Do you know of any scientific teachings behind myths?

Question

We all know that Myths are fables. But have we ever looked beyond them and try to figure out why these stories were created?

Answer 1

They tried this same venue in the late 1800 in England, they wrote a treatise on Aethena and tried to equate her powers to the science of the day.  These myths are for our benefit, they are created to help us mortals understand not only the powers of nature, but the power within us all, and how to over come them!

Answer 2

For the most part, Ancient Mythology was just the culture's way of explaining the unexplainable. This is also where the idea of polytheism came from. If there's something the culture doesn't understand, they make a god who put it there.

Fables, on the other hand, were usually a very good lesson. Take the Brothers Grimm. They tell stories of crazy old ladies living in the woods, and wolves eating you if you went out after dark. This is probably because there WERE crazy old ladies in the woods who might hurt you, and the wolves DID come out after dark. They were a way of scaring children into following the rules. Too bad the style died out.

Hope that's helped!

Answer 3

In my opinion myths started from something real.  In the 1800s there was a myth of a big hairy man like animal living in the jungles, everyone who had never seen it was sure it was a myth.  It turned out to be gorillas, nobody from the "civilized world" had ever seen them and didn't believe their existence until they were captured.

Answer 4

Some myths do have some truth to them in a certain sense.  Some people think that the Greek myth of the cyclops came about after someone saw the skull of a Mammoth, on the skull the eye sockets are small holes on the side but there is a big opening on the front of the skull which is the nasal cavity.  I think most myths have similar beginnings.