Berezkin's analytical catalogue of world mythology motifs
The largest systematic database of folklore-mythological motifs (tens of thousands of coded occurrences across ~1,000 traditions), built to detect areal and historical signal in motif distributions: Berezkin's program reads geographic clustering of motifs as residue of deep population history (out-of-Africa routes, Beringian crossings), not as proof of universal archetypes. It is the vault's primary instrument for the "global distribution" question on the flood and other motifs. Class 3 by nature: it dates nothing directly; it constrains hypotheses statistically.
Flood/world-catastrophe motifs are widespread but not universal: notably dense in South and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the Americas; comparatively sparse in continental Africa. Africa has catastrophic floods as natural events, so the sparsity argues against the naive "floods happen everywhere, so flood myths arise everywhere" version of convergence — distribution carries historical signal (Berezkin 2015 and catalogue motif group on world catastrophes).
Methodological core: motifs are treated like genetic/linguistic markers; statistically significant areal clusters that match known migration corridors are read as transmission (descent along population lines), while scattered low-density occurrences are candidates for independent invention.
d'Huy and colleagues apply phylogenetic tree-building to motif sets (Cosmic Hunt, Polyphemus), claiming reconstructable Paleolithic proto-versions — methodologically exciting, heavily debated.
Coding decisions (what counts as "the same motif") are the standing critique; lumping/splitting choices can manufacture or erase signal. Ethnographic recording dates are post-contact almost everywhere, so contamination by missionary narratives (esp. for flood stories in the Americas) must be assessed motif-by-motif — a known, serious confound. Phylogenetic extensions (d'Huy) are more contested than the catalogue itself.
great-flood, sky-father