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Archaeomythology, archeoastronomy, medical archeology, and geomythology have all gradually transformed what was once a one-dimensional wall between science and myth into a multi-dimensional window that allows scientific principles, recorded history, human imagination, and cultural identity to exchange freely between modern and ancient mankind.
This free and fearless exchange of the modern and the ancient in order to better understand the nature of truth is like exploring a new dimension of living memories rather than merely visiting an old museum of dead artifacts.
Opening the window between science and myth is like first drawing an accurate factual outline in black and white, and then suddenly discovering an unlimited palette of new colors, tones and hues with which to articulate a deeper identity.
The courage of the scientific community to examine myth as a new alternative source in the ongoing search for truth contradicts our modern attitudes towards myth. But for many of us, our outright rejection of myth is our way of being scientific and safely segregated from the ignorance and backwardness of our ancestors.
Declaring something a myth is not a very kind expression. A deep cynicism, or even a mockery of what we judge to be absurd beliefs, especially those beliefs that emanate from an ancient culture. Like so much in our world of polarizing ideological conflict, we are sadly becoming conditioned to our own narrow reality and the conditioned reflex to judge anything outside of that reality.
But for the new scientists of geomythology, archeoastronomy, and the like, declaring something a myth implies neither the truth nor the falseness of an ancient story. This is because scientists understand, that for ancient cultures, a myth was by definition considered true in that it embodied that particular culture’s way of looking at the world and making sense of the world in that time.
Engaging myth is in direct opposition to our very popular, very simple and very judgmental view that myths are always false by definition. Our natural reflex is to reject myth as an impossibility. The reflex of new science is to embrace myth as a mystery.
In this episode of The Question Community podcast, you will hear highlights from Frederick Tamagi’s presentation on Science & Myth III as well as the music of Joel Pearson.