Origins of Mythology

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From Cinderella to Beauty and the Beast, the roots of fairy tales stretch back thousands of years — to the dawn of Indo-European languages and beyond.

In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by author and journalist Laura Spinney to explore the origins of mythology. From the tales compiles by the Brothers Grimm to cutting-edge linguistic studies, they explore how ancient myths endure across cultures, and what they reveal about human societies stretching back tens of thousands of years.

The Birth of Indo-European

With thanks to the authors of the Proto-Indo European reconstructions Ricardo Ginevra (Assistant Professor of Historical and General Linguistics, Catholic University of Milan) and Andrew Byrd (Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Kentucky). Reconstructions performed by Phil Barnett (MA in Linguistics, University of Kentucky).

Click on the following links to listen to the full reconstructions on Youtube:

Creation Myth

Dragon-Slaying Myth

Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Tim Astall and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds

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Transcript

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0:32.1	Hello all. Welcome to today's episode of the ancients. You have to forgive my slightly slightly horse voice. I have recovered. Maybe I was being a bit too optimistic last time. I'm still feeling a little under the weather. Still got quite a horse voice. But hey, happens once in a while. The weather's getting colder. The summer has ended here and it's time to put on the jumpers and jackets again in the UK.
0:54.7	So, hey, I guess you could say it was bound to happen.
0:57.4	Anyway, enough about me and more about today's episode.
1:00.5	Really excited to share this one with you,
1:02.2	because you might remember a few months ago back in April, I believe.
1:07.6	We released an episode about the birth of Indo-European languages, proto-Indo-European,
1:13.2	a linguistics episode, and you guys went mad for it. It was amazing to see how many responses
1:18.3	we got to the episode, how much you loved our guest, Laura Spinney, and how much you were
1:22.9	clamouring for more episodes on ancient linguistics. So I'm delighted to say that we are responding to that
1:30.2	today with our episode. We've got Laura Spinney back on the show and she's talking us through
1:34.7	the amazing new research into the origins of mythology and how these stories go back thousands of years.
1:45.9	I've got a hunch, this one's going to be popular.
1:48.8	Anyway, that's enough from me. Let's go.
	...

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