Geomythology
Geomythology is an emerging field invented by the geoscientist Dorothy Vitaliano in 1968 but has ancient roots in figures such as the mythographer Euhemerus (3rd century B.C.) as well as modern predecessors like Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the “English Leonardo,” and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), the father of modern paleontology. It has been featured in recent panels at literary and scientific conferences. Geomythology seeks to discover proto-scientific information in ancient and medieval myths, legends, and tales. Often, this information is encoded in stories originally told by eyewitnesses to make sense of traumatic events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
