Don't you think that the good question is not about other people having a similar theory, but: "How can you prove your theory" ?

Jean-Loic,

Yes! Thank you for the suggestion. I was wondering why I had gotten no responses. And, as in many things, it had framed the question incorrectly.

Your question mirrors the old saw "and man created God in his own image..." Suggest the writings of Stith Thompson (anthropologist) from the 1960s and 1970s related to origins of mythology in various cultures. Best of luck with your explorations.

If the Heroes and Gods were just emanations of the brain, we would find the same myths everywhere on the planet, which is far from being the case. On the origins and diffusion of myths, see now Yuri E. Berezkin: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yuri_Berezkin/contributions?ev=brs_act

I think heroes are basically myths embodied, for Malinowski the myth is a guide to rituals, ethics and values ​​whose function is to strengthen the tradition and culture of a community. Myths have been around since primitive cultures to the present day, and to a greater or lesser extent, continue to serve the same function: they help us understand the world, to give meaning and function in their institutions.

Mythical heroes main characters in these stories are the amalgamation of all the traits valued in the culture in which the myth originated.

Jean-Loic,

I have not read Berezkin but the material on his research page seems to indicate that he does believe that we have the same myths everywhere on the planet under different cultural guises. I won't have time to further investigate his writings for a month or so, but am looking forward to it. Thank you for your help.

Another interesting paper by Berezkin... when you have time: http://nouvellemythologiecomparee.hautetfort.com/archive/2014/06/28/yuri-berezkin-world-distribution-of-zoomorphic-protagonists-5400272.html

... and if you read French :

https://www.academia.edu/4339552/2014_-_Une_chrono-stratigraphie_des_mythes_de_creation._In_Yves_Vade_dir._Memoire_culturelle_et_transmission_des_legendes._Paris_lHarmattan_p._51-72

But even if you don't, the maps will show you that we definitely do NOT have the same myths everywhere on the planet.

Enjoy the reading.

To take "Heroes and Gods as externalized and personified concepts" is, I fear, a great over simplification that implies an almost deliberate response to situations and feelings that in the context of the times the myths arose would have been quite unnatural.

Many years ago I read Robert Graves encyclopaedic compilation, "The Greek Myths".  While I cannot argue for or against many of his basic tenets, what came across clearly from that work is the complexity of the evolutionary process underlying the Greek myths as we now think of them.  Oral history, cultural clashes, cultural integration, social collapse, and subsequent piecing together of half remembered lore into a written form through writers like Homer and Hesiod, to subsequent incorporation into both cults and literature.

Some of the most ancient goddesses appear to empathise female fertility, but did this represent concerns about farming and crops, or birth rate to keep the tribe strong/  Or is this just another simplification.

The place to start must always be with archaeology, not anthropology, since modern primitive cultures, however isolated, have still been open at different times in their history to external cultural influences, however indirectly.

In many cases ancient cultures turn out to be much more sophisticated than we give them credit for.  The recent findings at Göbekli Tepe, dating back 11,000 years, is a good case in point.

Kathleen,

Thank you for addressing my postulation re gods and heroes.  My intent is not to diminish cultural influences on primitive cultures, nor to undermine their sophistication. I am also aware of the evolutionary process surrounding all myths, Greek or not.  My question or theory, has to do with the inherent need to externalize through art and image, the fears, hopes, needs, of any culture.  From whence cometh such urges? As an avid fan of Joseph Campbell, Jung, ,Neumann, et al, my focus is on the biological grounding of mythic stories.

From a biological perspective, the gathering and transmission of knowledge has an intrinsic life value. As Sandra L. Bloom explains in ‘Bridging the Black Hole of Trauma: The Evolutionary Significance of the Arts’, Psychother. Politics. Int. 8.3 (2010): 198-212., human beings are subject to the same “cognitive imperative” that drives other mammals and birds to order the world by differentiating and adapting significant events and sensory elements and unifying them into a cognitive whole (Bloom 2010, 201). Consequently, sharing knowledge about such matters as which plants are edible and which poisonous is crucial for the survival of all species. However, in the case of human beings, this vital cognitive imperative is complicated by our capacity for self-awareness, which involves the perception of our own mortality, for, as Bloom reflects: “How does one place into a meaningful and ordered scheme, the idea of one’s own death?” (ibid., 202). The answer to this question is that “there is a great deal about reality that we simply cannot bear” (ibid.). The function of art is to mitigate the traumatic potential of traumatic though necessary knowledge through metaphor and myth. I would say that here lies the human need to create heroes and gods.

Yes and no. Certainly human needs, fears, desires, experiences and drives, not to mention political justifications, are a major source of mythic material. There's also a strong argument for organised religion having evolved to promulgate one community's moral/political codes in opposition to those of other communities (there are after all war gods in most pantheons...). But the origins of these memes is, on one level, not the important matter; it's what they become that is important.

Tales of gods and heroes can entertain people and cheer them up, satisfy angst, justify actions or allay fears and guilt, but they also allow people to see the world in a different way and consider issues in a fresh context, or from a new angle, where the core moral, ethical or intellectual factors can be seen without the social and prejudicial baggage of everyday life (as do sci-fi and fantasy genres of fiction, film and TV). Stories can lead us to new insights, revelations and epiphanies.

And this is the other side to the equation. Mythology is a language, rooted in the human sub-conscious, by which we communicate with the unseen, with God or the Gods, the Ancestors, spirits, the Land, or the Universe. The spiritual essences on 'the other side' clothe themselves in the god-forms that we envisage in our stories in order to communicate with us, and indeed influence those forms themselves. 

The story is what matters - it can inspire us to new heights, intellectually, politically, emotionally and spiritually. It is a way to meet our God(s) and grow as human and spiritual beings.