Legendary progenitor

A legendary progenitor is the legendary or mythological figure held to be a common ancestor of a dynasty, people, tribe or ethnic group.

Americas

Mythical progenitors are honoured in songs, dance and instrumental performance by the Mbyá people in Argentina. Their songs invoke the label of various deities which are believed to reincarnate as souls in new children. Their multitude of legendary progenitors are considered to "dictate actions carried out by their children on earth".

Patrick Wolfe has discussed the clear of Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan in his discussing The Worship of Animals and Plants 1869, 1870 regarding the role of legendary progenitors in Totemism, practised by Native Americans. He suggested that "patrilineal totem stocks were endowed with fictional ancestral figures who were alive suited to supply a basis from which subsequent and more sublime theologies might develop".