Myths are found in every culture. I've always been attracted to Ancient Greek mythology. I find that there is wisdom that can be translated to today's problems. Imagine stories that can be linked to today's problems and how different people handled the situations. Obviously, we all can't have flying chariots nor wings made out of wax. It is the underlying message of the Ancient Stories that we should be paying attention to. Imagine what the world would be like if we listened to the messages of our ancestors. Would we continue to repeat similar patterns that we find throughout History? I would like to think that we wouldn't.
Honestly, children's stories that are being written today are for the lessons that we believe children need to learn today, but I haven't read or seen any stories that capture the adventure or give big lessons other than ancient mythology. For example, don't we learn a lot from reading Pandora's Box? I would recommend reading both to kids because I know some have different adult themes. I mean, go watch a Disney movie that you watched as a kid and count the number of adult jokes that are in it. As an adult, we need to continue to expand our imaginations too. The myth of Prometheus teaches us if we can help someone, while it being against higher authority wishes, that we should help.
The cool part about studying mythology is that we can find myths while going to the library, bookstore or on the internet. The sad part is that Ancient is rarely spoken since we have modern Greek. People who speak modern Greek would be able to understand but translations could often be different just as some old English understandings could be different from others. The reason why I'm saying this is because some myths can be translated differently depending on the translator. For instance, The Myth of Prometheus has him carrying fire to the humans hidden in a hollowed-out Pumpkin or Reed it depends on translation. Sometimes meanings can be lost in translation and that is something we need to be careful about.
Myths come from all cultures and most if not all cultures have similar myths. It brings the phrase "Great minds think alike" to a whole new standard. When it comes to understanding ancient stories, it comes with knowledge of that time and how they thought. Ideas and teachings are the same. The Story of Pandora and Eve (from Adam and Eve) eating a beautiful apple can be thought of as similar. Pandora was forced to sit with a beautiful box that she couldn't open and Eve was forced to not eat from a beautiful apple tree and both if they did not do as they were told, bad things would happen. It shows that curiosity can lead to "bad" things, but it ignited progress. Stories like that can show the light at the end of the tunnel.
