#cultural diffusion

[keefetheshimmerbooty]

cooking up a storm rn

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Life-Sized Mortuary Doll from Siberia, c.250 CE: a small pouch filled with cremated human remains was tucked into the body of this mannequin, which was then stuffed with grass, dressed in furs, and buried

The mannequin measures about 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) tall, and it was crafted out of leather, fur, woollen fabric, tendon thread, silk, and grass. This is one of several mortuary dolls that have been found at the burial complex known as Oglakhty cemetery, which is located in the Oglakhty mountains of southern Siberia.

The mannequin's face was created from a patch of red woollen fabric; a rolled-up piece of leather was tucked beneath that patch in order to create the shape of the nose, while leather flaps were used to form the ears. Several black lines were also drawn across the face using charcoal.

The mannequin was positioned with its head resting atop a leather cushion filled with grass and reindeer fur.

Oglakhty cemetery is associated with the Tashtyk culture of southern Siberia. This article describes their unique burial practices, which often included a mix of mummification and cremation rituals:

The communities belonging to this group left numerous burial sites with an expressive funeral rite famous for its tradition of funeral masks and ‘dummies’: leather-made models of human bodies up to 1.5m in length, stuffed with grass, and  containing charred human bones.

Of special interest is the fact that different rites were used to bury individuals in the same grave: the mummies and dummies both contained human bones. Remains of the mummies, i.e. dry bodies with trepanned skulls and faces covered with gypsum masks were lying side by side with the dummies.

And as this article notes:

These mannequins or so-called ‘dolls’ are the only surviving examples of burials of this type.

It's believed that the mannequins are dressed in clothing that was originally worn by the dead people they represent. Some of the mannequins also have plaits of human hair that were likely taken from the dead just prior to cremation; the hair was then used to form neatly-braided hairpieces that were typically placed upon the mannequins' heads.

Many of the graves at Oglakhty cemetery exhibit a peculiar mix of both inhumation and cremation. That blend of rituals is often attributed to the arrival of peoples/traditions from other regions, and the cultural diffusion that gradually occurred as a result:

Different ways of burying people in the same graves in the early Tashtyk cemeteries may reflect their different origins: descendants of local population and immigrants living and buried alongside each other.

Sources & More Info:

Antiquity: Pastoralists and Mobility in the Oglakhty Cemetery of Southern Siberia

Masters of the Steppe: Mummies and Mannequins from the Oglakhty Cemetery in Southern Siberia

Quarternary International: New Results of Radiocarbon Dating from the Oglakhty Cemetery

Research Square: First Ancient DNA Analysis of Mummies from the Post-Scythian Oglakhty Cemetery

Archeotravelers: The Face Hidden Behind the Mask

Great Sites of the Ancient World: Siberia's Oglakhty Mountains

[folklorehorse]

The extreme sport of skijoring, where horses pull skiers at 40 mph

And why the eccentric sport will likely never return to the Olympics.

[magpies-and-mysteries]

so i know we all like to rat on tumblr for being a hellsite (and there are definitely some groups/features we could do without) but its actually like. a really sweet example of cultural diffusion

so, for context, cultural diffusion is the exchanging of ideas between cultures. for example, in India, they don't eat cows, so McDonald's serves different meat there.

on tumblr, we get to meet people from all around the world. this means that we exchange ideas and knowledge from out countries to people in other countries. its amazing actually. my moot in Europe told me not to drink the coffee in England. my moots in Australia take pictures of the wildlife there. i found out a week ago that restaurants in Italy don't have free refill stations??? i get to hear about the world just by talking to my beloved mutuals on tumblr

so yeah tumblr's insane but its a beautiful example of cultural diffusion nonetheless

[writingwithcolor]

Blending Mythos Respectfully

@sapphicq submitted:

Hi all! I’m trying to write an urban fantasy that explores oppression in a world that is basically the same as ours, except with magic, while incorporating magical systems and mythologies of multiple cultures. I’ve done an okay amount of research on each one that I’d like to include (still need to do more for sure, especially considering how colonization has effected mythologies). However, I’m struggling a bit on how they should coexist, since in the world I’m writing about they’re present and tangible. One example of this is fox spirits in East Asian mythology. Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese mythologies each have a nine-tailed fox, and though my research says that the myth originates from Chinese mythology, it also says that each of the fox spirits carry different connotations of malevolence, benevolence, and how widespread they are, depending on which culture’s mythology is being referred to. 

The same sort of thing has been popping up quite a lot in a lot of my research. I started to wonder if I could explain these similarities within world as “different cultures have come up with different names and customs surrounding the ‘same’ thing,” considering mythology in the real world from an anthropological perspective. However I don’t want to overgeneralize, especially considering that these different mythological figures are meant to be present and tangible. If I went that route, I wouldn’t want to say something like ‘actually, benevolent fox spirits do exist, and Korean mythology about fox spirits is wrong since Kumiho are pretty strictly malevolent,’ which would obviously be an implication. All this to say: do you have any tips for multiple mythos coexisting in a way that respects the various cultures they come from?

Avoid Round Pegs in Square Holes

A mistake you sometimes see Western authors make when dealing with mythology in urban fantasy settings is to confine the universe’s worldbuilding to a particular mythology or force the rules of a single culture’s folklore onto other cultures. For instance, here at WWC, we get a lot of questions asking how to represent supernatural creatures from multiple cultures respectfully alongside fae from Western Europe, and it's fairly obvious that the author plans to treat all supernatural creatures as fae. Urban fantasy based on Greek mythology or Christian mythology often falls into the same trap. 

