Outsider wrote:It's not even that complicated. Robin Hood has been around for centuries, longer than any copyright law expiration, and no clear author can even be attributed his creation. Individual representations of him or works based on him can be copyrighted, such as Disney's portrayal as an anthropomorphic fox, or this deck of cards; those copyrights will eventually expire as well.
Obviously mythologies can be copyrighted. Tolkien's work forms a pretty coherent mythology, still under copyright. Also Scientology, which at least takes itself seriously as a religion, has a mythology that is still copyrighted.
But both those mythologies you reference are the scholarly pursuit and extension of literary works -- which can be copyrighted -- not the oral history of humankind.
As I said and you reinforced, iterations of characters can be copyrighted and yes there are accepted literary versions of the wider mythological corpus, which invariably fall into the purview of copyright, but nobody can trace these tales through a millennium of more of history to an identifiable creator. Thus no copyright.