The science behind the myth: Homer's "Odyssey" - Matt Kaplan

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Homer's "Odyssey" recounts the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus during his journey home from the Trojan War. Though some parts may be based on real events, the encounters with monsters, giants and magicians are considered to be complete fiction. But might there be more to these myths than meets the eye? Matt Kaplan explains why there might be more reality behind the "Odyssey" than many realize.

Lesson by Matt Kaplan, animation by Mike Schell.

Homer's "Odyssey",

one of the oldest works
of Western literature,

recounts the adventures
of the Greek hero Odysseus

during his ten-year journey home
from the Trojan War.

Though some parts
may be based on real events,

the encounters with strange monsters,
terrifying giants and powerful magicians

are considered to be complete fiction.

But might there be more to these myths
than meets the eye?

Let's look at one famous episode
from the poem.

In the midst of their long voyage,

Odysseus and his crew find themselves
on the mysterious island of Aeaea.

Starving and exhausted, some of the men
stumble upon a palatial home

where a stunning woman welcomes them
inside for a sumptuous feast.

Of course, this all turns out to be
too good to be true.

The woman, in fact,
is the nefarious sorceress Circe,

and as soon as the soldiers
have eaten their fill at her table,

she turns them all into animals
with a wave of her wand.

Fortunately, one of the men escapes,

finds Odysseus
and tells him of the crew's plight.

But as Odysseus rushes to save his men,

he meets the messenger god, Hermes,

who advises him to first consume
a magical herb.

Odysseus follows this advice,

and when he finally encounters Circe,
her spells have no effect on him,

allowing him to defeat her
and rescue his crew.

Naturally, this story of witchcraft
and animal transformations

was dismissed as nothing more
than imagination for centuries.

But in recent years, the many mentions
of herbs and drugs throughout the passage

have piqued the interest of scientists,

leading some to suggest

the myths might have been
fictional expressions of real experiences.

The earliest versions of Homer's text

say that Circe mixed baneful drugs
into the food

such that the crew might utterly forget
their native land.

As it happens, one of the plants growing
in the Mediterranean region

is an innocent sounding herb
known as Jimson weed,

whose effects include pronounced amnesia.

The plant is also loaded with compounds
that disrupt the vital neurotransmitter

called acetylcholine.

Such disruption can cause
vivid hallucinations,

bizarre behaviors,

and general difficulty distinguishing
fantasy from reality,

just the sorts of things

which might make people believe
they've been turned into animals,

which also suggests that Circe
was no sorceress,

but in fact a chemist who knew how
to use local plants to great effect.

But Jimson weed is only half the story.

Unlike a lot of material in the Odyssey,

the text about the herb that Hermes
gives to Odysseus is unusually specific.

Called moly by the gods,

it's described as being found
in a forest glen,

black at the root
and with a flower as white as milk.

Like the rest of the Circe episode,

moly was dismissed
as fictional invention for centuries.

But in 1951, Russian pharmacologist
Mikhail Mashkovsky

discovered that villagers
in the Ural Mountains

used a plant with a milk-white flower
and a black root

to stave off paralysis
in children suffering from polio.

The plant, called snowdrop,

turned out to contain a compound
called galantamine

that prevented the disruption
of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine,

making it effective in treating
not only polio

but other disease, such as Alzheimer's.

At the 12th World Congress of Neurology,

Doctors Andreas Plaitakis
and Roger Duvoisin

first proposed that snowdrop was, in fact,
the plant Hermes gave to Odysseus.

Although there is not much direct
evidence that people in Homer's day

would have known about
its anti-hallucinatory effects,

we do have a passage from 4th century
Greek writer Theophrastus

stating that moly
is used as an antidote against poisons.

So, does this all mean

that Odysseus, Circe, and other characters
in the Odyssey were real?

Not necessarily.

But it does suggest that ancient stories
may have more elements of truth to them

than we previously thought.

And as we learn more
about the world around us,

we may uncover some of the same knowledge

hidden within the myths
and legends of ages passed.