Title: Tour de force !
Review: I have been a fan of Elizabeth Wayland Barber since The Mummies of Urumchi. This time with her husband Paul, she has again written an eminently readable and enlightening book. Together they cast light on the messages passed down to us in myths. We have so lost touch with the point of view of people in the preliterate past that we have largely discarded their earnest efforts to relay what they deemed important information. The Barbers, through pains-taking research and brilliant insights, have been able to discover the rules that governed the conservation of knowledge in the verbal "pipeline". They find the "camera angle" of the ancients, what they saw and how they would have interpreted it. This has enabled them to start to decode what many myths were meant to convey. It is an exciting beginning. I am sure that we will soon be hearing of many more secrets being deciphered using their tools.
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