When They Severed Earth from Sky

Explains how myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Recent studies of how our brains work have helped Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber to deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. They point the way to restoring some of that lost history that could teach us about human storytelling. The book is published by Princeton University Press.