"This book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story - for nearly 8,000 years." "We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations - although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions."--Jacket.
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| Edition | Availability |
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1
When they severed earth from sky: how the human mind shapes myth
2005, Princeton University Press
in English
0691099863 9780691099866
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2
When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth
December 28, 2004, Princeton University Press
Hardcover
in English
0691099863 9780691099866
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Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
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{{cite book|author1=E. J. W. Barber |author2=Elizabeth Wayland Barber |author3=Paul T. Barber |date=2005 |title=When they severed earth from sky |url=https://archive.org/details/whentheyseverede00barb |publication-place=Princeton, N.J |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0-691-09986-3 |lccn=2004046640 |oclc=57512941 |ol=3304294M}}