“All of these exercises in scholarship ( = myth + footnotes) suffer from the same problem . They attempt to reach so far back into prehistory that no textual sources are available to control the inquiry, but where archeology offers a plethora of data. In practice, all the remains found throughout Eurasia for a period of several millennia can be constituted as evidence from which to craft the final narrative, but it is often the researchers' desires that determine their principles of selection. When neither the data nor the criticism of one's colleagues inhibits desire-driven invention, the situation is ripe for scholarship as myth. Prehistory here becomes "pre-" in a radical sense: a terrain of frustration and opportunity where historians-cum -mythographers can offer origin accounts- complete with heroes, adventures, great voyages, and a primordial paradise lost- all of which reflect and advance the interests of those who tell them . Ideology in narrative form.”
