Customer Reviews

When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth

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In this fascinating book, the Barbers argue that myths carry important information about real events, and that sometimes that information can survive intact for thousands of years. As their starting point, the authors describe the Klamath Tribe's myth of a great battle betwen the Chief of the Above World and the Chief of the Below World, a legend that had been handed down for hundreds of generations and that accurately describes the eruption of Mount Mazama (now Crater Lake)--a cataclysm that took place nearly 8,000 years ago!

It turns out that many famous "monsters" of history were not really monsters at all--the stories of Medusa and the Gorgons, of Cyclops, of the battle between the gods and the Titans, may have started out as descriptions of devastating volcanic eruptions. The "message in the myth" may have originally been something along the lines of "stay away from Mount Gorgon--her hair of snakes (treacherous lava flows) can turn things to stone!" Over the years, as people migrated away from the volcano that gave rise to the myth, the mountain turned into an anthropomorphic monster with a bad hairdo and the power to turn her hapless victims into statues.

Time and again, the authors remind us that there may be deep messages encoded in the myths--ancient societies observed and understood the precession of the equinoxes (a cycle that takes nearly 26,000 years to complete), and many of the ancient myths about gods casting down monsters and the cycles of history can be explained by reference to this predictable (but hard to observe) change in the heavens.

"When They Severed Earth from Sky" is well-written, lively and thought-provoking. It makes me wonder whether someday anthropologists will be able to use the principles that the Barbers described to tease out and recover the "ur-myths" that underlay the seemingly impenetrable symbolism of prehistoric peoples. Perhaps not--some things are no doubt lost forever in the mists of time. Still, the message sometimes gets through, even after thousands of years--and what an interesting message it is!

Our literate age has skewed our view of ancient legends, according to the Barbers. We have seen stories we venerated proven false and misleading. What credence, then, can we give to "primitive" tales orally transmitted down the generations" It seems there is much substance to be found in these "obsolete" myths. They often reflect real events, which we can understand and verify if we learn how to look properly. The Barbers open with an occurrence on North America's West Coast dated seven millennia ago. Crater Lake is a delightful view today. In 1865 an investigator learned from the Klamath Indians that two deities, clashing over the fate of a woman, filled the sky with ash and smoke accompanied by thunder and lightning. The battle's residue was a mighty caldera, later filled with water, which the Klamath people will not enter. How did a volcanic eruption remain in folk memory so long?

The authors contend that natural events are kept active in human memory for long periods by the process of story telling. The "narrative imperative" is an essential product of human evolution. As primates, we are group dwellers who have learned to enhance social cohesion through communication. Story telling reinforces chosen events and people related to them in memory. While the actual circumstances may not be literally true as related many generations later, the essence of the event will be retained. Our memories are selective, say the Barbers, and stories held important rank higher in priority than even recent, but less significant, occurrences. This is the reason many legends, from many peoples bear an almost uncanny similarity. They reflect similar, often violent events - volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis figure large in their origins. Natural events, integrated with accounts of people's lives, become the foundation of social history. They relate the tales of heroes [and heroines], gods and rulers. Unravelling the threads woven into the account of the original event isn't an easy task, but the Barbers explain how it has been done. Today's technology is of vast help, since reliable dating is now a mainstay in myth analysis.

The Barbers make clever use of terms in presenting their ideas. The brain, they say, relies on "Redundancy Strategy" which can be countered by the "Silence Principle". In effect, the mind seeks things to remember. Whatever isn't used is cast away. The "Movie Construct" is a method of deriving the origins of stories from what is known now. Filling in the missing details becomes an exercise of using known experiences or simply fabricating. A related concept is the "Adversary Principle". The persistent story of Mount Mazama creating Crater Lake is a good example. People learning the lake was created by two deities in a dispute is both logical and meaningful in oral traditions. Time and distance lead to the "Fogging Effect" in which what occurs and what is remembered and passed on as stories may be drastically different. If the student understands how this works in the mind, the fog may be brushed aside to reveal the original event. Keeping the terms straight is easy, since the authors provide an Appendix, which lists the Index of Myth Principles.

