Just spotted a neat article on the UK’s Guardian Unlimited about the emerging field of geomythology. Geomythology is basically the process of looking at local legends and mythology for clues about changes in geology and the local environment which predate scientifically recorded history.

Geologists have found that Middle Eastern flooding myths, including the story of Noah, could be traced to the sudden inundation of the Black Sea 7,600 years ago. The Oracle at Delphi has been found to lie over a geological fault through which seeped hallucinogenic gases. These could account for the trances and utterances of the oracle’s mystics.

While I wouldn’t quite call this a “new” discipline, it seems noteworthy that it’s receiving attention in mainstream science rather than just the strictly fringe stuff. From what I can tell, this article references another piece which came out in the journal Science, last month. Although I’ve yet to track down that link, I did find a blog with some choice quotes from the original piece:

Now that more people are willing to listen, he says, too many scientists are invoking myth “left, right, and center to explain everything.” In a paper at a late-October workshop on natural catastrophes in the ancient Mediterranean, he asserts that no major myths have yet met scientific standards, although he does credit some regional ones, such as the Pacific Northwest earthquakes.

Of course, the point of myth is vastly different from science, and thus it won’t meet “scientific standards” but it still seems like a sort of fun area of research - sort of like the Da Vinci Code for geology.

A handful of other resources on Geomythology from the Web..

1. Geomythology: Volcanoes in Prehistoric Oral Traditions
2. Description of Geomythology course at Valdosta State
3. Short blog entry on geomythology - and another, and one more

PS. For anybody in the Pacific Northwest, that article suggests that you guys may be due for a tsunami!