Emergence Myths, Female Agency, and Deep Time

TL;DR

• The global spread of “emergence from below” cosmogonies is old and structured: Eurasia favors Earth-Diver; Indo-Pacific & much of the Americas favor Emergence, per motif cartography and quantitative clustering Berezkin 2007/2010; van Binsbergen 2010, Berezkin 2018.
• Phylogenetic/comparative reconstructions push a common macro-narrative (“Laurasian”) back to the later Paleolithic (~40 ka), plausibly accommodating emergence variants Witzel 2012; see also global motif clustering d’Huy, Thuillard & Berezkin 2018.
• In Pueblo traditions, women (Spider Woman; Earth Mother) actively midwife human ascent through worlds; classic ethnography explicitly links emergence/sipapu to parturition Haeberlin 1916, pp. 53–54, with migrations mapped clan-by-clan Fewkes 1902, Voth 1905.
• Female agency extends beyond the Southwest: Inca origins from Pacariqtambo (cave “windows”) are co-led by women (e.g., Mama Huaco), in an explicit emergence-plus-migration package Sarmiento de Gamboa 1572/1907, Zuidema/Bauer syntheses.
• Paleolithic evidence: the earliest figurative human image is female (Hohle Fels, ≥35 ka) Conard 2009, Nature; Aurignacian “vulvar” signs are secure in context White et al. 2012, PNAS. Several lines (Leroi-Gourhan; Laming-Emperaire; later Lewis-Williams) read caves as womb/portal space—precisely the phenomenology emergence myths encode Leroi-Gourhan 1965–68; Lewis-Williams 2002.
• Interpretations of “Venus” figurines increasingly highlight women’s technologies/selves (textiles, self-views) over a generic fertility idol, which better fits female-led cosmogenesis than a monolithic “Great Mother” Soffer, Adovasio & Hyland 2000, McDermott 1996.

“It is thrilling to observe that the Laurasian system can be traced…to the later Paleolithic, some 40,000 years ago.”
— E. J. Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies (2012)

What’s being claimed (and what isn’t)#

Short version: there’s a defensible case that emergence-style creation myths—humans ascending from a lower realm, often in staged “worlds,” with subsequent migrations—are Pleistocene-old. This is not “proving” a single ur-myth; it’s triangulating time-depth from (i) global motif geography, (ii) phylogenetic clustering, and (iii) Paleolithic iconography whose female-coded symbolism fits the emergence phenomenology.

• Motif geography. Across continents, the “Earth-Diver” cosmogony and the “Emergence from below” cosmogony show mutually exclusive or complementary distributions. Berezkin’s catalog argues Earth-Diver is continental Eurasian; Emergence tracks Indo-Pacific and much of the Americas, with an African backbone—inferences consistent with Paleolithic dispersals Berezkin 2007/2010, Berezkin 2018, RG summary.
• Macro-phylogeny. Witzel’s “Laurasian” narrative spine—creation → world ages → hero cycles → end—arguably crystallized by the later Paleolithic, ~40 ka, aligning with the first figurative parietal art Witzel 2012. Large-scale motif clustering likewise recovers deep bifurcations compatible with early human range expansions d’Huy, Thuillard & Berezkin 2018.
• Method sanity check. Cultural phylogenetics works on oral narrative families (e.g., Little Red Riding Hood) showing clean, testable tree structure Tehrani 2013. That doesn’t prove Paleolithic origin by itself; it licenses the method.

Women as cosmogenic agents in Emergence + Migration

Pueblo (Hopi and neighbors)#

• Spider Woman / Earth Mother are not set dressing; they midwife ascent and social order. Early ethnography documents the sipapu—the “navel/opening” of emergence—and explicitly ties it to parturition: “the idea…has become associated with the idea of parturition and of the emergence of the people through the sipapu,” with the underworld as place of germination and the dead aiding fertility—a whole symbolic economy of women’s generativity Haeberlin 1916, pp. 53–54.
• Migrations embedded. Hopi clan histories are a lattice of origin, emergence, and long migrations; Fewkes’ classic survey maps them in detail Fewkes 1902. Voth’s compilation preserves Spider Woman/Grandmother roles in origin cycles Voth 1905.

