Myth and history represent alternative ways of looking at the past. Defining history is hardly easier than defining myth, but a historical approach necessarily involves both establishing a chronological framework for events and comparing and contrasting rival traditions in order to produce a coherent account. The latter process, in particular, requires the presence of writing in order that conflicting versions of the past may be recorded and evaluated. Where writing is absent, or where literacy is restricted, traditions embedded in myths through oral transmission may constitute the principal sources of authority for the past. Hence, myths may be cited when a situation in the present is materially affected by what version of the past is accepted. For instance, if a dispute arises among the Iatmul of Papua New Guinea over the rights of different clans to possess land, the contending parties take part in oral contests involving the recitation of long lists of mythological names and other details from the myths. Since each clan’s view of the mythic past has implications for the ownership of estates by persons living in the present, victory in these contests is a matter of direct practical importance to the participants.
Even in societies where literacy is widespread and where a considerable body of professional historians is at work, it may still be the case that a majority of the population form their views of the past on the basis of inherited mythlike traditions. Examples from the 20th century in Europe would be the polarized communities (Protestant and Roman Catholic) of Northern Ireland, or pro- and anti-Communist sympathizers in Greece. In the former case, the two communities have different and irreconcilable pictures of the events related to the partition of Ireland. In the latter case, the course of the civil war (after the end of World War II) is viewed quite differently by the two groups. These rival traditions may be described as mythlike because they are narratives with a strong validating function—the function of justifying current enmities and current loyalties—and they are believed with a quasi-religious faith against which objective historical testing is all but powerless.
Finally, similarities to myths may be present even in the work of those who are justifiably described as historians. A clear instance of this is the ancient Greek writer Herodotus, the so-called “father of history.” He had the radically original idea of writing an account of the struggle between the Greek world and its “barbarian” neighbours during the Persian Wars, an account that combined and evaluated a range of disparate and often conflicting pieces of information. On these grounds he should certainly be described as a historian. Yet, his work is full of themes and story patterns that also occur in Greek myths—for example, transgression against the gods leads to retribution; again, people who live at the margins of the Greek world are imagined as having customs that are the exact inverse of their Greek equivalents. In the work of Herodotus there is no incompatibility between myth and history; both historical events and the patterns into which such happenings are perceived as falling form part of his overall enterprise: namely, to conduct an inquiry (the meaning of the Greek word historia) into the past. As with the distinction between myth and science, then, that between myth and history is by no means a straightforward one. Major types of myth Myths of origin
Cosmogony and creation myth are used as synonyms, yet properly speaking, cosmogony is a preferable term because it refers to the origin of the world in a neutral fashion, whereas creation myth implies a creator and something created, an implication unsuited to a number of myths that, for example, speak of the origin of the world as a growth or emanation, rather than an act. Even the term origin should be used with caution for cosmogonic events (as well as for other myths purporting to describe the beginning of things), because the origin of the world hardly ever seems the focal point of a mythological narrative—as a mythological narrative is not a matter of inquiry into the first cause of things. Instead, cosmogonic myths are concerned with origins in the sense of the foundation or validity of the world as it is. Creation stories in both primitive and advanced cultures frequently speak of the act of creation as a fashioning of the earth out of raw material that was already present. In African cosmogonies, especially, the earth is preexistent. A creation out of nothing occurs as a theme much less frequently, for all that such creation myths are more satisfying to the philosophical mind. Philosophical questions, however, are less important in the justificatory systems set up by myth.
Water, though important everywhere as a source of life and image of endless potentiality, has a special role in Asia and North America, where the creator (often an animal) is assisted by another figure, who dives for earth in the primordial ocean. The earth-diver helper sometimes develops into an opponent, or Satan-like character, in other areas—e.g., those touched by Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian dualistic religion. Though hardly an explanation in the ordinary sense of the word, the theme accounts for the fact that evil is constitutive of the cosmos without holding the creator responsible for it. Other widely diffused motifs are: the cosmogonic egg, found in the Pacific world, parts of Europe and southern Asia (e.g., in Hinduism); the world parents (usually in the image of sky and earth); and creation through sacrifice or through a primordial battle. Creation through the word of the creator also occurs outside the biblical account (in Polynesia).
Cosmogony sets the pattern for everything else in most traditions; other myths are related to it or derived from it. Because human beings’ inhabitable world, the cosmos, is the crucial issue, no matter how various the contents may be and how different from one period to another, cosmogony probably is the clearest expression of humanity’s basic mythological propensity. All cosmogonic accounts have certain formal features in common. They speak of irreconcilable opposites (e.g., heaven and earth, darkness and light) and, at the same time, of events or things totally outside the common range of perception and reason (e.g., a “time” in which heaven and earth were not yet separated and darkness and light intermingled). In other words, the basic ingredients of the human world and its orientation are presupposed yet are realized, constituted, or brought about anew in the narration. The narrative can arrive at such a reconstitution only by transcending the limits of ordinary perception and reason.
The origin of human beings is usually linked immediately to the cosmogony. Humans, for instance, are placed on the earth by God, or in some other way their origin is from heaven. Nevertheless, it is only in mythologies influenced by philosophical reflections that the place of humans becomes the conspicuous centre of the cosmogony (e.g., Pythagoreanism, a Greek mystical philosophical system; Orphism, a Greek mystical religious movement; gnosticism, a Christian dualistic and esoteric movement; and Tantrism, a Hindu and Buddhist esoteric meditation system). Humans are sometimes said to have ascended from the depths of the earth (as with the Zuni, an American Indian people) or from a certain rock or tree of cultic significance. These images are often related to the idea of a realm of ancestors as the origin of newborn children. Humans are also said to be fashioned from the dust of the ground (as in Genesis) or from a mixture of clay and blood (as in the Babylonian creation myth). In all cases, however, humans have a particular place (because of their duties to the gods, because of their limitations, or even because of their gifts), even though—especially in many hunters’ civilizations (e.g., the African San peoples and many North American Indian tribes)—the harmony of humanity and other forms of nature is emphasized.