From thunder gods to serpent slayers, scholars are reconstructing myths that vanished millennia ago. How much further can we go—and what might we find?October 13, 2025The quest to unlock mythology’s origins reveals recurring patterns that stretch back thousands of years and continue to shadow the stories we tell today.Illustration by Shane CluskeyI read George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” sometimes hailed as the greatest British novel, in a rain forest in western Indonesia. I was there as a graduate s...