Earthquakes, volcanic eruption, eclipses, meteor showers, and many other natural phenomena have always been part of life on Earth. In ancient cultures that predated science, such events were often memorialized in myths and legends. There is a growing body of research that strives to connect those ancient stories with the real natural events that inspired them. Folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor has put together a fascinating short compendium of such insights with Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore, from dry quicksand and rains of frogs to burning lakes, paleoburrows, and Scandinavian “endless winters.”
Mayor’s work has long straddled multiple disciplines, but one of her specialities is best described as geomythology, a term coined in 1968 by Indiana University geologist Dorothy Vitaliano, who was interested in classical legends about Atlantis and other civilizations that were lost due to natural disasters. Her interest resulted in Vitaliano’s 1973 book Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins.
Mayor herself became interested in the field when she came across Greek and Roman descriptions of fossils, and that interest expanded over the years to incorporate other examples of “folk science” in cultures around the world. Her books include The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (2009), as well as Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & the Scorpion Bombs (2022), exploring the origins of biological and chemical warfare. Her 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology, explored ancient myths and folklore about creating automation, artificial life, and AI, connecting them to the robots and other ingenious mechanical devices actually designed and built during that era.
When her editor at Princeton University Press approached her about writing a book on geomythology, she opted for an encyclopedia format, which fit perfectly into an existing Princeton series of little encyclopedias about nature. “In this case, I wasn’t going to be working with just Greek and Roman antiquity,” Mayor told Ars. “I had collected very rich files on geomyths around the world. There are even a few modern geomyths in there. You can dip into whatever you’re interested in and skip the rest. Or maybe later you’ll read the ones that didn’t seem like they would be of interest to you but they’re absolutely fascinating.”