/r/Askhistorians frequently receives questions that dance around the subject of today’s feature, and when I see the posts like this I respond with a number of observations. First, the idea that the gods and heroes of legend are based on real people had an early proponent in the Greek, late-4th-century BCE writer, Euhemerus , giving his name to this approach to myth and legend: Euhemerism. Folklorists generally regard this approach to oral tradition as barking up the wrong tree, because the core “real” event that is the basis of a story told by people is usually elusive and searching for that core is a futile exercise. In addition, research into how stories begin usually concludes that they emerge in a rather spontaneous way, usually without an actual incident to inspire them.

A few examples: The Classical Greek story of Perseus is an early manifestation of a widespread folktale, catalogued by the twentieth-century folklorists Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson as AT 300, The Dragon Slayer. Was there a proto-Perseus who rescued a maiden from some sort of extraordinary threat or perhaps from some sort of human sacrifice? It is hard to answer that question, but it is not hard to imagine how far back in time that proto-incident would have had to occur: AT 300 is spread throughout Eurasia. It was collected from cultures that could have no conceivable literary connection with ancient Greece, and yet the shared assortments of motifs in the various variants clearly show some sort of genetic relationship. Would we need, therefore, to go back thousands of years before the first recordation of the Perseus story in order to find this proto-Perseus? It is much easier to understand that the folktale simply diffused and that one of its manifestations was in ancient Greece.

Now, let’s consider another example that has inspired a lot of spilled ink. A simple Google search for the origins of King Arthur provides more websites than one could easily read in a week. Was there a proto-Arthur? Perhaps. Perhaps there were several. But what does that prove? Every society has remarkable characters, and it may be a natural process for these sorts of individuals to attract all sorts of traditional stories that have nothing to do with the actual core inspiration of the cycle of legends.

So what do we have with Arthur? Was there a core source (or sources) for this legendary character? Let’s concede for sake of argument that the answer is yes. Now, did this individual have a great warrior at his side who became ensnared by the leader’s wife in the fashion of Lancelot and Guinevere? That is more problematic since this type of story is also associated with Diarmuid and Grainne in the Irish court of King Finn and with the Cornish stories of Tristan and Isolde in the court of King Mark. In fact, it appears that this was a widespread type of story that became associated with various courts of historical legend. We cannot conclude that every time there was a great king that his queen was attracted to one of his warriors and coerced him to take her away. This is simply a story that was attracted to cycles involving great courts. In short, the farther one goes back to find the “real Arthur,” the less the candidate (or candidates) look like the King Arthur who has been beloved for centuries. Those proto Arthurs are not really King Arthur. They may be seeds but they look nothing like the tree that will grow. We do not hold an acorn and say “Ah, I hold in my hand a mighty oak tree.” It is not yet a tree. It is a seed.

One more example: there is a widespread legend told by countless families of the ghostly appearance of a loved one in anticipation of news that the individual died. This became a popular tradition in post-Famine Ireland because so many relatives lived in North America or elsewhere. But it is frequently told by all sorts of people internationally. So we can ask, is there a core to this legend? That is, do the spirits of the dead actually come to visit loved ones? Well, how the hell should I know? To paraphrase Star Trek, “Damn it Jim, I’m a folklorist not a ghost hunter.” And I have no intention of becoming a ghost hunter. It doesn’t matter what is behind stories so much as it does that people tell these stories. I’m in it for that part of the game; I consider stories as they are told over time, to gain from that material some insight into the past, into culture, and into the human condition. And with that, my plate is full.

I spend quite a bit of time reading hagiography and thinking about how we catch glimpses of true events through the cliches and tropes that populate the genre. This can often be difficult, holy men are often self-consciously imitating the tropes of sanctity that can be found in hagiography, so how much is literary invention and how much is actual people seeking to emulate literary models is difficult to say. Nevertheless, certain incidents which seem like they must be true shine through and lead a real humanness to texts which can often seem quite disconnected from concrete historical reality. Lately I've been struck by this incident from Eadmer's Life of St. Anselm:

One night, when we were sleeping in this church, Anselm happened to get up silently to relieve himself. He went to the door with a gentle step, as his manner was, lest he disturb us. But when he had got outside, he forgot the hole [a cistern next to the church], and, making his way towards it in the darkness, he fell in crying out in a loud voice as he fell, 'Holy Mary!' At this noise, we and our companions who were sleeping in the tents leaped up from our beds in panic and ran to him. When we saw him at the bottom, we were almost beside ourselves with fear and anguish of spirit. Seeing this, he at once raised his head and with a courteous air and cheerful look told us that he had come to no harm. Some of us therefore climbed down on the side opposite to the sheer drop where there was a way of descent and brought him out of the place safe and sound.

And now you know the story of when Anselm went outside to pee and fell into a well.

In Skull Wars by David Hurst Thomas he talks about a 7,400 year old oral story that survived to the 1800s when an American soldier wrote it down. I'll lift the passage which starts on page 249.

Chief Lalek begins the Klamath story like this: "A long time ago, so long that you cannot count it the white man ran wild in the woods and my people lived in rock-built houses. In that time, long ago, before the stars fell, the spirits of the earth and the sky, the spirits of the sea and the mountains, often came and talked with my people..." Lalek then described the spirits living inside Mount Mazama and its sister mountain, Mount Shasta. The two massive peaks had openings that led to a lower world through which the spirits could pass. The Chief of the Below-World loved a Klamath chief's daughter, Loha, and demanded that she marry him. When this amorous overture was rebuked, the result did not sit well with the spirit, who threatened total destruction of the people as revenge. "Raging and thundering," the story went, "he rushed up through the opening and stood on top of his mountain," terrorizing the people below.

At this point, the spirit of Mount Shasta intervened as a cloud appeared over the peak of Shasta, and the two mountains engaged in a horrible combat: "Red-hot rocks as large as hills hurled through the skies. Burning ashes fell like rain. The chief of the Below-World (Mazama) spewed fire from its mouth. Like an ocean of flame it devoured the forests on the mountains and in the valleys. On and on the Curse of Fire swept until it reached the homes of the people. Fleeing in terror before it, the people found refuge in the waters of Klamath Lake."

The Klamaths then decided that someone should be sacrificed to calm the chaos. Two medicine men climbed Mount Mazama and jumped into the caldera: "Once more the mountains shook. This time the Chief of the Below-World was driven into his home and the top of the mountain fell upon him. When the morning sun arose, the high mountain was gone... for many years, rain fell in torrents and filled the great hole that was made when the mountain fell..."

Chief Lalek ended his story this way: "Now you understand why my people never visit the lake. Down through the ages we have this story. From father to son has come the warning, "look not upon the place... for it means death or everlasting sorrow."

Deloria emphasizes the parallels between the pre-1865 Klamath account-recorded decades before the first scientist explored Crater Lake-and the modern geological explanation, which dates only to the 1920s. In both, Mount Mazama was destroyed in a catastrophic explosion, characterized by superheated avalanches, a massive cloud of volcanic dust, the dramatic collapse of the peak into the belly of the mountain, and the formation of a new deepwater lake atop the truncated mountain.

Skulls Wars came out during the controversy regarding the Kennewick Man and the implementation of NAGPRA and who has claims to the remains since they are so old (about 9,000 years old). Thomas talks a lot about Native American claims to the land and illustrates these claims with such things such as the oral story I copied above. Even in 1996 when this book was published not everyone was convinced Native Americans had been here as long as they have and with initial examinations of the Kennewick Man having "caucasoid" cranial features it flared the dying embers of those who still thought that early in history there may have been other 'races' before Native Americans arrived later.