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Some parents tell their children myths at bedtime and most others read modern children’s literature to their little ones. I suspect that most are not assigning much meaning to the myths they recount and the readers are using the stories as sleep aids versus morality lessons. At best, the parents might think the stories and myths are simply a form of entertainment.

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But like any proper bedtime story, A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong does a few things that all adults, not just parents, should pay heed to: she shows us how myths have helped create fuller, more complete lives in the past, that we are wrong to ignore myths, and implores us to create and discover myths that will give our lives meaning today.

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Armstrong wisely begins like many stories, at the beginning, by asking the question:  what is myth? She gives definitions using simple, concise language - that myths can be a “counter-narrative that enables us to come to terms with mortality” and to “enable us to place our lives in a larger setting”.  In effect, Armstrong argues, myths are about human experience and how we can live complete lives but we’ve changed the meaning today to have it mean simply an untrue story.

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Starting in Paleolithic times, Armstrong condenses 20 thousand years to 149 pages (no mean feat) and explains the origins of humankind’s creation and use of myths. She extrapolates from the scantest earliest evidence of Neanderthal and early homo-sapiens physical remnants such as the cave paintings at Lascaux, and argues for how myths were seen and interpreted in earliest humans to how they are seen today. She necessarily uses words such as ‘probably’ and ‘almost certainly’ which softens the arguments but the examples feel sound.

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Armstrong details how the great revolutions of our existence, from hunting and gathering to farming to city building to the development of the “golden rule” (c. 800 to 200 BCE) to just before our modern age (c. 1500 CE) have shaped myths, and shows how myths changed to meet the new psychological and physical realities of life in each era and still “enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting” and “come to terms with mortality”. Myths were not wholly rational but they weren’t designed to be; they were used as guides to change.

The criticism of earlier wishy washy language fades as Armstrong moves through the ages. Naturally, the more firm the evidence, the steadier the ground for explaining how people saw themselves and their story telling. A slightly more opaque and scholarly tone creeps into the book as more modern concepts of “being” arise, causing a breakdown with the earlier, more simple language used.

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Another criticism is that Armstrong relies on “western” myths and we don’t hear much about, for example, African or Native American myths, but the shortness of the book and perhaps Armstrong’s background as a former nun in a Christian, western setting makes it harder to add. To her credit she does acknowledge the shortcoming in one chapter.

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Armstrong begins her last chapter “The Great Transformation” with the statement that we have been creating a change in civilization that is unprecedented in human history. This latest age (starting c. 1500) is founded on the replication of goods and economic reinvestment and has been so successful that we have focused almost entirely on the rational (logical or scientific thinking) that our psychological needs are being neglected. Yet our need to place ourselves in the universe and give meaning to our lives cannot wholly be replaced by logic and science because logic doesn’t and shouldn’t answer the question why.

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Armstrong argues that we need myths to again tell us why or at least tell us how to authentically live with the modern knowledge we have. The despair in modern economies needs myth to explain what is happening in people’s lives. The superficial nature of many social media offerings tells us that we are often silent and solitary people, focused simply on the how but we need meaning.

Armstrong realizes that storytelling, right from the start of our cave dwelling ancestors, was a method to impart meaning to people’s lives and she implores the artists and writers and other creators to become the mythmakers and guides in today’s world, to allow humans to once again “enable us to place ourselves in a larger setting.”