Could Myths Be the Ruins of Forgotten Histories?

We tend to divide the past into two clean categories: history—the facts, the timelines, the dates we memorize in school—and mythology—the wild tales of gods, monsters, flying chariots, and talking animals. But what if this division is a lie we tell ourselves?

What if myths are not fiction, but distorted memories of a forgotten reality?

The Game of Time

Ever played Chinese Whispers?

It starts with a simple sentence. But as it passes from one person to another, something strange happens—it warps. Words get flipped, meanings twisted. Now imagine that happening over centuries, not seconds. A real event—say, a flood, a battle, a natural disaster—told over generations by word of mouth. Add some imagination, reverence, fear, and symbolism… and suddenly, a clever engineer becomes a sky god; a massive ship becomes an ark carrying all of creation.

Human tendency is to exaggerate things while passing information from one person to another.

This isn’t fantasy—it’s human nature.

History’s Shaky Foundation

We often forget that what we call “history” wasn’t always based on evidence. Take Herodotus, often called the “Father of History.” He wrote of talking animals, magical springs, and gold-digging ants the size of foxes. Was he lying? Not necessarily. He was recording what people told him—legends, oral accounts, and hearsay. His "Histories" is a blend of reportage and fable, showing how even ancient chroniclers couldn’t separate truth from tale.

So, if history itself began as storytelling… where do we draw the line?

From People to Gods

Imagine a man from 15,000 years ago witnessing someone in an advanced flying craft—a drone, say, or even a plane. How would he describe it to his tribe? He might say:

“A silver bird with fire in its belly flew through the sky. A glowing being stepped out, surrounded by light, and spoke in thunder.”

Advanced flying craft could have been exaggerated and called "a silver bird flying across the sky".

Ridiculous? Maybe. But entire religions have been built on less.

Humans exaggerate. We amplify awe into reverence. We turn fear into gods, admiration into worship. Over time, the extraordinary becomes the divine. The same may have happened with myths. What if these “gods” were simply people of a forgotten, advanced civilization, now buried under time, flood, or tectonic shift?

Myths as Glimpses of Lost Realities

Let’s look at a few myths and ask: what if they were distorted memories of real events?

1. The Great Flood

From Noah’s Ark to Manu’s boat in India, to Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh, flood myths appear across cultures. Coincidence? Or collective memory of a catastrophic event—like the melting of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age (~12,000 years ago), which caused sea levels to rise 400 feet, swallowing coastlines worldwide?

These stories may not be invented—they may be witness accounts of survivors, retold until they blurred into myth.

2. Vimanas and Flying Chariots

In ancient Indian texts like the Mahabharata, there are references to flying machines—Vimanas—that shot arrows of fire, made loud noises, and flew faster than the wind. Skeptics call it symbolism. But what if it's technological memory?

What if these “arrows of fire” were missiles?

What if Vimanas were crude descriptions of aircraft?

If such a civilization existed prehistorically and collapsed (as all do), all that remains are oral echoes, now wrapped in divine metaphors.

3. The War of the Titans

Greek myths tell of a war between the gods—the Olympians vs. the Titans. Could this be an echo of clashing civilizations?

The myth of the war of Titans could have been the clash between civilizations.

A prehistoric superpower, perhaps, fell to an emerging culture. The losers were demonized or deified (as often happens in war). With time, their technologies became magic, their leaders became gods, and their cities became Mount Olympus or Tartarus.

Even the “lightning bolt” of Zeus might not be so metaphorical—what if it was a high-energy weapon misunderstood by the survivors?

A Civilization Before Us?

Mainstream archaeology dates organized civilization to about 6,000 years ago. But discoveries like Göbekli Tepe in Turkey—built around 11,000 years ago—challenge that timeline. These megalithic structures, created before the invention of agriculture, suggest that highly organized societies existed far earlier than we believed.

Could there have been entire civilizations—urban, literate, technologically advanced—that we have no record of because time, war, and climate buried them too deep?

If they did exist, the survivors of their collapse would’ve passed stories to the next generation.

And those stories, over millennia, became our myths.

Myth Isn’t the Opposite of History. It’s an Unwritten Chapter

We assume myths are made-up. But what if they’re misremembered?

Let’s not forget: before writing, before clay tablets and papyrus, the only way to preserve memory was storytelling. And storytelling, being emotional and dramatic by nature, changes with each telling.

What we now consider exaggerated fables could have once been sincere attempts to preserve real experiences—experiences that seemed so powerful, they had to be told in metaphor.

What we now consider exaggerated fables could have once been sincere attempts to preserve real experiences also known as histories.

The Cost of Dismissing Myths

By calling myths “untrue,” we may be discarding humanity’s earliest attempts at recording history. In doing so, we might also be ignoring warnings—about floods, wars, cosmic events, or moral collapses.

What if myths are like dreams: symbolic, confusing, but rooted in something real?

What if the tales of Atlantis, Lemuria, or even the Garden of Eden are not fantasies—but distorted memories of real places and peoples, told by those who survived their fall?

A Truth Buried in Metaphor

We may never know where history ends and myth begins, but maybe that’s not the point. Maybe both are just reflections—one clear, one rippling—of the same body of water.

Maybe myths are the fossils of forgotten truths, softened by metaphor, polished by time, and elevated into legend.

Maybe myths are the fossils of forgotten truths, softened by metaphor, polished by time, and elevated into legend.

And maybe the next time we scoff at tales of gods with flying machines, talking serpents, or chariots of fire—we should pause.

Because somewhere beneath the metaphor,

there might have once been a man.

Not a god.

Not a legend.

Just a man with fire in his hands—and the misfortune of being too early for history, and too real for myth.

About the Author

I am Sanchari Mukherjee, a student doing Masters in English from the reputed Presidency University, Calcutta. I love writing and appreciate art in all forms. Being a literature major, I have learnt to critically comment on things of various kinds. I take a deep interest in deconstructing the various essential structures and revealing the mechanisms of their working. Really glad that you came across my blog, hope you found it covering some critical insights essential for progress!