What is the purpose of mythology?

Mythology literally explains phenomena in the outside world

Question: What is the purpose of mythology?
Position1 of 4›: Mythology explains the world
Argument‹2 of 2: Mythology literally explains phenomena in the outside world

Long before the age of reason, people relied on mythology to help them understand seemingly-inexplicable aspects of the world around them.

The argument

In ancient times, the world probably felt like a terrifyingly unpredictable place. Humanity had to deal with all of the same natural hazards we see occurring today, from earthquakes to volcanoes to floods to droughts, but with none of the science that we have now to explain or predict their occurrences. On a less catastrophic (but still world-shaking) level, people had to come to terms with universal life events like childbirth, sickness, and death, without being able to truly understand their causes. Because of this, humanity collectively (and likely, subconsciously) turned to mythology as a means of rationalizing the world around them in order to make it more palatable for everyday life. For example, in ancient Egypt, myths explained earthquakes as the laughter of the earth god, Geb. They rationalized flooding as the way Hapi, the Nile god, maintained cosmic balance and they believed the sunrise and sunset to be the work of Khepri, the god of renewal and life. On a more personal level, mythology provided comfort for the vulnerable, with claims that Anubis, the god of mummification, guided the dead to the underworld, and that Sekhmet, the goddess of war, protected the sick. Though these examples are exclusive to ancient Egypt, the same effect can be seen across cultures and throughout history. Again and again, mythology has been created to rationalize the irrational, unpredictable, and frightening world around us.

Context

Many myths are fantastical stories that explain common occurrences, from childbirth to rainfall to the sunrise. The argument that mythology was used to rationalize natural phenomena to peoples who had no scientific basis for understanding them is one of the most commonly-cited interpretations of ancient myths.

Premises

[P1]In ancient times people faced natural hazards—earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, droughts—and universal events like childbirth, sickness and death without any science to explain or predict them. [P2] Humanity turned to mythology to rationalize these frightening phenomena; ancient Egyptians explained earthquakes as the god Geb's laughter, flooding as Hapi maintaining balance, and sunrise as Khepri's work, a pattern repeated across cultures. [C] Because myths were created to make the unpredictable natural world intelligible, mythology literally explains the world.

Counter-arguments

This argument is an oversimplification of the significance of mythology throughout history, ignoring the clear metaphorical undertones present in countless myths and the cultural impact that they had. Further, it ignores the myths that do not seek to explain any singular natural event, like many ancient epics, and implies that ancient cultures had no kind of scientific understanding to explain the world around them, when many of them did.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise assumes ancient societies had no means of understanding the natural world, when Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Greek cultures kept detailed astronomical, medical and agricultural records — so the absence being filled by myth is overstated, and the two coexisted rather than one substituting for the other. [Rejecting P2] The examples are also selected to fit: aetiological myths exist, but so do epics, dynastic genealogies and ritual narratives that explain no natural event — and we have no evidence that the people who told these stories took them as causal accounts rather than as things a culture says about itself, which is the assumption the conclusion needs.