Andes (Inca)#

• The Pacariqtambo myth—emergence from the hill of “three windows” (Tampu‑tocco)—includes founding women (e.g., Mama Huaco) as prime movers in the subsequent conquest/migration narrative Sarmiento de Gamboa 1572/Markham ed. 1907; standard syntheses treat this as statecraft anchored in a cave‑emergence + itinerant settlement schema Bauer 1998/1991 overview.

Takeaway: in multiple emergence corpora, women aren’t passive fertility tokens; they are agents who move people up cosmological levels and out across geographies.

Venus figurines, cave “wombs,” and emergence phenomenology#

• The earliest human figurine we have is female. The Hohle Fels piece (Swabian Jura) dates ≥35,000 cal BP Conard 2009. Whatever her specific meaning, female figuration is primordial in the Upper Paleolithic record.
• Vulvar signs are early and secure. The Abri Castanet ceiling carries engraved vulvar motifs in Early Aurignacian context (i.e., among the oldest graphic traditions in SW France) White et al. 2012.
• Caves as portals/wombs. The mid-20th-century structuralists (Laming-Emperaire; Leroi-Gourhan) already read Paleolithic sanctuaries in gendered, oppositional terms; later neurocognitive takes (Lewis-Williams) treat caves as threshold spaces for descent/ascent, a ritual phenomenology mirroring emergence schemas Leroi-Gourhan 1965–68; overview in Lewis-Williams 2002.
• From goddess to handiwork/self. The “Great Mother” reading (Gimbutas et al.) is not the only game. Gravettian figurines document women’s technologies (fiber, woven caps, string skirts), implying identity/status signals rather than generic fecundity icons Soffer, Adovasio & Hyland 2000. McDermott’s self-representation hypothesis reframes the bodies as how women see themselves—again agency, not abstraction McDermott 1996.

Why this matters: If Upper Paleolithic iconography already encodes female generativity + portal/birth symbolism, then emergence myths featuring women who pull, guide, or push humans upward through world-levels are not anachronistic projections—they’re coherent with Paleolithic visual grammars.

The phylogenetic + areal case (with older precedents)

What the quantitative work says (post‑2005)#

• Areal distributions of motifs (Berezkin database) show emergence and earth‑diver patterns that track plausible population history, including founder effects and bottlenecks across the Americas Berezkin 2007/2010; Berezkin 2018.
• Macro‑reconstruction: Witzel’s “Laurasian/Gondwanan” split posits a narrative complex crystallizing by the later Paleolithic; it’s controversial, but the logic is explicit and testable Witzel 2012.
• Clustering & trees: d’Huy et al. recover robust world‑scale partitions from thousands of motifs—i.e., signal survives drift and retelling d’Huy et al. 2018.

Older scholars (≪2005) who anticipated parts of this picture#

• Herman Karl Haeberlin (1916): explicitly ties Pueblo emergence to parturition and fertility cults—a crisp, early statement of the female‑centered emergence ecology Haeberlin 1916.
• J. W. Fewkes (1902) and H. R. Voth (1905): document Hopi emergence and migrations with Spider Woman/Grandmother as operative agents Fewkes 1902; Voth 1905.
• André Leroi‑Gourhan (1960s) / Annette Laming‑Emperaire (1962): structural readings of cave art as gendered systems with female signs central—precursors to “cave as womb” interpretations (summaries in later overviews; cf. Lewis‑Williams 2002).
• Mircea Eliade (mid‑20C) / Joseph Campbell (1949): not data‑driven phylogenies, but their focus on cosmogonic repetition, sacred centers, caves/navels anticipated parts of the emergence phenomenology later grounded in archaeology and motif‑geography.

