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By Root 579 0

human behavior. Science fiction provides descriptive myths, often of dystopian or paradisiacal future states of the world. This evolutionary explanation of myths, in fact, is itself explanatory mythmaking. The fact that scientific reasoning and empirical data are employed to support the argument makes it no less a myth—a story for us, of our time, that provides meaning and purpose.

In this regard, science is a type of myth, in both function and typology. To some degree, cosmologists give us origin and eschatology myths, from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch. Historians provide hero myths, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr. Archaeologists present time and eternity myths, from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age. Economists proffer providence and destiny myths, from total free market anarchism to pure communism. Psychologists furnish memory and forgetting myths, from recovered memories to repression. Astronomers and computer scientists supply higher beings myths, from extraterrestrial intelligences to artificial intelligences. Biblical archaeologists contribute founders of religions myths, from King David to Moses. Anthropologists produce transformation myths, from Samoan teenagers to Yanomamö warriors. Sociologists confer rebirth and renewal myths, from childhood to adulthood. And political scientists proffer messianic and millenarian myths, from the new president to the new world order.

Why do we continue telling stories and constructing myths today? Because the epigenetic rules for mythmaking still reside within us. Consider monsters and beasts as myths. From the earliest cave paintings to the present, monsters and beasts lurk at the interstices of the natural world, appear on the margins of our perception, dwell in the dangerous lands remote from human habitation, come out at night, or in our nightmares. In the light of E. O. Wilson’s epigenetic rule for fear of snakes that generates narratives in the form of snake myths in cultures worldwide, we should not be surprised that the modern sciences of zoology and especially cryptozoology (the “science of hidden animals”) are ripe with mythic tales. For millions of years hominids evolved alongside other primates and mammals in a rich and varied zoological world. The identification of other animals, and the anticipation of possibly dangerous cryptids would have produced not only Type 1 and 2 Hits but also numerous Type 1 and 2 Errors in our thinking. Thus, in our own time we have correctly identified such genuine cryptid surprises as the giant panda, the pygmy hippopotamus, the Komodo dragon, and the long-thought extinct coelacanth. The nowfamous mountain gorilla was only discovered in 1903. The pygmy chimp (making us the “third chimpanzee” in Jared Diamond’s apt phrase) was only recently identified as being a separate species. But the field of cryptozoology is ripe with pseudoscientific hoaxes, exaggerated descriptions, and ridiculous claims. These are Type 1 Errors in thinking. But we must be cautious not to commit a Type 2 Error in rejecting a new discovery. There may very well be new and possibly dangerous animals lying in wait. They may not be dangerous to those of us living in suburban America, but they certainly could have been to our paleolithic ancestors, and this is where an epigenetic rule that would generate mythic monsters could have evolved.

Or consider how an epigenetic rule might apply to the myths of dragons and werewolves. Dragons are the most common of all mythological creatures, usually portrayed as the hybrid of a serpent or crocodile, and constructed of any number of disparate mix-and-match parts such as the scales of a fish, the wings and occasionally the head of a bird, the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion, the ears of an ox, the feet of a tiger, the claws of an eagle, the horns of a deer, and the eyes of a demon. In the ancient world the dragon was a winged lizard or serpent, regarded as the enemy of mankind, and its overthrow is made to figure among the greatest exploits of the gods and heroes of mythology. The dragon is found