This article aims to analyse the behavioural response generated by people who came into contact with civilisations and places whose existence was previously unknown or only remotely registered in their collective knowledge. Three major cases have been taken into consideration: a.) the “discovery” of America during the sixteenth century CE when Europeans entered in contact with Aztecs, Cakchiquels, and Andeans; b.) the encounters with the civilisations in Tahiti and Hawaii during the eighteenth century CE, and c.) the ancient Egyptian arrival at Punt during the fifteenth century BCE under the reign of queen Hatshepsut. Although spatially and chronologically separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, in all of these cases the “encounterers” (i.e., the ones who were moving towards the unknown or distant and contemporaries who were writing their own history) tended to project a self-perceived supremacy over the encountered people, configured as a spontaneous feeling of their supremacy over the local population (hence a “counterfeit” emic notion). In all the above cases, the “encountering” event gave rise to the creation of an “apotheosis” myth, in which the encounterers were supposed to be seen, and believed in, as “gods coming from the sky.” Applying concepts from the cognitive science to these historical events, the article aims to scrutinize the mental categories that tended to generate such a belief of divine superiority projected in the vision of the Other. Rather than being marginalized as an episodic event, the formation of an apotheosis myth can be interpreted as part of a global process, which emerges in the human mind-frame, solicited by mental processes and in contact with a number of similar external outputs.

本文旨在分析接触过文明和地方的人们所产生的行为反应，这些文明和地方的存在以前是未知的，或者只是在集体知识中很少被记录。三大案件已经考虑到：1）美国的“发现”在16世纪，CE，当欧洲在阿兹台克人，Cakchiquels和安第斯人接触进入; 湾）与十八世纪期间在塔希提岛和夏威夷文明的遭遇CE，和c。）在15世纪的平底船古埃及的到来BCE哈特谢普苏特女王的统治下。尽管在空间和时间上相隔数千英里和数百年，但在所有这些情况下，““”IE，那些朝着未知或遥远的地方以及同时写自己的历史的时代的人）倾向于对遇到的人们表现出一种自我感知的至高无上的态度，这是他们自发地感觉到他们对当地人口的至高无上的感觉（因此产生了“伪造” （emic概念）。在以上所有情况下，“遭遇”事件都引发了“神化”神话的产生，在神话中，人们被认为并被认为是“天上的神”。本文将认知科学的概念应用于这些历史事件，旨在审查那些倾向于产生“他者”视野中所投射的神圣优势信念的心理类别。与其被边缘化事件作为边缘事件，