Myth and catastrophic reality: using myth to identify cosmic impacts and massive Plinian eruptions in Holocene South America

Major natural catastrophes such as floods, fire, darkness, and ‘sky falling down’ are prominently reflected in traditional South American creation myths, cosmology, religion, and worldview. Cosmogonic myths represent a rich and largely untapped data set concerning the most dramatic natural events and processes experienced by cultural groups during the past several thousand years. Observational details regarding specific catastrophes are encoded in myth storylines, typically cast in terms of supernatural characters and actions. Not only are the myths amenable to scientific analysis, some sets of myths encode multiple catastrophes in meaningful relative chronological order. The present study considers 4259 myths, including 284 ‘universal’ (perceived in the narratives to be worldwide) catastrophe myths, from 20 cultural groups east of the Andes. These myths are examined in light of available geological, palaeoenvironmental, archaeological, and documentary evidence. Our analysis reveals three likely major Plinian volcanic eruptions in Columbia and the Gran Chaco. We also identify a set of traditions that are probably linked to the well-known Campo del Cielo iron meteorite impact in northern Argentina around 4000 years ago, along with a separate set of traditions alluding to a possible airburst in the Brazilian Highlands. These impacts apparantly triggered widespread mass fires. There are hints of cosmic impacts in the mythologies for other locations in South America. South America is a vast and physically diverse region, occupying some 17 819 000 sq km, approximately 12% of the world’s overall land mass. South America was seemingly the last of the inhabited continents to be colonized, a process beginning by at least 12 000 BP. Prior to European contact in the sixteenth century, a wide range of societies developed and flourished throughout South America, ranging from simple migratory huntergatherers of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego to well-known state-level societies of the central Andes and adjacent coastal plains of Peru and Chile. The Inca, the Chimu, and the Moche continue to impress archaeologists and historians with their monumental architecture and their mastery of irrigation and general water management. In between these two extremes were semi-sedentary and sedentary village horticulturalists and various small independent chiefdoms relying heavily on agriculture and maritime resources. The distinguished anthropologist Julian Steward identified a total of 178 named different tribes for South America (Steward 1946–1959; Steward & Faron 1959). It is readily apparent that thousands of additional ‘tribal’ names are present in historical documents, and that much confusion exists due to synonymy and language uncertainties. Early explorers and missionaries had no systematic way to classify the various groups of people they encountered. There are at least 65 known language families in South America with estimates of the numbers of individual languages ranging between 400 to as many as 3000 (Bierhorst 1988, p. 17). This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that many of these languages and the groups who spoke them have become extinct during the past several hundred years. Despite these conditions, South America has a rich legacy of oral traditions and mythologies. South American mythology has been the source for some of the most creative and comprehensive studies of mythology performed to date (e.g. Levi-Strauss 1969, 1973, 1978, 1981; Bierhorst 1988). Of particular value for our study is the set of 4259 myths published during the period of 1970–1992 by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as part of the monumental 24volume series entitled Folk Literature of South American Indians (Wilbert & Simoneau 1992). The distribution of the ‘UCLA collection’, representing 20 different cultural groups east of the Andes, is depicted in Figure 1. We hypothesize that ‘great’ or ‘worldwide’ catastrophic events appearing in South American Indian From: PICCARDI, L. & MASSE, W. B. (eds) Myth and Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 273, 177–202. 0305-8719/07/$15.00 # The Geological Society of London 2007. Fig. 1. Map of South America depicting countries (e.g. Paraguay), geographic regions (e.g. Gran Chaco) and cultures with their total numbers of myths in the UCLA collection (e.g. Toba with 636 myths). W. B. MASSE & M. J. MASSE 178