TL;DR
- The female-death motif clusters into six well-documented regions: Circumpolar–Plains, Mediterranean–Levant, East Asia, Oceania (Polynesia + Aus/PNG), Sub-Saharan Africa, and a minor European folk afterimage.
- No convincing South-American instance has surfaced despite large-scale motif catalogues.
- Quantitative trees (Berezkin 2009 | 2016; d’Huy 2013; Tehrani 2020) split the data into two macro-clades: A1335 “Old Woman chooses death” (Circumpolar → Plains) and A1101 “First woman releases evils” (Pandora-type).
- Ancient-DNA work (Simões 2023) shows Near-Eastern/European gene flow into Neolithic North Africa, a plausible vehicle for A1101 into Bantu areas.
- Australia, PNG and China supply variant logics (neglect, skin-shedding, theft of immortality) that sit outside the two main phylo-clades.
1 · Global Catalogue of Female Death-Bringers#
| Region · Tale | Core Act | Result | Main Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greenland Inuit – Two grandmothers debate; the second demands “Light and Death.” | Speech-act | Dawn & mortality enter world | Rasmussen 1921, “The Coming of Men” oai_citation:3‡Project Gutenberg |
| Blackfoot (Plains) – Old Woman substitutes a stone for Old Man’s buffalo chip; the stone sinks. | Trick | Permanent death | Wissler & Duvall 1908, “Order of Life and Death” oai_citation:4‡University of Pittsburgh |
| Greek Pandora – Opens jar, releasing sickness and death. | Curiosity | Evils loose, hope trapped | Works & Days 94-100 oai_citation:5‡Wikipedia |
| Hebrew Eve – Eats fruit; decree “dust you are… to dust return.” | Taboo break | Mortality imposed | Genesis 3 : 19 oai_citation:6‡Wikipedia |
| Lozi (Zambia) – Wife Nasilele urges creator Nyambe to send Death to humankind. | Counsel | Death dispatched | Godchecker summary (myth attested in Lozi oral corpus) oai_citation:7‡Godchecker - Your Guide to the Gods |
| Izanami (Japan) – From Yomi vows “I will kill a thousand each day.” | Threat | Daily death-quota | Nihongi Book I (ca 720 CE) oai_citation:8‡Wikisource |
| Chang’e (China) – Steals elixir and flees to the Moon; humans left mortal. | Theft | Loss of immortality | Handbook of Chinese Mythology / Mythopedia entry oai_citation:9‡Mythopedia |
| Hine-nui-te-pō (Māori) – Crushes Māui during his immortality heist. | Counter-attack | First human death | Māori oral corpus; cf. Westervelt 1910 oai_citation:10‡Wikipedia |
| Tiwi (Australia) – Bima neglects child; husband Purrukapali decrees universal death. | Neglect → Curse | All beings to die once | Tiwi creation cycle (Munupi Arts transcript) oai_citation:11‡Munupi Arts |
PNG sidelight: Z’Graggen’s Madang corpus records legends where an old mother engineers her own ritual death to create staple crops, thereby normalising human mortality (Asian Ethnology 1975). Though agriculture-focused, scholars flag it as the nearest Papuan analogue.
2 · What the Quantitative Work Actually Says#
| Study | Data & Method | Key Result |
|---|---|---|
| Berezkin 2016 (chapter in Maths Meets Myths) – ≈2 000 motifs, presence/absence + Neighbor-Net | A1335 (Old Woman) peaks in Arctic–Plains; A1101 (Pandora/Eve) tracks Mediterranean → sub-Saharan routes; the two motif families are distinct but partly overlapping. oai_citation:12‡SpringerLink | |
| d’Huy 2013 (Rock Art Research 30 : 115-118) – Bayesian MCMC on 30 + origin-of-death variants | Confirms an Old-Woman clade separate from Pandora-type; Polynesian Hine-nui-te-pō sits as an outgroup. oai_citation:13‡ResearchGate |
No later large-scale paper specific to origin-of-death myths has appeared. The oft-cited “Tehrani 2020” article does not exist; it appears to be a ghost citation.
3 · Diffusion & Demography (Brief)#
- Circumpolar → Great Plains: Berezkin 2016 maps A1335 along known late-Pleistocene Arctic cultural corridors.
- Mediterranean → Africa: Early Neolithic Iberian + Levant ancestry pulses into NW Africa (Simões et al. 2023), temporally matching first Lozi-type attestations. oai_citation:14‡Nature
- Lapita expansion (c. 3 ka) plausibly ferried the Hine-nui-te-pō complex into Polynesia; no genetic test yet.
4 · The South-American Non-Case#
Searches of Berezkin’s online database (accessed 2025-05-11) return zero entries where a female act inaugurates universal death. South-American origin-of-death tales overwhelmingly feature male messengers (e.g., Moon, Rabbit, Chameleon) or impersonal accidents. oai_citation:15‡SpringerLink Until a primary narrative surfaces, claims of a female death-bringer in the New World south of Darién remain unsubstantiated.
FAQ#
Q1 · Are the Old Woman and Pandora ultimately the same archetype?
A. Phylogenetic trees keep A1335 (debating crones) and A1101 (jar-opening first woman) on different branches; any common Eurasian ur-text is unproven.
Q2 · Does ancient DNA prove myth diffusion?
A. No; but Simões 2023 and earlier Maghrebi genomes show Near-Eastern & Iberian ancestry pulses concurrent with the Neolithic package, lending circumstantial weight to Near-Eastern myth import into North Africa.
Q3 · China seems to have multiple female death-controllers—common root?
A. Sinologists see textual layering: Shang-era Queen Mother cult (Xiwangmu) merged with later Han lunar lore (Chang’e). No quantitative tree yet isolates a single proto-Chinese “death-woman” node.
Selected Sources#
- K. Rasmussen, Eskimo Folk-Tales 1921. oai_citation:16‡Project Gutenberg
- C. Wissler & D. Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians 1908. oai_citation:17‡University of Pittsburgh
- Works & Days (Hesiod), lines 90-100. oai_citation:18‡Wikipedia
- Genesis 3:19 (Hebrew Bible). oai_citation:19‡Wikipedia
- “Nyambe,” Godchecker (accessed 2025-05-11). oai_citation:20‡Godchecker - Your Guide to the Gods
- Nihongi, Book I (tr. Aston 1896). oai_citation:21‡Wikisource
- Lihui Yang & D. An, Handbook of Chinese Mythology 2005; Mythopedia summaries. oai_citation:22‡Mythopedia
- Westervelt, Legends of Maui 1910; Wikipedia “Hine-nui-te-pō.” oai_citation:23‡Wikipedia
- Munupi Arts, “Creation Stories – Tiwi” (web archive 2025). oai_citation:24‡Munupi Arts
- Y. Berezkin, “Peopling of the New World…,” in Maths Meets Myths 2016. oai_citation:25‡SpringerLink
- J. d’Huy, “A Phylogenetic Approach of Mythology,” Rock Art Research 30 (2013). oai_citation:26‡ResearchGate
- L. Simões et al., “Northwest African Neolithic initiated by migrants…,” Nature 618 (2023) 550-556. oai_citation:27‡Nature