A short history of myth: What it means to be human
In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong argues that the history of humanity and myths are inseparable. Armstrong traces myths to their origins and describes how they change throughout history. As humanity moved from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a civilization, myths evolved with them. Armstrong argues that the oldest humans understood the entire world, especially nature, to be divine. Rethinking day-to-day life as a natural world alive with meaning allowed me to feel the words in Genesis and something Mr. Lincicome once said: We once walked with God, in the breezy time of day.
According to Armstrong, myths do not explain how the world was created, but they do provide a reason: “Mythology was not about theology, in the modern sense, but about human experience.” Humanity does not have the records of its origin, nor does it know where it is headed, but myths help humans cope with this struggle to find our place in the universe.
Mythology and storytelling inspire people to live “more intensely than usual, firing on all cylinders, and inhabiting the whole of humanity,” writes Armstrong. “Like poetry and music, mythology should awaken us to rapture, even in the face of death and the despair we may feel at the prospect of annihilation.” When we create anything, even today, whether a guitar lick or a drawing, we’re tapping into a creative dialogue that’s as old as time.
Armstrong’s explanation of myths as a part of human nature helped me better understand the myths I’ve studied. For example, it reshaped how I viewed The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia: I never really knew how to connect to a poem written almost four thousand years ago, but I realized that it’s not about interpreting the poem “correctly.” Instead, just by reading it, I joined an age-old conversation about the meaning of life. And that’s precisely Armstrong’s point: humans are still searching for answers to the same questions we’ve asked since the beginning.
Armstrong explicates some key symbols in mythology. For instance, height signifies divinity. Anytime a myth mentions a tree, a mountain, or the like, the reader should be drawn to the concept of divinity. Why? Because they force us to look up.
When considering height, think of mountains, ladders, and trees. For example, the Greeks had Mount Olympus; in Hebrew tradition, there’s Mount Sinai. Mountaintops are as close as humans can physically come to heaven, inspiring fear, wonder, and other emotions. In the Abrahamic creation story, the tree, planted in the center of the garden, is traditionally seen as a bridge between man and God. When Adam and Eve commit the first sin, they are expelled from the garden, away from the tree, and cut off from God’s presence.
The original humans did not distinguish between the divine and secular worlds. Instead, they interacted with the sacred world daily. The stars, moon, and sky reflected the heavens. “When they gazed at the sky—infinite, remote, and existing quite apart from their puny lives—people had a religious experience,” writes Armstrong. Such respect and awe for the sky led to its deification (Zeus, Jupiter, Endra, Odin, etc.). For thousands and thousands of years, trees breathed. Science today has proven as much, but science also robbed us of that amazement.
Ancient humans experienced a world where everything was divine; they walked with the divine, smelled the divine, felt the divine. Reading about a world imbued with sacred meaning helped me with my Catholic faith in 2025, and the book is worth reading for just this reason. Although we should not deify the grass and the trees as our ancestors did, we should recognize the beauty of God’s creation. The wind can sway the trees hypnotically, and the sky’s tears hit the ground to further creation—if we see it that way.
Modern life discourages such awe and wonder. We often drive to work or school on the interstate. Dull, gray concrete drags on as far as we can see. But when it rains, we hear the same sounds humans have listened to for thousands of years. We hear exactly what God made us to hear, and recognizing that can reconnect us to Him.
A Short History of Myth opens readers to the idea that humans, at their core, are storytellers. We all want to watch a good movie, read a book, and contemplate a painting, and these urges are in us for a reason that predates cave paintings. When we continue to read myths and write our own stories, we join a conversation that has existed as long as humankind. I highly recommend A Short History of Myth to anyone interested in better understanding who we are.
