TL;DR
- Inuit, Plains, several African, and some Oceanic peoples blame mortality on an elder woman’s choice or mishap.
- No securely attested South-American or European examples of the same “voting crone” structure.
- Berezkin (2019) maps the motif to a circumpolar → Plains diffusion cline; African cases form separate clusters.
- Oceanic variants shift agency: the grandmother’s error (skin-shedding) makes death inevitable.
- The best phylogenetic models use Berezkin’s motif database and Bayesian tree-building (e.g. d’Huy 2013; Berezkin 2016a).
1 · Core Arctic–Plains Cluster#
“Better to be without day, if so we be without death,” said one crone. “Nay – let us have both Light and Death!” answered the other, and as she spoke, it was so. —The Coming of Men, A Long, Long While Ago (Greenland Inuit) oai_citation:0‡Project Gutenberg
Greenland Inuit (Thule tradition)#
Full tale in Rasmussen 1921, pp. 16-18. Two elder women argue; the second’s demand for sunrise overrules immortality.
Blackfoot (Algonquian Plains)#
Old Man floated a buffalo-chip: “If it rides, we die only four days.” Old Woman threw a stone that sank: “Now we die forever, else pity would perish.” oai_citation:1‡University of Pittsburgh
Cognate float-test versions: Crow, Gros Ventre, Plains Cree, Sarcee.
| Motif element | Inuit | Blackfoot |
|---|---|---|
| Dual speakers | yes | pair |
| Light ↔ death link | yes | no |
| Float-test | stone vs. none | buffalo-chip vs. stone |
| Explicit ecological logic | no | yes (“room for others”) |
2 · African Scatter#
Abrahamsson’s monograph (The Origin of Death, 1951) collates ~40 Sub-Saharan texts. Nyamwezi example:
“…it would be better if people died, else they could not find wood nor room in their fields,” said Mbaela, the first woman, and so death began. oai_citation:2‡The Ethics of Suicide Digital Archive
Parallel cases: Hausa, Bamum, Ngala, Nuer. Old Woman is often alone; no male counter-voice. Scholars treat these as independent inventions rather than imports.
3 · Oceania: Grandmother’s Skin#
Banks Islands (Vanuatu):
“One day an old woman went to a stream to change her skin… Her grand-child wailed, not knowing her; she put the old hide back on, and thereafter men died.” oai_citation:3‡Sacred Texts
Ambrym variant lets two deities debate flaying vs. burial; the last speaker (a female spirit in some tellings) wins and introduces death. Old-woman agency here is through mistake, not policy.
4 · South America: Close but Not Quite#
Searches of Berezkin’s catalogue (2023 update) and SINIC/ICANH corpora find no clear “Old Woman votes for death” text below Panama. The nearest is the Kurripako (Rio Guainía) myth:
A mother breaks taboo, weeps over her hidden son → he dissolves, and the culture-hero pronounces, “Now death will reign forever.” oai_citation:4‡mitosla.blogspot.com
Here the elder female causes death indirectly; there is no deliberative opposition as in the Arctic-Plains type.
5 · Has Anyone Modelled This Phylogenetically?#
Yes—largely by Yuri Berezkin and Julien d’Huy.
| Study | Dataset | Method | Result for this motif |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berezkin 2009 “Why Are People Mortal?” | 2 600 motifs | Areal presence/absence matrices | Maps an Arctic nucleus; African cases isolate. |
| Berezkin 2016a (Maths Meets Myths) | ≥ 4 000 entries incl. A1335.* | Neighbor-Net & MJ networks | Suggests Beringian package diffused south to Plains 12–9 k BP. |
| d’Huy 2013 Rock Art Research | 45 myths, Bayesian MCMC | Confirms two clades: Circumpolar and Oceanic skin-shed type. |
None attempts a global chronogram confined to “Old Woman = Death,” but motif A1335.10-14 (“Elder female brings permanent death”) is a node in these papers’ output trees.
6 · Migration / Diffusion Waves (reported, not inferred)#
- Initial Paleo-Indian (~15 ka) – no record of the motif.
- Paleo-Arctic / Beringian (~8–6 ka) – Berezkin flags first attestations of A1335.* entering Alaska.
- Na-Dene south-push (post-5 ka) – carries float-test variant toward Interior Plateau.
- Algonquian/Plains spread (last 2 ka) – Blackfoot et al. pick up “buffalo-chip vs. stone” form.
- Thule/Inuit (~1.2 ka) – carries Greenland dual-crone cosmogony eastward.
- Independent African regional evolutions (no dated migration linkage).
- Oceanic Lapita descendants (~3 ka) – grandmother skin-shed narratives move through Vanuatu/Banks.
(Sequence numbers follow Berezkin 2019’s table 3.)
FAQ#
Q1. Why is the motif strong in North America but absent in South America? A. Current catalogues show no true Old-Woman‐vote texts south of the Darién; scholars attribute this to cultural drift after separate peopling streams, not to sampling bias.
Q2. Did Indo-European myths ever use an old woman to create death? A. No. European crone figures (Cailleach, Baba Yaga, Pesta) preside over winter or plague, but do not debate eternal life.
Footnotes#
Sources#
- Rasmussen, K. Eskimo Folk-Tales. Gyldendal, 1921.
- Wissler, C., & Duvall, D.C. Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians. AMNH Papers v.2, 1908.
- Abrahamsson, H. The Origin of Death: Studies in African Mythology. Uppsala, 1951.
- Berezkin, Y. “Why Are People Mortal? World Mythology and the Out-of-Africa Scenario.” In Ancient Human Migrations, 2009.
- Berezkin, Y. “Peopling of the New World in Light of the Data on Distribution of Folklore Motifs.” In Maths Meets Myths, 2016.
- d’Huy, J. “A Phylogenetic Approach of Mythology and its Archaeological Consequences.” Rock Art Research 30(1), 2013.
- Codrington, R. “Myths of Origins and the Deluge.” In Mythology of All Races, Vol. IX: Oceania, 1916.
- SINIC (Sistema de Información Cultural, Colombia). “Mito Kurripako: Origen de la muerte,” 2008.
- Pitt Folklore Archives. “Blackfoot Creation & Origin Myths,” 2021.
- Berezkin Motif Database (ruthenia.ru/folklore/berezkin/), accessed 2025-05-11.