There are many stories that describe the beliefs of ancient peoples. Mythology is the rich collection of tales from different cultures about how the world was created and why certain things happen. Today the word myth is often used to describe something that is made up. But myths are much more than pure fiction. They tell of gods or other supreme beings, heroes, and events that are, or were at one time, believed to be true.

Background

Thousands of years ago, humankind did not have the sciences (such as astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry) to help them understand life. They did not know why the sun rises each morning, why the moon changes shapes, or why the seasons change. Ancient peoples witnessed sickness, death, and natural disasters, but they did not understand what caused them.

To explain the world around them, groups of people came up with their own accounts about nature and life. These stories, sometimes quite imaginative, were usually not written down. Instead, they were part of an oral tradition, meaning they were passed from one generation to another through telling stories. Upon hearing the explanations, people accepted them as the truth. In this way, myths became beliefs. It is for this reason that mythology is closely associated with religion.

The legends

Since each group of people developed their own explanations, mythology differs from culture to culture. But all myths try to answer basic questions such as, how was the world created? How did life on Earth begin? Why is there evil in the world?

For example, when it came to explaining the origins of the Earth, the Polynesians, a Pacific islands people, believed a supreme god they called Io formed the world out of water and darkness. People living in the cold lands of what is now northern Europe believed that the mist was created first. According to the ancient Scandinavian tradition, the mist flowed through 12 rivers and froze, filling the emptiness of the world with many layers of ice, which was later melted by a warm wind. Other cultures, including the Arapaho of North America as well as civilizations in Egypt and Japan, thought of humans as descendants of a sun god.

To explain the origin of the human race, an ancient story from India described a being called the Self in the shape of a man. When the Self became lonely, it divided into two parts, creating man and woman. Their children became the human race. Hundreds of years earlier, the Sumerians, a Middle Eastern people, had developed their account of how human life began. They explained that the god of the waters told his mother to take bits of clay and mold them into the shapes of men and women. These are only a sample of a great variety of myths about the beginnings of human life.

The origins of the world's evils were also elaborately explained by each cultural group. For example, the ancient Greeks believed that Pandora, the first woman on Earth, had opened a box filled with all kinds of miseries and released them on the world. Myths also accounted for extraordinary events in everyday life. For example, many cultures told of a superman, someone with great powers who overcame many obstacles. Perhaps the best known of these myths is the story of the 12 labors, or feats, of the brave Greek warrior Heracles.

Influence

Although most myths were not recorded, the Greeks wrote about them in poems and dramas. The oldest of these writing are The Iliad and The Odyssey, epic poems from the 9th or 8th century BC. Attributed to the poet Homer, these sources focus on events surrounding the Trojan War. They also tell of the activities of the gods, ruled by the powerful Zeus. Myths about the Greek gods describe their births, victories over monsters or rivals, and special powers. The Greeks viewed their myths as divine or timeless truths. These truths influenced not only literature, but the thoughts of Greek philosophers as well.

Later, the Romans adopted Greek myths, assuming them as their own. However, they changed the names of many gods and goddesses. The great Roman poet Ovid preserved these myths in his works. The stories became the source of poetry, drama, paintings, and other works of art that are familiar to people in Europe and the Americas.

Germanic mythology was preserved in the Eddas, two 13th-century books compiled by an Icelandic historian named Snorri Sturluson.