument disappeared). Thus, a future research agenda could involve meticulously mapping the distributions of all elements of the complex (as Loeb and others began to) and applying modern techniques (e.g. phylogenetic analysis methods borrowed from biology or computational modeling) to see if the pattern best fits a single-origin tree or a convergent pattern. Preliminary qualitative assessment strongly favors a tree with single root (monogenesis) [^203], but quantitative methods could provide additional rigor.

Crucially, new discoveries continue to emerge that can refocus attention on this topic. The Gobekli Tepe findings of possible bullroarers with snake motifs [^204], and their proposed connection to totemic rites, directly tie into the diffusion hypothesis, placing bullroarers at the dawn of organized religion [^205]. Genetic evidence about human migrations can give context (e.g. if we know population X split from population Y 20k years ago, and both have bullroarer cults, the practice likely predates the split). Indeed, the distribution of the bullroarer complex aligns intriguingly with what some anthropologists have called the distribution of “ritual brotherhoods” or male cults that may trace back to the Upper Paleolithic hunters. As science advances, such interdisciplinary triangulation might yield a clearer timeline of when and where the bullroarer cult arose. Was it with the first Homo sapiens in Africa (~100k years ago)? The lack of evidence in far northeast Asia (except Chukchi) and its patchy presence in Europe might suggest it postdated the exodus from Africa, arising perhaps around the time modern humans spread into Europe and Asia (~40k-20k BP). The robust presence in Australia and the Americas would then mean it spread by ~15k BP at the latest, consistent with archaeological finds and the needs of Ice Age societies. All this remains to be fleshed out, but the hypothesis drives productive inquiry.

In conclusion, the worldwide presence of the bullroarer is best understood not as a fluke of parallel evolution but as the legacy of a primordial cultural heritage – one that was shared by early human communities and diffused across the globe, surviving in diverse guises into modern times. Such a view honors the interconnectedness of human societies. It illustrates that even the most “archaic” rites of remote tribes are part of the grand human story, threads of an ancient tapestry rather than isolated oddities. By rehabilitating diffusion as a valid explanatory mechanism, we not only solve the riddle of the bullroarer; we also reconnect anthropology with its original quest: to discover the deep relationships that bind all of humanity. The bullroarer, “man’s most sacred ritual object” [^206], has indeed given us a lesson in folklore and prehistory – if we are willing to consider it. It teaches that while technologies and empires rise and fall, certain sounds and symbols can echo unchanged across epochs and continents. It challenges us to listen, literally and figuratively, to the roar of our ancestors – a roar that still resonates in the most distant corners of the world, carrying the message that we, as a species, remember more of our beginnings than we realize.

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Footnotes#

Note: The footnote markers [^N] in the text above are placeholders. The full bibliography with corresponding links can be found at: https://chatgpt.com/share/68054c67-c8bc-8008-a95e-1075bcdc3080