Quick comparative table#

How the pieces cohere (without wishful thinking)#

1. Areal + phylogenetic signal says emergence is not a late whimsy; it travels with populations and exhibits deep structure Berezkin 2010; d’Huy et al. 2018.
2. Ethnography shows emergence narratives where women are the movers: Spider Woman guiding ascents; emergence as birth (Haeberlin) 1916; Andean origins from caves with founding women Sarmiento 1572.
3. Paleolithic art front‑loads female imagery and vulvar marks; caves function ritually as portals—a lived metaphor of emergence through a womb Conard 2009; White et al. 2012; Lewis‑Williams 2002.
4. Non‑monolithic women. “Venus” readings that emphasize textiles and self‑representation (vs. one big Mother Goddess) match the active female agents in emergence myths Soffer et al. 2000; McDermott 1996.

Net: a minimal, non‑woo claim is viable—emergence + migration packages with female agency plausibly descend from Paleolithic imaginaries.

FAQ#

Q1. Isn’t Witzel’s “Laurasian/Gondwanan” split controversial? A. Yes. But even if you bracket his macro-history, independent motif cartography and clustering still recover ancient, geographically sensible partitions—i.e., there’s signal without committing to a single grand tree Berezkin 2010; d’Huy et al. 2018.

Q2. Do “Venus” figurines prove a Mother-Goddess? A. No. Competing accounts (textiles, self-view, status) are strong. The relevant point is narrower: female iconography + vulvar signs are very early, aligning with emergence’s birth/portal metaphors White et al. 2012; Soffer et al. 2000; McDermott 1996.

Q3. Show me one unambiguous female “mover” in a creation-plus-migration corpus. A. Hopi: Spider Woman orchestrates ascent and social order; emergence/sipapu is explicitly tied to parturition/fertility in early analytic ethnography Haeberlin 1916; migrations are integral Fewkes 1902, Voth 1905.

Q4. Couldn’t “cave as womb” be projection? A. It could—which is why context matters. Here, vulvar engravings in Aurignacian layers and the female primacy of the oldest figurines make the womb/portal reading empirically anchored, not just Jungian vibes White et al. 2012; Conard 2009.

Footnotes#

Sources#

• Berezkin, Yuri. “The emergence of the first people from the underworld.” In New Perspectives on Myth (2010). Open PDF via the Quest Journal site. link.
• Berezkin, Yuri. “Ethnology (2018) brief.” On motif distributions and Paleolithic dispersals. PDF.
• Conard, Nicholas J. “A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels.” Nature 459 (2009): 248–252. open PDF.
• d’Huy, Julien; Thuillard, Marc; Berezkin, Yuri. “A Large-Scale Study of World Myths.” Trames 22 (2018): 407–424. open access.
• Fewkes, J. Walter. “Tusayan migration traditions.” BAE 19th Annual Report (1902): 573–633. Smithsonian handle. link.
• Haeberlin, Herman Karl. “The Idea of Fertilization in the Culture of the Pueblo Indians.” Memoirs of the AAA 3(1) (1916). PDF.
• Lewis-Williams, David. The Mind in the Cave. Thames & Hudson (2002). Book overview/abstract via USF Karst portal. link.
• McDermott, LeRoy. “Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines.” Current Anthropology 37(2) (1996): 227–275. JSTOR PDF.
• Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro. History of the Incas (1572). Hakluyt Society ed. (1907), trans. C. Markham. open PDF.
• Soffer, Olga; Adovasio, James; Hyland, David. “The ‘Venus’ Figurines: Textiles, Basketry, Gender, and Status in the Upper Paleolithic.” Current Anthropology 41(4) (2000): 511–537. journal page/DOI.
• Tehrani, Jamshid J. “The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.” PLOS ONE 8(11) (2013): e78871. open access.
• Voth, H. R. The Traditions of the Hopi. Field Columbian Museum (1905). PDF.
• White, Randall et al. “Context and dating of Aurignacian vulvar representations from Abri Castanet, France.” PNAS 109(22) (2012): 8450–8455. open PDF.
• Witzel, E. J. Michael. The Origins of the World’s Mythologies. OUP (2012). Excerpt/preview with key claim on Paleolithic time-depth. PDF preview.