Outside of the work itself, the stories have to have an origin at some level for Jordan to use them, because he obviously didn't just make up centuries old stories we all know so well. He got them from somewhere, if only subconsciously, and the first extant occurrence still known today is the origin in that respect, and in that respect it is those original stories of our collective heritage Jordan tries to evoke in TWoT.

However, Jordan may well be arguing that true time is cyclic (though I don't believe this MUST be his view) and if that's the case all bets are off. He could just mean to speak of the archetypes of our collective heritage, and if he does so in service of cyclic time there is no more "original" story in the real world than in Randland, because they're all looped and we can't point to a particular version of pervasive repeated mythos because they're all one. If we take this to extremes we could even say that, given indefinite time and indefinite space, Randland COULD BE Earth in 10,000 years, or 10 million, or some distant terrestrial planet in 10 billion. If anything's possible, if an infinite amount of time means EVERYTHING'S CERTAIN, then sooner or later TWoT will play out as a historical series of events, some place, some time, because anything you can imagine or can't does, sooner or later.

That seems going too far to me though, and I'm not entirely convinced Jordan's use of cyclic time is anything more than a conceit to serve a story that has other themes he does affirm. Ishy's oft stated goal is to break the Wheel of Time, and he verifies in TGS what I've always believed: His goal, and the DO's, is universal non-being, void, as the result of breaking the Wheel. But in TGS we see something else for the first time: Rand also wants to break the Wheel in a very real sense, to escape both his supposed destiny and that of the world not by avoidance but by facing and destroying the DO permanently. I think it's a fool's errand, but I thought the same of the Cleansing, and it would certainly be very interesting to see unfold. Can the world exist without the Creator's antithesis, if only in a confined state? How deep is the source of conflict, would the push/pull of the One Power's halves be enough, or is the DO required to prevent a static world as absent of life as the void the he would create if free? Perhaps a world without the DO is so untenable, so incompatible with the Creator's goals, that in killing the DO Rand would be assaulting the Wheel itself, and thus replace the DO, be imprisoned indefinitely alone longing for oblivion more than at any point since he accepted his prophesied fate to die in torment saving and breaking the world at the same time.

Again, it seems as if there are a lot of possibilities to consider, and the potential for a very deep and serious discussion, but I know that's only an illusion since, after all, there are no great deep themes in TWoT. In fact, never mind. If anyone needs me I'll be contemplating my navel.