Hamlet's Mill : An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth

“A book wonderful to read and startling to contemplate....both the history of science and the reinterpretation of myths have been enriched immensely.”―Washington Post

A seminal work of scientific and philosophical exploration. Ever since the Greeks coined the language we commonly use for scientific description, mythology and science have developed separately. But what if we could prove that all myths have one common origin in a celestial cosmology? What if the gods, the places they lived, and what they did are but ciphers for celestial activity, a language for the perpetuation of complex astronomical data?

Drawing on scientific data, historical and literary sources, the authors argue that our myths are the remains of a preliterate astronomy, an exacting science whose power and accuracy were suppressed and then forgotten by an emergent Greco-Roman world view. This fascinating book throws into doubt assumptions of Western science about the unfolding development and transmission of knowledge. This is a truly seminal and original thesis, a book that should be read by anyone interested in science, myth, and the interactions between the two.

Giorgio de Santillana was born in Rome and moved to the United States in 1936. In 1942, he became an Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he would spend the remainder of his academic career.

Hertha Von Dechend was born in Heidelberg in 1915. She began her career as an anthropologist in 1934 at the Frobenius Institute. Between 1960 and 1966, she regularly taught and researched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.