[Context: this question has been sent to me at least once before, but was apparently lost in the celestial aether before reaching my in-box]
Hmm…
I’m trying to think of examples that appear to show something like this. The first thing that comes to mind is the Power of One’s “disturb not the harmony of fire, ice and lightning” maxim, and I suspect legendary Pokémon in general would play a very important part in defining concepts of that kind. It would certainly make sense if they had ideas like this; the idea of ‘basic elements’ is widespread enough in ancient thought. I, of course, am most familiar with the four Empedoclean elements of western thought, and their precedent in Thales’ conjecture that all things were made of water (this is really interesting; basically, Thales’ insight was realising that water is the only substance that can be found in nature as a solid, a liquid or a gas, and suggesting that earth and stone were really just further cooled and condensed forms of ice, while air and fire are further heated and rarefied forms of steam – I mean, he was totally wrong, of course, but it was a fascinating hypothesis), but more interesting in terms of Pokémon is the classical Chinese system of five elements – water, fire, earth, wood and metal. This system has a cycle of relationships of ‘destruction’ reminiscent of Pokémon’s elemental rock-paper-scissors, such as “fire destroys metal” and “wood destroys earth,” but also has a cycle of relationships of ‘creation,’ such as “water creates wood” and “fire creates earth.” If I were trying to construct a history of the Pokémon world, I’d be tempted to place the origins of the type system in one or more cycles like that.
I tend to think that type is something that, in many if not most cases, actually has little to do with Pokémon biology but is a system of classification imposed by humans largely for the purpose of providing a heuristic framework for understanding the ways in which different Pokémon and attacks affect each other in battle – instead of remembering strengths and weaknesses for every Pokémon and every attack you come across, you can memorise a set of general rules that will usually work. If I’m right about that, then it would make sense that the system didn’t simply spring into being fully formed, but had a number of more rudimentary antecedents which failed to describe the abilities of different Pokémon as thoroughly or accurately (maybe they had too few types to account for all the variability, or divided similar Pokémon for superficial reasons). It would further make sense that the earliest of these systems would seek explanations in magic or astrology. Hell, in the case of Ghost-, Psychic- and Fairy-types, they may be absolutely right to do so.
Pokémaniacal 