Why does myths exist

While artists of every generation reinterpret myths, the same basic patterns have shown up in mythology for thousands of years.

A name, phrase, or image based on a familiar myth can speak volumes to those who have been absorbing these mythic tales since birth.

When we hear the expression, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" or when we see a television commercial featuring a wooden horse full of soldiers, we recognize the reference to Odysseus, who tricked the Trojans into admitting an army into their city this way. When Jacqueline Kennedy referred to her husband's tenure as a new Camelot, we understand that she meant it was a golden age, like that of King Arthur.

When the Greek government dubbed a campaign to rescue ethnic Greeks from behind the walls of the Iron Curtain "Operation Golden Fleece," we understood that they were invoking an ancient name to communicate that these people belonged to them. Each generation of storytellers adds another layer of fact and fiction to the myths, such that the themes and characters of myths are timeless, and endlessly relevant, as they are reinvented and reapplied to the lives of each new generation.

Myth functions as long as both the need continues to exist and myth continues to fulfill it at least as well as any competitor. The need for myth is always a need so basic that it itself never ceases. The need to eat, to explain the world, to express the unconscious, to give meaningfulness to life — these needs are panhuman. But the need for myth to fulfill these needs may not last forever.

The need to eat can be fulfilled through hunting or farming without the involvement of myth. The need to express the unconscious can be fulfilled through therapy, which for both Sigmund Freud and his rival C. Jung is superior to myth. The need to find or to forge meaningfulness in life can be fulfilled without religion and therefore without myth for secular existentialists such as Albert Camus.

For some theorists, myth has always existed and will always continue to exist. For others, myth has not always existed and will not always continue to exist. For Mircea Eliade , a celebrated Romanian-born scholar of religion, religion has always existed and will always continue to exist. Because Eliade ties myth to religion, myth is safe. For not only Tylor but also J. Frazer , author of The Golden Bough , myth is doomed exactly because myth is tied to religion.

For them science has replaced religion and as a consequence has replaced myth. The foregoing myths are not merely primitive curiosities, irrelevant to the Judeo-Christian view of the origin of the world.

Many of the mythological episodes recounted here have close parallels in the Bible. These parallels, moreover, have long been recognized by students of comparative religion as being extremely significant. Frazer, the well-known scholar, scoured the anthropological literature for these parallels and wrote " I have attempted There is very little doubt among anthropologists and Biblical scholars that many of the creation stories in the Bible are really pre-Biblical, going back thousands of years.

In the eyes of anthropology, no culture holds a privileged position. None is thought to be the unique recipient of divine knowledge or benevolence. Each is recognized as the product of two million years or more of a natural process of cultural evolution.

During these countless millennia, each society added to its own store of origin myths elements from the mythology of near or distant tribes. The result was that each society gradually developed an elaborate cosmogony, which, while unique in certain particulars, nevertheless incorporated many features that ultimately derived from the four corners of the world.

Not until the rise of modern science during the last few centuries has a different account of human and cosmic origins emerged to challenge the picture presented by mythology. Applying newly developed concepts and instruments, science has given us a fuller and truer account of the origin of man and his universe than was ever possible before. These explanations, constantly subjected to verification and correction, have become ever more probable and more precise. Perhaps the account of how the world began that has been patiently hammered out by science lacks the drama, emotion, and romance of mythology.

But what it may have lost in color, it has gained in coherence and certitude. Anthropologists are ready to argue that the exchange has been worth it. Moreover, without having to accept the literal truth of origin myths, we can still glean from them a vivid picture of how primitive peoples interpreted their world, and how they used myth to justify the present and glorify the past.

And while all this tells us little or nothing of how human beings and the earth actually began, it tells us much about the nature of human thought and its modes of expression. This knowledge is of the greatest interest and value to the science of the human race. Make a Donation Today. Give a Gift Membership. More Ways to Give. Member Services FAQs. Legacy Society. Science Champions Society. Give a Gift of Stock. Donor-Advised Funds.

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Media Center. Our Partners. Need a Speaker? Our Impact. Our Research. View All Forbes. Financial Times. Washington Post. We support teachers How it Works. The real reason creation myths are near universal was given by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume observed that without an idea of cause and effect, we would be utterly incapable of making sense of the world around us.

The problem, however, is that all we observe is one darn thing after another: we never actually see one thing causing something else. Nor do we have sound rational reasons for leaping from observations of regularity to the conclusion that two things are linked by some necessary connection.

Fortunately, nature has bridged this logical and empirical gap for us.