A constructive assessment of Oppenheimers thesis
claiming decisive Indonesian prehistoric cultural influence
on West Asia, Africa and Europe, specifically on the core mythologies
of the Ancient Near East and the Bible
Paper, joint conference The Deep History of Stories,
organised by The International Association for Comparative Mythology and
The Traditional Cosmology Society, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom,
28-30 August 2007
by Wim van Binsbergen
(African Studies Centre, Leiden / Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University
Rotterdam)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
revised and expanded version, 9 September 2007
© 2007 Wim van Binsbergen
This presentation is available at the following URL:
http://www.shikanda.net/ancient_models/edinburgh.htm
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to the African Studies Centre, Leiden, for funding my
participation in the present conference, and the extensive research on which
the present paper is based; to Emily Lyle in her capacity as convenor; to
Stephen Oppenheimer for highly illuminating feed-back both at the conference
and in private; to Mark Isaak, without whose painstaking inventory of flood
stories worldwide, and generous collaboration, I could never have undertaken
the multivariate statistical analysis on which my argument is partly based; to
Bambang Sugiharto, for sharing with me the issues of this paper and related
research, and for inviting me to present a highly positive general assessment
of the Sunda thesis (but without the comparative-mythological application)
before his Department of Philosophy, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung,
Indonesia, August 2007 the present paper has greatly benefited from the
audiences discussion in that connection; to my PhD student Stephanus
Djunatan, a Bandung lecturer, who decades after I vainly specialised in
Indonesian studies, among other fields (only to materialise as an Africanist
from 1971 onwards) , recently created a context in which I could gather
first-hand experiences of Indonesian culture and thus bring albeit to a
minimal extent the Sunda thesis to life before my very eyes; to Michael
Witzel, for offering, ever since 2003, a highly stimulating context in which
the ideas underlying my current research could come to fruition and receive
expert critical feedback; to Steve Farmer, for constantly and with his
characteristic grace reminding me of the many pitfalls of long-range research
into comparative mythology; to the Nkoya people of western central Zambia, who
ever since 1972 have been the mainstay of my ethnographic, historical and
intercultural-philosophical work, and who by adopting me into their midst have
afforded me detailed and convincing perspectives on the practical reality of a
Sunda-related community in the heart of Africa even though it took me more
than thirty years before I could begin to see them in this light; to Yuri
Berezhin, for advising me on mapping of statistical material, and for
suggesting one crucial addition to my analysis of Judaeo-Christian-Islamic myth
in the Sunda context; to Fred Woudhuizen, my partner in Sea Peoples research,
where many of the issues of the present argument came to the fore; to the
Assyriological Study Group on Magic and Religion in the Ancient Near East
(Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
(NIAS), Wassenaar, 1994-95), for expertly initiating me to many of the themes
of the present argument; and to Patricia Saegerman, my sparring partner in
daily discussions on this central topic of my research over the past few years.
---------------------------------
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
