Myth or History? It’s a Mystery.

In ancient Greece, Mount Olympus the tallest mountain in the region, served as both part of their everyday life and as the home of their Gods and Goddesses. Did the Gods really live there? Well, if you asked the Greeks, absolutely, the Gods lived and existed there to keep an eye on mankind while remaining separate. However, if you ask someone today, the answer is more likely to be no, that it was just a reverence for both the gods and the mountain that led to that mythology. However, when we look at these ancient cultures in the at modern day, I think that we have separated things too much. When we look at the idea that the Greeks believed that their Gods were so close and within reach, we attribute it to their ignorance…but what if those stories and myths were based on something real? We often take these cultural stories of the past and ancestors for granted when we look at them superficially. We now consider them to be nothing more than explanations for natural events or even stories that are teaching some sort of lesson to the younger generation. In fact, Carl Jung felt that mythology is a necessary part of human psyche to explain the unexplainable. However, it stands to reason that many of these stories were actually based on fact and historical events, which over time became “mythologized” since the people telling this history became so separated from the event. This part of my blog will be very active as I explore the myths of different cultures, finding their similarities as well as any basis in history they might hold.

 

Let’s take for example the Late Bronze Age city of Troy. For many years researchers and historians considered it to be nothing more than an mythological city created entirely by Homer for his story “The Illiad”. For at least 3000 years Troy existed as nothing more than an idea. A story about a war over a woman, that lasted for over 10 years until they were tricked and overtaken by the Greek army. Even to Homer the story of Troy was ancient history, having taken place over 1000 years before Homer’s time. It had been passed down for generations, and by Homer’s time became nothing more than a story for him to tell. By the way many scholars believe there was no single person who was “Homer”, but many attribute these stories to a group of traveling poets that lived sometime during the 12th to 8th century BCE. Moving into more modern times, no one actually believed Troy existed, it was considered nothing more than a legend, much like Atlantis today. However, the first generation of Ancient Civilization researchers started to find evidence to the contrary. In 1822, a Scottish journalist proposed where he felt Troy lie, and by the late 1800’s the location was confirmed by extensive excavations of the location in Turkey.

 

Since we found Troy, how can we say with certainty that no other legendary or mythological locations existed? We can’t. More research needs to be done into these stories to parse out what pieces might have been true history. I think that we are missing out on some very valuable information on history by disregarding these myths as nothing more than stories, at least some of them must be based on true events…history hidden in cultural stories. Think again about Atlantis. Today, it is nothing more than a story about a wonderful mythological continent that was incredibly powerful, that suddenly fell into the ocean after catastrophe. We do not have any physical evidence, but instead must rely on stories and recounted information from Plato. I’m not saying that Atlantis is/was 100% real, what I AM saying is that the more we look into these ideas and concepts, the more likely it becomes that we find places like Troy. That could possibly be the most valuable thing we could do. Learning from history so that it is not repeated should be a valuable idea, though even that is arguable.

 

Following that logic, we need to look at what these “stories” talk about. Not only do some of these myths explain creation and other natural events, but there are incredibly strong similarities in the stories across the world. Take for example the story of the great flood. It is covered in the Christian bible, but also in other mythologies around the world. It has been brought up by so many civilizations covering the same time period, to the point where some historical evidence of the flood has been found in several locations throughout the world. As we look at other myths about the world, what if some of these other ones are also true? This is where ancient astronaut theory comes into play. If you look across different civilizations and their polytheistic gods, there are similarities in qualities between the different deities representing the same aspects. There is a reason for this, past solely human nature and desire to explain things. The strong similarities across the world leads to the idea that there might have actually been at least one group (if not a few) of individuals that were influencing the culture of early man.

 

Using this part of the blog, I strive to explore these 2 points. Mythology houses some of the lost history of our world and peoples, and that there were real life “Gods” that influenced multiple early civilizations, which were revered by early man. I’m not necessarily pushing the idea that there was just one or two groups, that were influencing early civilizations. There were likely multiple (3 to perhaps 5?). I’m also not necessarily saying that they were Extraterrestrial, though that would be the easiest and most exciting explanation. It is possible that in the rise and fall of civilizations of man, that some people retained the “old” knowledge and passed it to the less knowledgeable masses…though that is a different post all together!

 

If any of this type of information and theory sounds interesting to you, make sure to keep an eye here for my research and musings!