Claude dit:

In order to understand what myth really is, must we choose between platitude and sophism?  Some claim that human societies merely express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate, or revenge or that they try to provide some kind of explanations for phenomena which they cannot otherwise understand–astronomical, meteorological, and the like.  But why should the societies do it in such elaborate and devious ways, when all of them are also acquainted with empirical explanations?

Structural Anthropology, 203