The Origins of the World’s Mythologies

E. J. Michael Witzel's 2012 Oxford University Press study attempts the broadest contemporary comparative-mythological reconstruction: a putative 'Laurasian' mythological substrate underlying the great traditions of Eurasia and the Americas, contrasted with an older 'Gondwanan' substrate in sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. Witzel's reconstruction is controversial in mainstream comparative-religion scholarship but offers the most systematic recent account of the structural parallels between the global flood, golden-age, and lost-civilization traditions. The work is a principal mainstream reference point for the structural-parallel observations that underwrite alternative reconstructions of pre-Flood civilization.