The animistic idea as the representation of the imaginative reality, is sanctified in the Homeric poems and in Greek myths, in stories of the god Hephaestus ( Phaistos ) and the mythic Daedalus ( the builder of the labyrinth ) that made images which moved of their own accord.

The line between myth and tall tale is distinguished primarily by age ; many myths exaggerate the exploits of their heroes, but in tall tales the exaggeration looms large, to the extent of becoming the whole of the story.

American " cultural anthropologists " focused on the ways people expressed their view of themselves and their world, especially in symbolic forms, such as art and myths.

This includes looking for living examples of animals that are considered extinct, such as dinosaurs ; animals whose existence lacks physical evidence but which appear in myths, legends, or are reported, such as Bigfoot and Chupacabra ; and wild animals dramatically outside their normal geographic ranges, such as phantom cats or " ABCs " ( an initialism commonly used by cryptozoologists that stands for Alien Big Cats ).

Also, all creation myths speak to deeply meaningful questions held by the society that shares them, revealing of their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context.

While in popular usage the term " myth " is often thought to refer to false or fanciful stories, creation myths are by definition those stories which a culture accepts as both a true and foundational account of their human identity.

Creation myths also help to orient human beings in the world, giving them a sense of their place in the world and the regard that they must have for humans and nature.

Emergence myths commonly describe the creation of people and / or supernatural beings as a staged ascent or metamorphosis from nascent forms through a series of subterranean worlds to arrive at their current place and form.

The genre is most commonly found in Native American cultures where the myths frequently link the final emergence of people from a hole opening to the underworld to stories about their subsequent migrations and eventual settlement in their current homelands.

This half-human and half-animal composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures, embodied in contrasted myths, both as the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths, or conversely as teachers, like Chiron.

Early Christians contrasted their sacred stories with " myths ", by which they meant false and pagan stories.

Rita Oleyar describes these writers as " on the whole, reverent and faithful to the primal myths, but filled with their own insights into the nature of God, man, and the universe ".

According to Cynthia Stewart, during the Reformation, the Protestant reformers used " the founding myths of Christianity " to critique the church of their time.

The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules.

In a tradition from the Arabian Nights, a collection of myths and folk tales, Muhammad was said to have warned his followers against staring at youth because of their beauty: " Be careful, do not gaze at beardless youth, for they have eyes more tempting than the houris.

Legends generally feature humans as their main characters, whereas myths generally focus on superhuman characters.

Instead of dividing their traditional stories into myths, legends, and folktales, some cultures divide them into two categories, one that roughly corresponds to folktales, and one that combines myths and legends.

This view of myths and their origin is criticised by Plato in the Phaedrus ( 229d ), in which Socrates says that this approach is the province of one who is " vehemently curious and laborious, and not entirely happy.

In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.

He is more often regarded as the tamer of horses, but in some myths he is their father, either by spilling his seed upon a rock or by mating with a creature who then gave birth to the first horse.

He also writes that it may have been that Epimetheus and Pandora and their roles were transposed in the pre-Hesiodic myths, a " mythic inversion ".

By the folklorists ' definition, all myths are religious ( or " sacred ") stories, but not all religious stories are myths: religious stories that involve the creation of the world ( e. g., the stories in Genesis ) are myths ; however, religious stories that don't explain how things came to be in their present form ( e. g., hagiographies of famous saints ) are not myths.

They ate in silence, with hoods so drawn over their faces that they could see nothing but what was on the table before them.

( They had no refectory, but ate their common meal, of bread and water only, when the day's labour was over, reclining on strewn grass, sometimes out of doors.

Two women made a pact to eat their children ; after the first mother cooked her child the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child.

The " blitzkrieg theory " is that human hunters killed and ate the diprotodonts, causing their extinction.

The name is a portmanteau of GNU and Nutella, the brand name of an Italian hazelnut flavored spread: supposedly, Frankel and Pepper ate a lot of Nutella working on the original project, and intended to license their finished program under the GNU General Public License.

Lamia was envious of other mothers and ate their children.

The dodo, a flightless bird of Mauritius, became extinct during the mid-late seventeenth century after humans destroyed the forest s where the birds made their homes and introduced mammals that ate their eggs.

Food was so scarce that their mules " ate one another's tails and the leather of the pack saddles.

Quote: " Further, in their secret meetings they said that the Christ who was born in the earthly and visible Bethlehem and crucified at Jerusalem was ' evil ', and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine – and that she was the woman taken in adultery who is referred to in the Scriptures ; the ' good ' Christ, they said, neither ate nor drank nor assumed the true flesh and was never in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul.

Like the area's other tribes, the Guaraní were cannibals, but they usually ate only their most valiant foes captured in battle in the hope that they would gain the bravery and power of their victims.

Essentially, much of what Aborigines ate depended on their environment – that is, whether they lived in coastal or mountainous areas.

People were not as wealthy as today, consumed fewer calories and ate less meat, so less water was needed to produce their food.

People were not as wealthy as today, consumed fewer calories and ate less meat, so less water was needed to produce their food.

The 1989 parody, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, is presented as a first-person narrative by the wolf, who portrays the entire incident as a misunderstanding ; he had gone to the pigs to borrow some sugar, had destroyed their houses in a sneezing fit, ate the first two pigs to not waste food ( since they'd died in the house collapse anyway ), and was caught attacking the third pig's house after the pig had continually insulted him.

American consul James W. Davidson described in The Island of Formosa ( 1903 ) how the Han Chinese in Taiwan ate and traded in their aboriginal victims ' flesh, a practice also mentioned by Owen Rutter in Through Formosa ( 1923 ), whose account bears some similarities to Davidson's.

Shakespeare, for instance, alluded to the legend that Scythians ate their children in his play King Lear:

Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater shared the same office and ate lunch together for their entire business career.

It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor.

They tell her how she eventually grew bored with them, ate their bodies, and cast their spirits aside.

They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return ; nevertheless, though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches.

When a flock of birds descended on Emain Macha and ate all the grass, the Ulstermen decided to hunt them, and they set off after them in their chariots.

Sigurd then ate some of Fáfnir ’ s heart and kept the remainder, which would later be given to Gudrun after their marriage.