From Fiji to France to Central Australia, stories abound of lands lost beneath the sea. Some are likely founded on millennia-old memories of coastal submergence, offering us clues today.
A mythical creature born of a misinterpreted fossil?
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His life’s work was asserting the humanity and history of the Bantu people, while proposing that the soul was able to bring knowledge of the past and of the future into the present.
Understandings of truth may be found in the Muses’ words.
Jacopo Tintoretto's The Muses/Wikpedia
Is making sense of a story more important than getting at its truth? Looking at the treatment of myth in ancient Greece may help us navigate what is true, and whether that matters.
Many books, like ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ contain symbolism.
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Enheduanna’s name means ‘Ornament of Heaven’. She wrote hymns and myths more than 4000 years ago, studied the stars and yet is almost entirely unknown in the present day.
Jason Momoa as Aquaman in the forthcoming film.
IMDB
An expert argues our connection with these figures is longstanding. They are embedded in our myths and help us explore deeper questions about being human.
Giovanni Lanfranco’s Norandino and Lucina Discovered by the Ogre (1624): in many societies giants were long part of received wisdom.
Wikimedia Commons
Tales of giants can be found around the world - in Wales, in Australia, and the Pacific Islands. They helped people explain the sometimes cataclysmic changes to the environment they saw around them.
Even if mermaids aren’t real, they’ll likely feature in human stories for many years to come. Very few mythical creatures are found in so many diverse cultures, across so many years without changing.
An 1894 image of Lambton fighting the worm from the book More English Fairy Tales.
Wikimedia Commons
A monstrous worm that features in English mythology shares remarkable similarities with the watery serpents of Indigenous stories.
The “Burney Relief,” which is believed to represent either Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, or her older sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the underworld (c. 19th or 18th century BC)
BabelStone
Sex was central to life in ancient Mesopotamia. And the authors of Sumerian love poetry, depicting the exploits of divine couples, showed a wealth of practical knowledge about the stages of female sexual arousal.