Neuroscience, Narrative, and Never-Ending Stories

Introduction:

At first glance, many people see science and storytelling as distinct and separate pursuits. A considerable portion of British authors from the Victorian era agreed — so much so that they aimed to supplant traditional fairy tales with educational materials, arguing that parents did their children a disservice in allowing them to waste time on fiction when the 19^th century offered so many scientific revelations. Of this movement, children’s nonfiction author Priscilla Wakefield simply said, “Nonsense has given way to reason” (Keene, 2015, p. 10).

One fact this perspective fails to account for is that human storytelling is a result of evolution and is therefore, in a sense, driven by science. Storytelling is universal across human cultures, as are many narrative archetypes. As evidenced by ancient works of art including pottery, cave paintings, and carvings, storytelling predates writing (Zipes, 2012). As for how storytelling might increase evolutionary fitness in humans, one theory is that storytelling provides individuals with an opportunity to practice Theory of Mind, the psychological capacity to understand the perspectives and motivations of others. A strong Theory of Mind is essential for social interaction and would have enabled early humans to better predict each other’s behavior, benefiting individuals in an array of cooperative activities ranging from hunting to warfare (Williams, 2012). The use of narratives to structure how one views the world can lighten cognitive load, especially when it comes to processing embedded mental states (Willems et al., 2020). Van Duijn et al. (2015) describe embedded mental states as “A believes that B thinks that C intends (etc.)” (p. 148). In other words, embedded mental states allow an individual to consider how another person applies Theory of Mind to others, with the original individual utilizing their own Theory of Mind in the process. The more perspectives embedded, the more cognitively demanding comprehension becomes.

While embedded mental states can quickly become confusing if presented in isolated sentences, they are relatively easy for people to understand in the context of a story. For instance, Shakespeare’s Othello requires the audience to grasp that Iago wants Othello to believe that Desdemona cares for Cassio, but the presentation of this situation within a narrative allows it to be understood without undue cognitive strain (van Duijn et al., 2015). It can therefore be argued that narrative lightens one’s cognitive load, which might be evolutionarily advantageous because it can increase processing efficiency, allowing the brain to parse information with less energy. In other words, narrative is a built-in tool the human brain uses to understand the world. However, more than just evolution binds science to the tradition of storytelling. As this article will show through examples in Greek mythology, Indian mythology, and Victorian fairy tales, cultural narratives have a long and storied history of concealing morsels of scientific truth.

Greek Mythology:

The ties between mythology and science are evident from the etymology of “mythology” itself — “mythos” references traditional narrative, while “logos” refers to logic (Karakis, 2019). It is impossible to pinpoint the exact inspirations of legends created thousands of years ago, so modern historians and scientists settle instead for educated guesses based on a myth’s cultural, geographic, and technological context.

To begin, one needs only to look at the foundation — literally. The field of paleontology may provide key insights into some of Greek mythology’s greatest monsters. Of course, “paleontology” was a foreign concept to the Greeks. What did they make of fossils? Science correspondent Matt Kaplan hypothesized that these buried bones gave rise to mythical beasts like the Chimera and dragons and may even have inspired the legend of King Midas. According to legend, the Chimera was a fire-breathing lion with a goat head rising from its back and a snake for a tail. No single fossil could account for such a creature. Kaplan believes instead that multiple animals fell into a tar pit and were fossilized together, creating the appearance of one bizarre monster. Kaplan described the food chain at work, claiming that a goat, distressed at finding itself trapped in a tar pit, might attract a hungry lion, and the vultures coming to feed on the dead goat and lion could attract a bird-eating snake. As for the Chimera’s ability to breathe fire, Kaplan noted that Homer placed the Chimera in Lycia, where natural gas gradually leaks out, and the resulting blackened rocks and perpetual petroleum smell could have been thought to be supernatural in origin (Nissan, 2018). The existence of only one Chimera in Greek mythology lends credibility to Kaplan’s theory, since it is plausible that the tar pit scenario occurred once and became infamous.

