On Myth and Ancient History
In 2026, I think it's worth standing back and taking stock of the fact that there's been a massive shift in our understanding of mythology over this past decade.
Just one decade ago it was considered a difficult position to suggest oral traditions could have preserved a myths for 7000+ years, let alone that these myths could contain factual historical information from this period. This was truly considered utterly implausible and silly just ten years ago.
The oldest known myths up until this point were Sumerian tablets dating back about 6000 years, and these stories don't show any immediate connection to known events.
Then, in 2016, a paper was published showing that Aboriginal myths that spoke of changing coastlines happened to reflect changing coastlines 7000 years ago.
This caught a few headlines and was sort of interesting, but as a bit of a one off case wasn't consequential. However, since then there has been a bit of a watershed in terms of the papers and scientific journal articles that have validated similar examples. In the majority of years since 2016 another myth has been shown to relate to a very ancient historical event and at an accelerating rate, here's a list:
2016 - Aboriginal myth of coastlines shown to relate to 7000 year old coastlines
2017 - Aboriginal myth shown to relate to a 7000 year old Queensland eruption
2019 - Aboriginal myth of volcano shown to relate to a 9000 year old eruption
2022 - Five Celtic myths observed to relate to rising seas between 5000-15000 years ago
2023 - Aboriginal myth observed to relate to a land connection to Tasmania 12000 years ago
2025 - Isle of Man stories shown to relate to the island connecting to Britain 8000 years ago
2025 - Submerged walls found off France where the myth of Ys said a city used walls to hold back the seas, the walls date to approximately 8000 years ago.
There are also many myths that appear to relate to history as interesting corelations but haven't yet been published and validated, these include:
A 1983 theory that the four rivers of the Garden of Eden relate to the Euphrates, Tigris and two now dried up rivers that connected to them which were last fully active 7000 years ago, Juris Zarins’s Persian Gulf hypothesis.
A Welsh myth of Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr, which describes a time when the Irish Sea was two rivers that could be crossed. This was the case 16,000 years ago.
The Greek myth of Pheaton driving the chariot of the sun and causing Africa to become hotter describes a similar event to the sudden end of the African Humid Period 8000 years ago.
A 2020 article on the Aboriginal myth of Budj Bim aligning to the events of a 37,000 year old eruption.
Finds from the Tas Tepeler which show continuity with later sculptures and motifs from Egypt and Mesopotamia, such as the statue of Min, Wajet and the Master of Animals motif. The Tas Tepeler are 12,000 years old, 9000 years before these later artifacts were created.
-
Quietly over the last decade a wealth of mythic correlations to ancient history have been validated, and others which haven't yet been published but at least corelate with ancient events.
If taken seriously, any one of these published examples ought to have overturned a deeply rooted assumption that perseveres as assumptions so, that myths that talk of a very ancient past tend to be made-up accounts. We have many myths that now prove the contrary, instead, it may be more prudent to assume that myths tend to record history.
This is of course how change happens, our positions reflect our societal norms and no one remembers strongly holding a position that oral history cannot last more than 7000 years just 10 years ago, as such as position is now deemed obviously undeniable and people forget. But the default assumption that myths should be considered false stories somehow still perpetuates.
The myths of Atlantis, Zep Tepe, the Titans, the Aesir and many others have been dismissed as inconceivable of historical basis, partly for the reason that is was inconceivable that oral history dating back 7000+ years could have remained in been preserved, but there's no longer a clear implausibility to such oral accounts. They have also been dismissed for containing supernatural elements and gods, but all the above myths also contain supernatural elements, framing the record of real events, Likewise the ancient stories of Sumer were assumed to be stories because a century ago up until this decade it was not considered common for myth to preserve ancient history, but this has now been shown to be very plausible inviting a reconsideration. Lastly, the historian Sanchuniathon presents many of the Greek gods not as gods but as kings in his detailed Phoenician History. In 2024, Eleftheria Pappa published an article which made the case that Sanchuniathon's work may have been unjustly labelled as confabulation, showing that his recorded events that we have records for are accurate.
-
Perhaps a growing interest online inquestioning the story of our ancient past and questioning how myths may relate to history is reflective of the fact thar our assumptions on how far back oral history can preserve information has quietly been shifting.
At some point this growing body of research of connections between myths and ancient history might demand a wider change in our default assumptions on myths and their purpose, and enable the possible overlaps between myth and history to become a more acceptable area of historical discussion, and even a serious and active area of academic research.
