History and Chronology of the Myth-Making Age (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from History and Chronology of the Myth-Making Age History. These legends were, down to the days of N iebuhr and the introduction of the study of Comparative Philology and Mythology, generally believed to be based, as averred by those who cited them, on the biographies of individuals. Since this new school of investigators has proved that the heroes of the Mythic Age were not living men like the leading actors in modern histories, it has come to be an almost universally accepted article of faith among those who try to portray the history of the remote past that the primi tive myths of what is called the Prehistoric Age must be looked on as inventions of later times mixed with small fragments of genuine ancient tradition. Though no one explains why men should have wasted time in their manu facture if they were useless lies, or how, if they were made up by modern authors to suit the appetite for local history in each place, they should everywhere show traces of being derived from some central and often far-distant source. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.