Coincidentally, I’m re-reading a book on fairytales by the Jungian psychotherapist.author Marie Louise von Franz — “Shadow & Evil in Fairytales” where she refutes this anthroplogoical idea that fairytales are universal.
Fairy tales are universal...so you will see the same stories retold over and over again in many places and times.
But that doesn’t mean that they all descended from the same story told ten thousand years ago.
For some reason, certain similar ideas pop up in cultures that have no contact (e.g. agriculture, the flood stories, religion/philosophy) that have many similarities...