MYTHOPEDIA

From acclaimed folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor an enchanting collection of the ancient myths that emerged out of the wonders and disasters of the natural worldMythopedia is a fun fact filled A Z treasury of myths inspired by natural events Bringing together fifty legends from antiquity to the present this delightfully entertaining book takes you around the world to explore sunken kingdoms and lost cities accursed mountains and treacherous terrains and lethal lakes and singing sand dunes explaining the historical background and latest science underlying each tale As soon as humans invented language they told stories to explain mysterious things they observed around them on land in the seas and in the skies Even though these tales are expressed in poetic or supernatural language they contain surprisingly accurate insights and even eyewitness descriptions of catastrophic events millennia ago Drawing on her unique insights as a pioneer in the exciting new field of geomythology Adrienne Mayor describes how cultural memories of tsunamis volcanic disasters and other massive geological events can reach back thousands of years as the stories were preserved elaborated told and retold across generations She shows how geomythology is expanding our unde