What is a Myth?
A simple definition of a myth is ‘a story handed down through history, often through oral tradition, that explains or gives value to the unknown’. Myths are often stories told by a particular people such as Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and others. They are especially linked to religious beliefs and rituals. Rituals were believed to invoke a type of magic that would aid the growth of crops, insure success in war, help achieve prosperity or make choices and promote stability in the land. If nothing else, when people thought that the gods favored a venture, they approached it with a positive attitude that in itself sometimes insured success. Songs, poems, and stories help to explain how people acquired basic things like simple speech, fire, grain, wine, oil, honey, agriculture, metalwork, and other skills and arts. A myth is an attempt to explain other things as well, such as a certain custom or practice of a human society (for example, a religious rite), or a natural process, like
A myth is a story with a purpose. It tries to explain the way the world is. Myths also try to explain the relationship between gods and humans. Even though the events in a myth are usually impossible, they try to send a message that has an important social or religious meaning. People have always tried to figure out common questions like who made the universe or questions like what causes a storm. Religion, gods, and myths were created when people tried to make sense out of these questions. For early people myths were like science because they explain how things work. They also explained other questions that are now answered through modern science.
