by Tessa Dick

Created on: July 31, 2009

Mount Olympus features in ancient Greek myth as the home of the gods, but it is also a real place, the highest mountain in Greece. This mountain, located within 100 kilometers of Thessaloniki, provides habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals. It is part of a national park that was established to preserve its environment, as well as its mythic significance.

Mount Olympus was the home of the twelve Olympian gods, who held council there under the leadership of Zeus. They ate ambrosia and drank nectar at a table served by a variety of magical creatures, including the lesser gods and goddesses. You might regard these stories as mere fantasy, mere myth, but if you do, you will be missing out on a window into our cultural heritage and a grain of truth.

We tend to regard mythology as a collection of fantasies, but myths are actually based upon fact. For example, the Biblical Flood of Noah has been regarded as myth and therefore not factual, but the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh records the same event because it really happened. Western societies are most familiar with the Greek myths, but all cultures have some form of mythology. Myths tend to feature supernatural heroes, interaction between humans and gods, and important events. They explain religious rituals, and they serve the purpose of preserving the history of a people and its culture. Myth is sacred narrative, but t is also history.

Perhaps you don't believe that Hercules was the son of the god Zeus and a human woman, or that he performed his twelve labors. However, his story is the typical hero myth, and it is most likely based upon some core of fact. Perhaps you don't believe that Helen of Troy was the daughter of Zeus and a human woman, and that she was hatched from an egg. However, Helen did exit and Troy did exist.

Homer's two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, tell the story of the Trojan War and the return of Odysseus (Ulysses) to his home in Greece. These stories were long regarded as the fantasies of ancient poets, and scholars believed that the mythical city of Troy never existed. However, Troy did exist and Heinrich Schliemann found the ruins of Troy near the coast of Turkey in the late 1800s.

The native peoples of South America told stories about bearded white men arriving from across the Atlantic Ocean before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. These myths were regarded as fantasy, but recent archaeological discoveries strongly support the existence of ancient

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