I think a writer can demonstrate greater creativity by embracing these differences. I think a potential way to deal with contradicting mythos between cultures is to come up with compelling reasons why differences exist. What world-building systems, philosophies and real-life phenomena allow for a framework that explains the simultaneous existence of commonalities and differences? As you know, in anthropology, there are theories that emphasize cultural diffusion as a way to explain similar customs within the same region, but there are also theories that hold that multiple cultures can develop the same traditions and principles independent of each other (See: existence of 0, lost-wax bronze casting, astronomical calendars and the use of wheels). The answers I’ve given are mostly technological. However myths and belief systems serve very real social functions as ways to keep people together and cultivate norms and mores. Lesya expands on the utility of intentional cultural diffusion below.

Similarly, within evolution, there are instances of species having common features because of a shared ancestor, but also instances where species without shared ancestors evolve to have similar features because they exist in the same environment. I believe flippers are examples of both types of evolution in marine animals.  Thus, I think you need to question your assumption that “different cultures have come up with different names and customs surrounding the ‘same’ thing.” As the world is daily proof, they sometimes do, but they also sometimes don’t. 

-Marika

First, props to you for sending us this ask. You have been thinking about this a lot and have done research into building an urban fantasy that doesn’t do the thing of putting all Asians under one umbrella. 

Second, I’m going to agree with Marika here. Rather than go for the generalization route, revel in everyone's differences. It's a way for you to acknowledge the variations in the mythology, that not all have the same origins though there may be some similarities. Instead, they may have reached the same conclusions. My advice for blending mythologies is to lean into it, and not create a homogeneous umbrella. You can make something amazing with that. 

-Jaya

Hybridity Through Diffusion

So a myth originated in China. This does not mean Chinese tellings have the monopoly on what a telling is. Marika and Jaya have gone into a possible solution, here, but what I’m going to examine here is a mental framework that a lot of people get stuck in that is actually ahistorical.

Cultural appropriation as we know it is shockingly recent when it comes to history. In the modern day, ownership boundaries of myths have become very strict because of primarily European colonialism picking and choosing everything it likes about a mythos, and, this is important: not letting up on the oppression of those peoples. There’s also a strong preference to kill those colonialism deems “wrong”, instead of creating a hybrid culture.

Historically, this got a lot more fluid.

What happened historically was primarily cultural diffusion, wherein open trade, intermarriage, and shared borders made it that myths, customs, and cultural practices were (mostly) freely exchanged without massive power imbalances happening, and then modified to fit local beliefs.

Key word: mostly. Because yes sometimes it happened that one place took over another place and imported all of its customs (see: China, Rome, the Mughals), but… often* the ruling power either backed off, was fought of, or otherwise left the region, leaving the common people to do whatever they wanted with the carcass of what had been imposed on them. Or sometimes, even, the imperial forces would actively create a hybridized culture in order to better rule others.

* in places where the ruling power has NOT backed off on oppression and assimilation, even if the colonialism is very old, then this is invalid and the power dynamics of appropriation are still at play.

Because, historically, there was a lot less incentive to simply genocide the peoples you took over (which is what made armies that did destroy all they took over so noteworthy). People were needed to keep providing food and materials, even if the new person got the resulting taxes. 

This meant there were a lot more common people to play with the stuff imported by the imperial culture. And there was a lot more incentive to hybridize your customs to the common people’s customs, leading to the sometimes-hilarious situations like “Rome assigns an equivalence in their pantheon for literally every mythology they encountered, which was a lot.” 

This also explains early Christianization, because it was a lot safer to simply adapt what you already had to make it better for your own ends than curbstomp everything that was “wrong” to your worldview. Ireland’s mythology survives in huge swaths, because it was either Christianized wholesale, or it was about “historical humans” and not fae. Norse mythology was similarly adapted for Christian worldviews, which means we unfortunately have no idea what the pre-Christian myths were.

So instead of thinking in terms of ownership, think instead in terms of diffusion. 

Myths get imported along with food, cloth, or anything else necessary for life. Myths were, historically, a way for people to explain the world around them, both in place of and alongside science. “Ghost marches” are really common, globally, because if you have wind howling in the forest, it’s going to sound like predators, and predators mean go inside and lock the door. Weaving goddesses are also common, because weaving was so necessary to survive the elements.

Sometimes trade relationships soured, and you get bad associations with the imported stuff. Sometimes the relationship stayed great for long enough it got completely adapted. This doesn’t mean any one myth is “right”, nor does it mean you have to erase historical trade links. It just means you look at the historical context, understand that cultural exchange often used to be a lot more two-way than it is in modern appropriation times, and figure out what that means for your worldbuilding.

~ Mod Lesya

[podracer]

Hipsters and the wealthy have always been gentrifying poverty and making life harder for those of us who must be resourceful of spirit to exist. They deny the poor means to survive in dignity then mock our struggles.

They want what you have whenever you thrive even if they have to take it from you.

They want to commandeer art; exploit the good nature of people who are just happy to be taken seriously, and revel in exoticism whilst conveniently forgetting their own transgressions and othering contributed to the conditions of which "the struggle" is set against.

Then they want to act like they're a friend and resell a legacy they've stolen. They want our grace.

[dressesofchina]

Guo Pei couture combines Chinese patterns and Western fairytales.

[the-orly-blog]

Giants Mont'e Prama. Municipal Museum of Cabras. Dated to 4000 bce, they are a rare masked goggle representation suggestive of cultural contact with the Americas. https://theorly.com/shards/tlaloc

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