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TheTimes Literary Supplement [June 26^th, 2015] had an article, by Natasha Randall, reviewing Georgian [the country] fiction [In defence of otherness].

Ms. Randall’s review(s) open with this:

“ … the Georgian myth of Amirani. He was the hero who lost his challenge against the god pf gods in a contest of strength and was chained to a mountain in the Caucasus as punishment … In captivity, he is given a winged dog who licks at his chains while birds peck at his body. No scholar can say for sure whether Amirani or Prometheus is the original of this story – indeed, there are at least forty-four variants across the Caucasus mountain range. And, further afield, apart from the Greeks, the Azeris and Armenians all vociferously lay claim to the myth of the mountain captive.” [Page 20, TLS]

The Classical Tradition [The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Reference Library, Cambridge, MA, and London, 2010] notes  [Page 785 ff.] the Prometheus myth as told by the Greeks (Hesiod, Aeschylus, Ovid) and the extrapolations by others (Fulgentius, Sandys, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe, Herder, Nietzsche, Shelley, Wollstonecraft, Gide).

The myth, as you know, tells how Prometheus gave fire (and technology) to humans and Zeus condemned him to be bound to a rock and perpetually tortured by an eagle (who pecked at his liver).

My point is that the Prometheus myth, like that of Noah’s flood, is ubiquitously told by many cultures – not connected linguistically or geographically or culturally – portrays an inherent historical truth, one that resides in the collective unconscious of humankind.

Something happened to ancient mankind that provoked the Prometheus or Amirani myth, and inside that myth resides the detail that some “hero” gave mankind advancements that upset the gods (or immortals), but helped humans move forward evolutionarily, at least “technologically.”

Isn’t that what Ancient Astronaut theorists keep telling us, with their “heroes” being extraterrestrials or galactic aliens?

Can we discount, then, the AA speculation(s) out of hand?

RR

• Geeper

  Chaining to a rock seems like the kind of punishment that would occur to multiple cultures. And what else is going to happen? Birds are going to scavenge you eventually.

  Jul 16, 2015, 2:55 am 0 Reply