Tracing migration routes through mythical variation:a phylogenetic approach to the She people’s Panhu myth variants

作者:Chenjie Yuan1, Lihong Lei, and Yiyang Cheng 发布时间:2026-09-20 11:48:43 来源:Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2026, 00, 1-20+收藏本文

 Chenjie Yuan¹, Lihong Lei², Yiyang Cheng³*:《Tracing migration routes through mythical variation: a phylogenetic approach to the She people's Panhu myth variants》,载《Digital Scholarship in the Humanities》。


¹ School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China

² Development Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai 200437, China

³ College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai 200437, China  


* Corresponding author: Yiyang Cheng, College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, Waiwen Building, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200437, China. E-mail: chengyiyang@fudan.edu.cn


摘要:This study aims to investigate the evolutionary patterns of the Panhu myth among the She people in southeastern China and to explore how mythological variation can provide insights into historical migration and cultural transmission. The research adopts a phylogenetic approach informed by digital humanities and cultural computation. A dataset of thirty-six homologous variants of the Panhu myth is analyzed to reconstruct their lineage relationships. Methods of distant reading and narrative data mining are employed to identify structural patterns and evolutionary trajectories across variants. The analysis identifies three major mythological systems centered in southeastern Guangdong, the Fujian–Guangdong corridor, and the Fujian–Zhejiang corridor. The latter two emerged later and exhibit further internal differentiation. Despite this divergence, continuous interaction among the three systems is evident. Combined with historical and ethnological evidence, the findings suggest that since the Song dynasty, the primary migration route of the She people followed a trajectory from Guangdong through Fujian to Zhejiang, accompanied by sustained cultural exchange. This study integrates phylogenetic modeling with mythological analysis, demonstrating the applicability of computational methods to the study of narrative traditions. It moves beyond traditional qualitative approaches by quantitatively reconstructing myth evolution and linking it to population movement. By applying phylogenetic analysis to mythological corpora, this research highlights the potential of digital humanities methods for uncovering large-scale cultural patterns. It provides a methodological framework for using narrative data to infer migration histories, offering new perspectives for the study of early populations.


关键词:She people; Panhu myth; homology; phylogeny; migration.


全文链接:https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqag115