The dog, the horse and the creation of man

Abstract

A story that described the creation of man became known to at least some inhabitants of the Eurasian Steppe zone not later than the early II millennia B.C. Not a fragment of it survived across most of this area, and our reconstruction is based on the evidence from the areas to the north and to the south of the Steppe Belt. The texts in question share many specific details and the probability of their independent emergence looks negligible. At the same time the people to whom the story was familiar in the 19th and 20th century could definitely not have borrowed it from each other in recent times. The only way to reconstruct the mythology of the people who lived in the past is a search of its survivals in the later folklore. The analysis of ancient iconography or scraps of evidence preserved in the early written sources is not enough for the reconstruction of the plots of complex tales.