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 world

Mythopedia 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 understanding of our planet's history over eons, revealing the human desire to explain nature and weave imaginative stories intertwined with keen observation, rational speculation, and memory.

With captivating drawings by Michele Angel, Mythopedia is a compendium of many marvels, from the Hindu monkey god Hanuman and his army of bridge-building primates to the terrifying sand demon Shensha shen of China, the gnawing glaciers of Austria, and the vengeful fish-headed snake god Nyami Nyami of Africa's Zambezi River.


• Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design Adrienne Mayor is the author of many books, including The Poison King, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and The Amazons (both Princeton). She is a research scholar in classics and the history of science at Stanford University. Michele M. Angel is an award-winning watercolorist, illustrator, and graphic designer. "Mythopedia offers deep and enthralling insights into the many ways that human cultures have tried to make sense of geologic phenomena. The stories-wild, weird, and wise-reveal that our ancestors understood the power of nature and challenge our 'modern' belief that we humans are now in charge."-Marcia Bjornerud, author of Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks "This engaging and accessible volume is appropriate for laypeople and scholars of interdisciplinary fields connecting anthropology, disaster studies, folklore, science, and history." "Folklorist and historian Mayor, author of the National Book Award finalist The Poison King, draws on the new field of geomythology to explain the historical background and science behind 53 legends and myths of the earth. . . . A fascinating catalog of ancient cultures and unique geological events." "I can't say that Mythopedia deepened my relationship to the land, but it has shaken and shifted it like so many toads in a tornado."---Dan Piepenbring, Harper's "[A] captivating volume. . . . Written with wit and erudition, this delights."