Kaplan explained a potential origin of Crete’s Minotaur as well, focusing on the activity of local tectonic plates. Crete rests on the Aegean Block (a section of continental crust), and the Nubian Block (a section of oceanic crust) slides directly beneath the Aegean Block. This arrangement constitutes a subduction zone — a region of Earth’s crust where tectonic plates meet. The movement of the Nubian Block can displace the Aegean Block, resulting in abrupt uplift (at times over 30 feet) in Crete. Kaplan proposed that the resulting earthquakes could have given rise to the legend of the bellowing Minotaur lurking in an underground labyrinth. Kaplan even attempted to find scientific origins for the likes of Medusa and King Midas. Medusa’s horrible gaze was said to turn creatures to stone, and Kaplan theorized that this was how the Greeks explained the existence of fossils. Along the same lines, Kaplan pointed out that pyrite (fool’s gold) can accumulate within bone, giving a possible explanation for the myth of King Midas and his power to turn objects to gold (Nissan, 2018).

In addition to describing fearsome monsters, Greek mythology reflects some of the medicinal practices of ancient Greece. Helen of Troy supposedly used mandrake or opium to ease her anguish following her abduction and the start of the Trojan War. Persephone responded similarly to her abduction at the hands of Hades, using poppies to abate her emotional pain (Karakis, 2019). Today, opium-based drugs like morphine and other opioids remain key to alleviating pain. Interestingly, Greek mythology not only implies that the ancient Greeks understood the opium poppy’s role in pain management, but also indicates that the Greeks recognized that mental as well as physical conditions can require treatment (though they did not grasp that such mental conditions originated in the brain).

Hellebore is another medicine featured prominently in Greek mythology. In one legend, the Greek seer-healer Melampus healed the mad princesses of Argos (who were daughters of King Proetus and were therefore known as the Proetides) using hellebore. The concept of hellebore curing madness in mythology is not isolated to this story — similarly, Antikyreus is said to have cured Hercules with hellebore after Hera induced a fit of madness that led Hercules to murder his family. Olivieri et al. (2017) found that black hellebore in particular (Helleborus niger) is a psychoactive substance with calming, antipsychotic, and antidepressant capabilities that could have treated the madness of the Proetides and Hercules as described in legend, though there is insufficient evidence to justify the widespread use of black hellebore for such purposes today. While many myths of Greek antiquity seem ludicrous, there may be more truth to them than meets the eye.

Indian Mythology:

Like many of Kaplan’s hypotheses concerning Greek myths, the proposed origin of the Hindu god Vishnu is tied to paleontology. When geologist Hugh Falconer discovered a giant tortoise (Colossochelys atlas) fossil in northern India in the 19th century, he believed the existence of such a creature (or its remains) inspired the legend of Vishnu’s tortoise avatar. According to the story, Vishnu transformed into a tortoise and carried the world on his back. In a separate Hindu myth concerning the bird-god Garuda, a battle raged between an 80-mile-long tortoise and a 160-mile-long elephant. Considering the monstrous proportions of the actual giant tortoise (over seven feet tall with a shell diameter of over eighteen feet), it seems plausible that the tortoise’s fossil could have inspired both legends of monumental tortoises. Garuda, too, might have origins in a real creature. Chakrabarti and Sen (2016) hypothesized that Garuda himself was inspired by India’s gigantic crane (Ciconia gigantea). The war between Garuda and the Nagas (serpents) in both Hindu and Buddhist mythology may have been based on an observation of the natural enmity between birds of prey and snakes in nature, though Buddhist legends describe garudas as a mythical species, not a single deity (Nissan, 2018).

Like paleontology, astronomy was influential in Indian mythology. The Skanda Purana (a Hindu religious text) compared the Earth to a spinning top. The Indian mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata concluded from his work that the Earth spun, and the Skanda Purana is thought to reference Aryabhata’s findings — which, while correct, were not widely accepted — when it described the spinning of Earth (Kochhar, 2009).