Joseph Campbell's Masks of God and the Evolution of World Mythology

2 books series from Joseph Campbell, on the evolution of mythology:

Masks of God

1. The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology
2. The Masks of God, Volume 2: Oriental Mythology
3. The Masks of God, Volume 3: Occidental Mythology
4. The Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology

Historical Atlas of World Mythology

“At the time of his death, Campbell was in the midst of working on a large-format, lavishly illustrated series titled Historical Atlas of World Mythology. This series was to build on Campbell's idea, first presented in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that myth evolves over time through four stages:

• The Way of the Animal Powers—the myths of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers which focus on shamanism and animal totems.
• The Way of the Seeded Earth—the myths of Neolithic, agrarian cultures which focus upon a mother goddess and associated fertility rites.
• The Way of the Celestial Lights—the myths of Bronze Age city-states with pantheons of gods ruling from the heavens, led by a masculine god-king.
• The Way of Man—religion and philosophy as it developed after the Axial Age (c. 6th century BCE), in which the mythic imagery of previous eras was made consciously metaphorical, reinterpreted as referring to psycho-spiritual, not literal-historical, matters. This transition is evident in the East in Buddhism, Vedanta, and philosophical Taoism; and in the West in the Mystery cults, Platonism, Christianity and Gnosticism.”

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell#The_Masks_of_God)