History myths that persist.

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Cthulhu.Science

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This photo is from a 1945 Life Magazine article about California Living. See the essay on the article here.
What struck me about the image was the planter adjacent to the swimming pool. Wouldn't want to try and keep that pool clean.
116659415-1024x1024.jpeg


And then I wondered. When was the bikini invented? Well, not until the following year 1946 by Louis Réard.
And so, as I research while I write this I am confronted with my own lack of understanding the mythology.
Here is the "First Bikini"
Micheline-Bernardini.jpg


While I thought the "bikini" was associated with two-piece swimwear. Apparently, originally the shock of the "bikini" is associated with the bottoms.
And from year to year, this is a big shift, isn't it? OOOOOH hips. Was it as radical as seeing ankles in the 1920s? Probably so.

Since the post made less sense as I wrote it, I thought about deleting it altogether.

But the general concept of historical mythology is a fascinating one to me.
Anyone else have some good examples of historic mythology. (unlike mine).
 
I understand "myth" as meaning something that isn't true, didn't actually happen, however much it might be related to something that did. With the redundancy typical to English, there is also legend. I distinguish myth from legend this way: a legend is simply a story about something that may or may not have happened. However large a kernel of truth that might lie within, a legend always has elements that are not true. Exaggerated, at the very least.

A myth is both larger and less substantial than a legend. A myth has stronger cultural impact, speaks to something deep within our psyche. A myth doesn't have an official form; there can (and usually are) multiple legends that all draw upon the same myth. We talk about a myth, but we tell a legend.

Anyway, I'm hard-pressed to spot the myth in the images or the commentary above. I'm not even sure what is meant by historical mythology. I can see the history of a myth--that's the bread and butter of folklorists--but history has to do with things that actually did happen while myths have to do with things that didn't. Putting the two together is a bit like speaking of magical physics.
 
sknox said:
I understand "myth" as meaning something that isn't true, didn't actually happen, however much it might be related to something that did. With the redundancy typical to English, there is also legend. I distinguish myth from legend this way: a legend is simply a story about something that may or may not have happened. However large a kernel of truth that might lie within, a legend always has elements that are not true. Exaggerated, at the very least.

A myth is both larger and less substantial than a legend. A myth has stronger cultural impact, speaks to something deep within our psyche. A myth doesn't have an official form; there can (and usually are) multiple legends that all draw upon the same myth. We talk about a myth, but we tell a legend.

Anyway, I'm hard-pressed to spot the myth in the images or the commentary above. I'm not even sure what is meant by historical mythology. I can see the history of a myth--that's the bread and butter of folklorists--but history has to do with things that actually did happen while myths have to do with things that didn't. Putting the two together is a bit like speaking of magical physics.
Click to expand...
Thanks.
That helps my writing. I thought my writing was clear.
There are a lot of invention myths. For example: Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Edison did not invent the electric light bulb.

And I was taught a story that "the bikini" was introduced after the first nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll and was thought to bring awe into the eyes of men in the same way as a nuclear explosion did.

I was told this story many decades after the invention of the bikini so is this story contemporary with the invention, or invented some time later and back-referenced to the timeline.

There are many types of history myths.
1. One is a plain falsehood for the purpose of promotion that is now generally accepted as fact.
2. Another is a back-reference to reflect a later understanding of a thing on the people and events that occurred earlier.

An obvious example is the claim that in 1492 educated people in Europe generally believed the world was flat. Umberto Eco does a great job dissecting this myth in Umberto Eco, Serendipities: Language and Lunacy.

So, that was the idea I was getting at. I can only hope that this set of writing gets my ideas across better.
 
Quite a famous one came from WW2. When the Brits were trying to cover up the success of radar, they claimed that Allied airmen were shooting down enemy night fighters because all the carrots they were eating improved their night vision. It also helped to bolster the message behind growing and eating more vegetables when the rationing hit.

So successful was the campaign that its still believed by many today that carrots improve your sight. No doubt the vitamin A that they contain helps improve sight (as well as all-round health) but its unlikely to turn airmen into aces overnight.
 
sknox said:
I understand "myth" as meaning something that isn't true, didn't actually happen, however much it might be related to something that did. With the redundancy typical to English, there is also legend. I distinguish myth from legend this way: a legend is simply a story about something that may or may not have happened. However large a kernel of truth that might lie within, a legend always has elements that are not true. Exaggerated, at the very least.

A myth is both larger and less substantial than a legend. A myth has stronger cultural impact, speaks to something deep within our psyche. A myth doesn't have an official form; there can (and usually are) multiple legends that all draw upon the same myth. We talk about a myth, but we tell a legend.

Anyway, I'm hard-pressed to spot the myth in the images or the commentary above. I'm not even sure what is meant by historical mythology. I can see the history of a myth--that's the bread and butter of folklorists--but history has to do with things that actually did happen while myths have to do with things that didn't. Putting the two together is a bit like speaking of magical physics.
Click to expand...


