Boo

Truncheon Rouge

Question on ghosts.

So there was a thread over on after hours about creepy happenings and the like. It inspired me to question ghosts.

Anyway, the basic spheel is that I didn't receive a satisfying answer.

I asked how is it possible that cultures which were oceans apart, for example the Mayans and the Aboriginal Australians, or Inuits and Celts could have similar descriptions and stories of ghostly visible spirit beings. (of dead people)

In a time when they knew nothing of each others existence and couldn't communicate.

Best reasoned answer I got was that since in the beginning humans moved out of Africa and spread out they carried the stories with them.
But is that possible.

I'm guessing humans are supposed to have traveled across the artic and moved into the Americas, and across the middle east.

But would they not have been of the early human grunting variety at that time?
And could such stories hold their ground for that long without being lost through deaths or altered or just plain forgotten.

Also, for the story to carry on in separate directions it would have to be formulated pretty damn early before the group split east and west.

(So at the very latest it would have to have been cooked up at some point around Egypt if humans went north out of Africa)

This forum seems like a good place to ask.
I had a brief look at a skeptic site but their best answer was to do with germs and wasn't really written with much confidence, and kind of left as unanswered.

doctoremma

You're assuming that ghost stories didn't arise independently in different cultures. I don't find this remotely implausible. Human brains, tricks of the light, hallucinations and fear of death are going to be common traits and lead to the same phenomena - things that go bump in the night.

Aenaes

The most basic answer I can think of is human nature. To create stories or trying to give answers to unexplained events.

"I asked how is it possible that cultures which were oceans apart, for example the Mayans and the Aboriginal Australians, or Inuits and Celts could have similar descriptions and stories of ghostly visible spirit beings. (of dead people)"

The same could be said how cultures so far apart created fire/music. How stories of mythology spread such as giant men like Goliath or Finn MacCool.
Also, how they all created some sort of deity for themselves no matter what time or place they lived.

Mark Hamill

Truncheon Rouge wrote: »

I asked how is it possible that cultures which were oceans apart, for example the Mayans and the Aboriginal Australians, or Inuits and Celts could have similar descriptions and stories of ghostly visible spirit beings. (of dead people)

How similar are they?

Truncheon Rouge wrote: »

I had a brief look at a skeptic site but their best answer was to do with germs and wasn't really written with much confidence, and kind of left as unanswered.

Germs? Do you have a link? I've never heard of an explanation for ghosts that originate with germs.

Truncheon Rouge

doctoremma wrote: »

You're assuming that ghost stories didn't arise independently in different cultures. I don't find this remotely implausible. Human brains, tricks of the light, hallucinations and fear of death are going to be common traits and lead to the same phenomena - things that go bump in the night.

I haven't assumed anything. Trick of light seems plausible.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

How similar are they?


Germs? Do you have a link? I've never heard of an explanation for ghosts that originate with germs.

http://www.skepticalanalysis.com/reports/ghosts/history.html

Mark Hamill

Truncheon Rouge wrote: »

http://www.skepticalanalysis.com/reports/ghosts/history.html

Its not a bad explanation. Its saying that most human societies (even Neanderthals) buried the dead, probably because of health reasons (dead bodies spread diseases). Myths and legends grew up around dead bodies as a reinforcement of the need of burying them. Most descriptions of ghosts are similar to dead bodies (pale, decaying, skeletal etc.), so that explains why different cultures have similar stories and descriptions.

Is there a particular part you disagree with?

Turtwig

If you roll a ball of wool along the floor past a cat the cat will usually just chase after it. (Or not bother do anything at all!). If you do the same past a child of, I think, one and a half years of age or older they'll first look to see where the ball came from. What caused it to roll past them? This search for a cause in everything is in pretty much everyone. (Probably everyone one, but again, I don't know for certain.) Biologically we have instincts to search for causes to every single thing we observe. The reasons we give for these causes just needs to satisfy our intuitions. So, once something is intuitively plausible we've supplied our instinctual need for an answer.

The problem is our intuition isn't exactly that rational. Our brain is an evolved complex organisms with glitches here and there and the search for a cause behind everything served us very well for some time e.g Leaves are rustling? What's causing it a predator that could kill you or the wind?

This hyperactive agency detection though means we seek out causes where often there are none. I'm not saying ghosts don't exist, they might, but one should bear in mind that humans everywhere are hardwired to seek causes and patterns to just about everything and anything. So from that point of view it's not surprising that just about every culture has fantastic myths and tales of ghosts, spirits, deities etc.

OP if you're really interesting in finding out more about this stuff I'd recommend reading Supersense by Bruce Hood.

Truncheon Rouge

Well I'm interested but not to the point of 'read a book' interested, not yet anyway.
I'm thinking along the lines of hallucinogenic plants now, that and 'it was a ghost what killed him and put his food in my house' kind of thing.

King Mob

Truncheon Rouge wrote: »

I asked how is it possible that cultures which were oceans apart, for example the Mayans and the Aboriginal Australians, or Inuits and Celts could have similar descriptions and stories of ghostly visible spirit beings. (of dead people)

But your first premise doesn't quite hold up. The descriptions and characteristics of ghosts vary wildly from place to place.
For example Japanese ghosts are kinda similar in appearance to ours:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Kuniyoshi_The_Ghosts.jpg
But ghosts from Thailand:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/XRF-krasue.jpg

Further while our ghosts are content to just float around and be creepy shadows, Japanese ghosts are said to always be evil and want to trick foolish humans into becoming one of them.

As for why they look similar sometimes, well that's what tricks of the light look etc like.
You might think you saw a person, but it's hard to make out....
You could have sworn you saw something but now it's gone....

Combine this with people's natural predilection for finding patterns and agency in random stuff, the same-ish depiction of ghosts popping up independently isn't that far fetched.

nozzferrahhtoo

Truncheon Rouge wrote: »

I asked how is it possible that cultures which were oceans apart, for example the Mayans and the Aboriginal Australians, or Inuits and Celts could have similar descriptions and stories of ghostly visible spirit beings. (of dead people)

Why wouldn't they?

Humans are able to create representations of other humans in their own minds. We are one of the few, maybe even the only, one that can do this. It allows us to do things like put ourselves in the position of another and theorise as to what they are thinking. We can even perform complex thoughts like "Is he thinking that I know he knows what I am thinking" and even more iterations of complexity.

These representations can be as real (if not more so) than the actual people. We all know the feeling of dread imagining the reactions and emotions of others to something we have done only to find the reality is not as scary or harsh.

Children when tested have shown some interesting aspects of this. When shown animated deaths of characters and asked "Does he still need to eat, walk, sleep" and so forth they answer "no" but when asked what the dead character "wants" they still give answers as if the character lives on. This examples what I am saying in that we hold separate representations of the physical and character in our minds and we are well capable of acknowledging the death of one but the continues existence of the other.

To return to your OP then it is not surprising that humans in different cultures... who all share the biological attributes I touched on above... would have folklore and impressions of the dead living on. Our own hubris coupled with what we are simply used to in our day to day leads us to represent those things in human form. That apparitions should be hazy and be associated with white light are also unsurprising.

To answer your OP in short therefore... I think the simple reason similar folklore and superstitions arise even in separated cultures that know nothing of each other can be explained by little more than our shared humanity.

That is all answered however without any examples from you about what exactly you are talking about and how you compared such tales and stories so apologies if my answer does not fit exactly with your question. I had to inject some level of assumption to fill in the gaps in your OP.