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[lemorttoussaint]

This is probably testament to how tired I am right now (three hours of intense frustration will do that to you) but I had a weird thought about John the Baptist.  Is he part of the wild man archetype?  Like, woodwose, wild man of the woods, Iron Hans kind of thing?  I mean, I can see the Iron Hans story as transmitted by the Brothers Grimm being influenced by John the Baptist (benevolent wild man who does favors for a younger boy who has some association with high birth and divinity or magic), but is the Baptist himself part of the larger wild man archetype?  And if so, where does that idea come from?  I, personally, favor the idea that the wild man was inspired by interactions between Cro Magnon man and Neanderthal man (physical description certainly supports that; parenthetically, I also think Neanderthal/Cro Magnon conflict explains the origin of Seth in Egyptian mythology) but of course I have no idea if that's true.  How long can orally transmitted traditions last, anyway?  Again, I see mythological trends all the time that can at least tentatively be traced back to the Paleolithic, but the key word there is tentative.  It's all guess work, because the extant evidence is so scarce.  (For the record, I think Marija Gimbutas' 'late feminist archaeology' is pure crap; not because I'm against her ideas in and of themselves but because the supporting scholarship is so bad.  Epic intellectual fail.)

Still.  It's an intriguing thought.  When I'm feeling a bit more energetic I think I'll look into it a little; at least, I will collect wild man legends in order to do so.  That's the fun part anyway.