Why every culture invented a different god for the same sky

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 26 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Humans have always looked at the same stars and seen different faces. From dysfunctional Greek deities to doomed Norse figures, mythology serves as a universal human toolkit for making sense of a chaotic universe. It is not just fiction; it is how civilizations map their values onto reality.

At its core, mythology functions as 'the science of a pre-scientific age.' Before modern physics and biology could explain the world, humans used myths to account for natural phenomena like thunder, the cycle of the moon, or why certain animals possess specific traits. By framing these events within sacred tales, cultures provided a sense of order and meaning to an otherwise unpredictable existence.

The term mythology derives from 'mythos' (story-of-the-people) and 'logos' (word), signifying that these are the spoken stories of a people. These narratives explore the deepest facets of the human condition: the origin of suffering, the nature of good and evil, and the transition between life and death. They serve as cultural repositories for values, explaining why specific rituals began and why they persist into the present day.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung suggested that myth is a necessary component of the human psyche, an essential mechanism for finding order in chaos. Evidence of these belief structures predates written language, appearing in prehistoric cave paintings, stone etchings, and monuments. While different cultures produce wildly different archetypes—such as the hungry gods of the Aztecs or the super-human heroes of Greece—the underlying purpose remains constant: to explain where we came from and why things happen as they do.

According to researchers Maria Leach and Jerome Fried, a myth is specifically characterised as a narrative framed as historical events from an earlier era. This distinction is key; myths are not merely 'stories' in the modern sense, but foundational truths about cosmological and supernatural traditions that define a civilization's identity.

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