Snake Cult / Myth lab Study 001

Where do myth
trees begin?

A tree connects stories. Its root proposes a beginning. Change the assumptions. See what survives.

ROOT EXPLORERFOUR CASES / ONE QUESTION

Loading the research trees…

#myth-load-status{display:none}

Enable JavaScript to move between trees. These are the four studies in the explorer; the full tree data can also be downloaded.

Dragons

A 23-region, 69-trait dragon matrix with all-trait and variable-trait root scans. Twenty-three regional aggregates support root comparison within this matrix; they do not establish a geographic origin. The published South Africa tree and scored NJ comparison are distinct references.

All 69 traits: California + Great Southwest is the best edge in the all-trait scan; Basque is 18.95 units lower and the South Africa comparison is 22.40 lower.
Selection-corrected · 68: The variable-trait scan keeps the same best edge; Basque is 18.84 units lower and the South Africa comparison is 22.33 lower.

d’Huy 2013 source record

Men & women

The 13-area opposition matrix, shown under all-trait and variable-trait conditioning. Thirteen cultural-area aggregates test the same opposition tree. The Balkans label does not establish an origin in ancient Greece. The published East African three-way root is separate from the fitted edge comparisons.

All 28 traits: The Balkans branch is the best-fitting root with all 28 traits; the East Africa comparison is 3.26 log-likelihood units lower. Correcting for trait selection changes the winner.
Selection-corrected · 26: The variable-trait best edge is slightly ahead of the Balkans comparison by 0.33 units; East Africa is 3.59 units lower.

d’Huy 2017 source record

Cosmic Hunt

A 47-version, 93-mytheme tree with all-93 and variable-88 root-edge models. This is the recovered 2013 47-version matrix, not the unrecovered 2018 175/176-version dataset. Region coverage is uneven, and five source '?' cells are treated as unknown.

All 93 mythemes: Copper is the best edge in this model; the published Evenki 3 choice is 2.14 log-likelihood units lower.
Selection-corrected · 88: Copper remains the best edge after conditioning on variable mythemes; Evenki 3 is 1.96 units lower.

d’Huy 2013 source record

Cinderella

A full 266-tip descriptive graph with exact 74-event and complete-19-event binary root scans. The 266-version sample mixes related ATU 510/511 types and hybrids and is strongly European-biased. The 74 and 19 event fits are conditional sensitivities on a shared descriptive tree.

74 story events: The 74-event scan favors the AB30_Nw Norway edge; the Armenian reference is only 0.31 units lower, while Basque is 3.87 lower.
19 complete events: The complete-19 scan has two Italian placements tied to the displayed precision.

Author supplement / OSF

The interpretation

A better fit.
A harder question.

Moving a root changes which branches appear early. It does not change who is connected to whom. Under a stationary, reversible model, those different beginnings have the same likelihood.

Here, a directional model allows the distribution of traits at the root to differ from the long-run distribution. That gives the data a way to prefer a beginning. The result depends on that assumption—and on which traits were recorded.

The best-fitting sampled branch is a model result. It is not a date, an ancient population, or a demonstrated birthplace.

Open the research notes

What the controls change

Each fitted comparison holds the connections in the tree fixed, then refits the root and model parameters. Fit differences compare roots within the selected model and matrix. They are not probabilities that a culture invented a story.

Where available, the trait-selection controls ask whether the conclusion changes when accounting for how motifs entered the matrix. A changed winner is a useful result: it shows which assumption carries the inference.

Method background: Felsenstein on reversible models and rooting; Lewis on correcting for character selection.

What the rows mean

The dragon and men–women matrices pool traits by region. Cosmic Hunt and Cinderella contain versions of a recognisable story. Neither kind of row is an ancient ancestor. Cultural borrowing and incomplete sampling can also make a tree an imperfect description.

Sources for the selected study

Source references are included in the downloadable dataset.

Download the explorer data

Read the argument about African roots

A better fit.A harder question.

What the controls change

What the rows mean

Sources for the selected study

A better fit.
A harder question.