Possibly 'urban myth' describes it better?
 
paranoid marvin said:
Quite a famous one came from WW2. When the Brits were trying to cover up the success of radar, they claimed that Allied airmen were shooting down enemy night fighters because all the carrots they were eating improved their night vision. It also helped to bolster the message behind growing and eating more vegetables when the rationing hit.

So successful was the campaign that its still believed by many today that carrots improve your sight. No doubt the vitamin A that they contain helps improve sight (as well as all-round health) but its unlikely to turn airmen into aces overnight.
Click to expand...

And to pile on, Bugs Bunny was also famous for eating carrots and having great eyesight!
 
paranoid marvin said:
Quite a famous one came from WW2. When the Brits were trying to cover up the success of radar, they claimed that Allied airmen were shooting down enemy night fighters because all the carrots they were eating improved their night vision. It also helped to bolster the message behind growing and eating more vegetables when the rationing hit.

So successful was the campaign that its still believed by many today that carrots improve your sight. No doubt the vitamin A that they contain helps improve sight (as well as all-round health) but its unlikely to turn airmen into aces overnight.
Click to expand...
Several years ago, in the space of about a week I read two different articles about discoveries different groups of scientists had made about carrots.

The first group stated they have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that carrots did nothing for the eyes at all.

The second group claimed they'd isolated just what specific elements of carrots was good for the eyes...
 
Thanks for the explanation. I personally would resist calling any of those myths--popular misconceptions is a phrase that suits me better--but there's no need to quibble. You asked for examples, which is a better way to move the thread forward.

I taught history for 35 years, so I can list many such misconceptions. Some are so deeply embedded that they could approach the level of myth. I'll give two examples to try to illustrate distinguishing between popular misconception and a myth. I should note that I taught medieval history.

First, in the Middle Ages people died young. Someone age forty (to grab a number) was considered old.
Second, in the Middle Ages kings were absolute rulers.
(I've stated both in very short form to keep this as succinct as possible.)

Neither of those assertions are true, but they both persist in the popular understanding. But for different reasons. The first persists because people are misled by statistics or are content with a superficial understanding. What is a measure of average age at death gets transformed into many died young so getting old happened earlier.

The second gets believed because it fits into a larger, general understanding of the Middle Ages that has to do with progressivist interpretations of history. Put crudely, the Middle Ages must be dark and oppressive and tyrannical to provide a suitable contrast to the enlightened society of modern times. So, "facts" that reinforce that view tend to persist while facts that contradict it simply never make it out of academia.

And that's where we start to move toward myth. The myth of the Middle Ages (that is, as "the Dark Ages") has powerful social reasons to exist. It's part of our ideology. There's room within that for countless understandings and misunderstandings. But like the Dude, the myth abides.
 
The use of the word myth to mean a misconception, an inaccuracy etc is actually quite recent. For all prehistory and a lot of early history myth meant: a story designed to describe and show a response to an extreme event (typically death); a cultural narrative housing rituals carried out by communities; a guide to ethical behaviour; metaphors for how a particular people viewed the construction of the universe. By far the best book on all this is Karen Armstrong's A Short History Of Myth.
 
Vladd67 said:
Funny enough I just found this on Google.
www.ourhealthdepot.com

55 Historical Misconceptions We All Believed

Are you sure you know history as well as you think? Here are 55 historical misconceptions we all once believed!
www.ourhealthdepot.com www.ourhealthdepot.com
Click to expand...
The author quickly stretches the meaning of "Historical Misconception" to get to the stated forty-five. I also am quite lost on the explanation of why countries on a globe are not shown in their true size ("Countries are Different Sizes")..
 
Wayne Mack said:
The author quickly stretches the meaning of "Historical Misconception" to get to the stated forty-five. I also am quite lost on the explanation of why countries on a globe are not shown in their true size ("Countries are Different Sizes")..
Click to expand...
I took it that they meant Mercator projection and that famous world map. Where the poles stretch off to infinity (making Antartica, by far, the biggest continent )
 
I like how the author manages to pack a misconception into the statement about 45 historical misconceptions. I doubt that author could identify any misconception, historical or otherwise, that we *all* once believed. OK, OK, it's more of an exaggeration than a misconception. Geez. :p
 
Venusian Broon said:
I took it that they meant Mercator projection and that famous world map. Where the poles stretch off to infinity (making Antartica, by far, the biggest continent )
Click to expand...
The original source probably was referring to a Mercator projection, however, I don't think the article author understood that, when the opening lines read,
"In school, we’re used to seeing the globe spin around, but did you know that the sizes of each country are wildly off from their actual square mileage? On our globe, Canada looks larger than the United States, but the U.S. is actually bigger!"​
​
 
Wayne Mack said:
The original source probably was referring to a Mercator projection, however, I don't think the article author understood that, when the opening lines read,
"In school, we’re used to seeing the globe spin around, but did you know that the sizes of each country are wildly off from their actual square mileage? On our globe, Canada looks larger than the United States, but the U.S. is actually bigger!"​
​
Click to expand...
I'm curious to see that globe, aren't you?
 
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