Although the Bibliography fails to list a single work in cognitive science, the authors' proposals merit attention. The details of how the brain holds and processes the information about significant events is less important than recognising that it does so. Once obtained, particularly with group memory acting to buttress retention, the foundation for oral history is firmly in place. The authors' argument to avoid thoughtless dismissal of myths is sound. They demonstrate the way events are mythologised in a way both informative and entertaining. A useful and welcome book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I have been a fan of Elizabeth Wayland Barber since The Mummies of Urumchi. This time with her husband Paul, she has again written an eminently readable and enlightening book. Together they cast light on the messages passed down to us in myths. We have so lost touch with the point of view of people in the preliterate past that we have largely discarded their earnest efforts to relay what they deemed important information. The Barbers, through pains-taking research and brilliant insights, have been able to discover the rules that governed the conservation of knowledge in the verbal "pipeline". They find the "camera angle" of the ancients, what they saw and how they would have interpreted it. This has enabled them to start to decode what many myths were meant to convey. It is an exciting beginning. I am sure that we will soon be hearing of many more secrets being deciphered using their tools.

I remember years ago reading an article about excavations at Mycenae uncovering a multitude of dams trying to keep flooding under control. Apparently after one dam was built, the water came through in two other places. When those were dammed, more flooding started elsewhere, resulting in more dams, etc. The author of the article pointed out that the Greek word for water was Hydra -- the same as the multi-headed monster that sprang two new heads for each one Herakles chopped off in the ancient story.

This book examines the same phenomenon across diverse cultures and time periods. Peeling back layers of time and distance, the authors search for, and reveal, the kernels of truth behind the legends. And what a wonderful journey they share! Full of asides (frustratingly tossed away without comment at times) and journeys that turn back upon themselves, this is a book you will savor and linger over.

Many of the thoughts will cause you to turn back pages to reconnect the dots yourself as they walk you through the processes of their evaulation. This will enjoy a fond place on your bookshelf among the favorites you treasure.

Incidentally, Ms. Barber's other works ("Women's Work" and "The Mummies of Urumchi") both share the same chatty style and interesting asides. Check them out. You'll see what I mean.

If you have struggled to undertand mythology or just plain wondered what it is all about, then look no further this is the book to read. If you think you already know what mythology is, you may be in for a surprise.

Mythology is what you get when one generation needs to pass on important information to the next generation using only verbal transmission. No books, no internet, no writing - only stories stored in memory.

Now try to imagine all the different ways that the stories could get modified and distorted over one thousands years of reciting.

That is what the authors have done, through years of research and rigorous analysis they have reconstructed the origins of many myths. The process and methods that they have devised will serve as a foundation for future inquiry.

This book shows what happens when experts in humanities merge their knowledge with what is often called "the hard sciences". The resulting consilience is truly enlightened.

Also worth noting, this book essentially ends the speculation begun by Julian James in "Origin of Consciousness..." it also makes sense of Freud's Oedipus complex and Jung's nonsense.

Other reviewers have done a fantastic job of praising this book, so I don't feel I need to wax lengthily about its merits. Merely, with only six reviews (to date) I felt I had to weigh in and say how remarkable this book is. Truly among the best non-fiction I've read this millennium; I ponder the implications of the authors' thesis all the time. Do not hesitate to pick this up. It's a page turner.

This is a stunningly brilliant and important book. It totally revolutionizes our understanding of what myth really is, as well as our understanding of prehistory and ancient history. It is also written in clear language. (It also has relevance for understanding how the authors of the Old Testament encapsulated history into stories of patriarchs and other primordial figures in the Book of Genesis.) The book sets out about 40 "rules" or "principles" for determining how myths were developed by preliterate societies to encapsulate observations about nature and memories of important historical events in a format that could be easily remembered and passed down from generation to generation (before and without books or computers!). The book then shows how the original "stories" became modified (or, "mythologized") once the original events or stories the myths were intended to memorialize were forgotten. This book studded with brilliant insights. For 17 or 18 bucks, you couldn't do better.

