The Past it’s History

The article History It’s the Science of the Past

A legend is a traditional story of the past that is unverified and thought to be an exaggerated version of a real event or events. Defining the term “myth” is a lot harder than legend because it is often defined based on what one wishes to include and exclude. The fact that it is seen as an untrue claim in popular usage only which only makes it harder to define.

In practical historical usage however myths and legends are accounts of the past that a given historian wishes to discount. Now this is not an official definition but it is a practical one. The fact is that many of these stories could be idealized and culturalized versions of real events. The process of idealization and culturalization could make true stories more fantastic than they real were, This is most likely to occur in cases where there are mutable versions of the same story in different cultures and even more likely when the cultures had little or no contact.