Discuss the main features of an anthropological approach to creation myths.  What sorts of questions are appropriate in this approach?  What questions are not germane or are ultimately unanswerable?

The Anthropological Perspective.pdf

            Anthropology (literally/etymologically “man + study”) asks the essential questions about mankind: “who, what, why, when, and where” we are as a species, both historically and present-day, (and even projecting into the future). These are the most “appropriate” questions in such an approach, but they're very broad- they have to be refined into more specific ones for each study. The more abstract the field of inquiry, the more difficult it becomes to present concrete data, and thus areas such as myth/religion become extremely problematic to quantify. However, the creation myths of various cultures, across time and geography, offer a rich field from which anthropologists can harvest some of the most pertinent early clues about a particular society, and from which collectively they can give us a history of myths and mythic thought across the ages and humanity as a whole.

            “Creation” is, according to Merriam Webster, “the action or process of bringing something into existence. [1] But from who, what, etc.? Latin gives us three options: “ex nihilo” (out of nothing), "ex deo” (out of God), or “ex materia” (out of a pre-existing material).[2] The various world creation myths offer each of these as options, sometimes in conjunction with each other. It can go as deep as one dares to. Rare minds such as Einstein's or Stephen Hawking's have brought some of these perennial questions into an amazingly cutting-edge,quantum-physical focus. But in the final analysis- nobody really knows anything yet. It's all conjecture, whether you think a turtle created the universe or you subscribe to string-theory. I don't think anyone's ever stated the dilemma better than Omar Khayyam:  [3]

“Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too”.      

            The ideal anthropologist needs to be as objective as is possible. There should be no religious bias or political slant “skewing the numbers”. Pseudo-scientists have, for a very long time, been able to find “evidence” of whatever they wanted to believe. (Such as Percival Lowell's “Martian-built canals on Mars” or various yellow-journalism documentaries like “The Search for Noah's Ark”... “Bigfoot”... “Ancient Aliens”, etc. They'll sometimes win favor with the general public for a brief phase, cash in while they can, then move on. So thereby, to answer one of the essay questions: it is NOT appropriate to set out to prove a pre-conceived belief (such as that “Jesus” was the son of god, or that “global warming is a myth”). As a scientist, if you're studying man, you have to simply dig up the facts/relics/mythologies and present them raw. No “cooking the books” allowed.

            Etymology is the often-overlooked aspect of so many words and concepts we use and take for granted. And there's a very close sister of anthropology on the family-tree: anthropomorphisism. Merriam Webster again “the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object. [1] This is the genealogy of creation myths, across the entire spectrum. With rare exception, we envision our gods as either more powerful versions of ourselves as humans, or at least as representing animals that we have become familiar/interacted with over time. Barbara Sproul, in her introduction, addresses it as thus: “the ground of being is eventually depicted as human... it is shown as male... or female... as seems appropriate”. [4]

            What is unanswerable? Almost everything! Each generation of scientists tries to throw the theories of their predecessors under the bus. Anthropologists can collect data, and stories, and art, and other artifacts. They can subsequently posit their theories. But nobody knows where we came from, definitively... That's the punch-line.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creation

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_nihilo

[3] http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html

[4] Sproul, Barbara C. Primal Myth, Creation Myths Around The World.

            New York: Harper One, Harper Collins Publishers. 1991. 11-12.

            Print.