This is a fascinating and irritating book which explores the etiology, or rather the historiography of the etiology of folklore to support the authors' thesis that myth contains kernels of real information about past events which may be discovered through a meticulous examination of its particular components. The creation of myth also serves as an exterior engramic counterweight to the inability of pre-literate cultures to remember events beyond the normal unaided human mental capacity.

The authors lay down an extensive list of their breezily formulated rules for interpretation, such as "The Methuselah Effect," "Centaur Syndrome," "Baby-With-the-Bathwater Reflex," "Goldilocks Principle" in a pseudo-serious fashion, then give reinforcing examples and their interpretations in quite a straight forward manner. The full Index of Myth Principles may be found on pages 245-51 preceding the excellent Bibliography. Altogether, I was very much reminded of the classes I took in law school for the rules and means of interpreting evidence, the combination of a regulated and normative artificiality and ordinary common sense elevated to a non-common standard of rigour. Despite my objections to the style of the authors' formulations, the substance of the book is substantial and fascinating, giving the interpretation of folklore a depth I have not found in other approaches to the subject.

Elizabeth Barber (professor of linguistics and archaeology) and her husband Paul (researcher with the Fowler Museum of Cultural History) has written a book about the human animal and her myths; why we have them and how they're created. And this book of theirs is one sweet creation; well-written, easy to read (more or less, anyway), and filled to the very brim with interesting facts for anyone who wants to learn more about human nature and our ways of explaining the world we live in.

The premise used for their argument is - shortly - that historical myths never were meant to be read as "fiction", at least not the way contemporary man sees fiction. Instead, myths were carriers of actual events and observations, especially in societies where a written language had not yet been developed or was only used by a small group of people with exclusive commitments. Natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions and flooding, were kept fresh in the peoples' memories throughout the centuries by the explanations saying that divine battles and interventions were the cause; and even though theses causes might not have been correct the people were nonetheless able to understand and above all remember.

The Barbers' arguments are both well formulated and thought-out, and throughout the entire book so-called "Myth Principles" appear: sections where the authors describe rules and regulations for how myths are created, how they evolve and change over the years, why people choose to believe in them, and much more.

It's easy for modern people to ridicule the ideas of ancient cultures, simply because their worldviews were so fundamentally different to ours. But, the Barbers point out; this way of looking at history is both wrong and unfair, since ancient cultures simply applied their own way of reasoning to their world and phenomena that today are easily explained due to our vast scientific knowledge. And ancient people were a whole lot smarter than most people think. Or as the Barbers put it: "We do well not to underestimate the intelligence and knowledge of our remote ancestors."

However, this book is not only about ancient days. The same methods used when studying ancient cultures may be used for studies of contemporary societies, for instance when the search is on for a scapegoat. Stories about morbid Satanists who sacrifice children and drink the blood of virgins are nothing new; fringe groups have at all times been feared by the masses. (And remember, as pointed out by the authors, once upon a time the Christians were the ones being blamed for the exact same things the Satanists go through today).

But the book has its flaws, too. The section about astronomy and astrology (where the inspiration behind the title of the book is discussed, too) feels somewhat tedious, despite the necessity of the section in order to fully understand myths related to the heavens, stars, and planets. The authors have, furthermore, a tendency to dismiss everything with mundane explanations, completely disregarding even the possibility that "something else" might be out there. From a scholarly point of view this approach might be the right one, but a 100% hardcore skeptical approach often becomes stale in the long run. And that's the case for this otherwise remarkable book.

This book is a great read for those who have interest in cultural mythologies. My American Indian ancestors passed down many creation myths, as well as stories that were intended to act as warnings and vessels of cultural information. It is wonderful to read the two authors take on the way myths are formed, and how events that actually took place are carried down through time; changing as they go into grand plays involving gods and spirits. I had never really thought of many of the perspectives the authors give on these different creations; these bits of culture that had such a central place in peoples lives so many years ago: before the written word conveyed descriptions of past events.

I highly recommend this book, and it should be read is small doses over a period of a few weeks, so that these ideas have a chance to find a lasting place in your world view.