From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Encyclopedia Mythica is an internet encyclopedia of folklore, mythology, and religion. It covers the mythology of most of the world, with sections spanning Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, both North and South America, and Oceania. This encyclopedia was founded in June 1995 as a small site with about 300 entries, and established with its own domain name March 29, 1996. As of December 2005 this encyclopedia had 7,143 entries.
[edit] Reliability
Encyclopedia Mythica does not provide references for its articles. Caution should be exercised when using Encyclopedia Mythica as a source. For example, the entries relating to Oceanic and Polynesian deities are often unreliable in that they tend to erroneously classify Micronesian, Melanesian, and Fijian gods as Polynesian, conflate information from several cultures,[1] or erroneously identify minor characters from legends as gods or goddesses.[2] Similar caution should be exercised concerning Celtic figures, some of whom seem not to be referred to elsewhere.
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[edit] External links
- ^ for example, Encyclopedia Mythica usually fails to specify the country or culture a 'Polynesian' deity comes from. When a deity known only in the stories of one small island is labelled 'Polynesian', that gives the reader the mistaken impression that the deity concerned is known in all Polynesia.
- ^ Sometimes there are consequences to the inaccuracy of the articles. Encyclopedia Mythica has a muddled entry for Kiwa, a Māori guardian of the sea, who is male, calling him 'mother of all shell-fish in Polynesian mythology'. When a new species of crustacean was discovered in the South Pacific, the researchers involved used Encyclopedia Mythica as a source, meaning that the error was propogated by news media and scientific websites all around the world. See Kiwa (mythology) and Kiwa hirsuta.
