Joseph Campbell Foundation is excited to announce the release of our latest eSingle, Campbell’s wonderful overview of myth, “The Historical Development of Mythology.”

In this fascinating overview of the shape of myths throughout human civilization’s expansion, Joseph Campbell lays out an overview of both the origins and the evolution of our myths.

Campbell wrote this essay just as he was launching his seminal  Masks of God series. “The Historical Development of Mythology” stands, in many ways, as a kind of prologue to that remarkable four-volume historical overview of the development of the mythological dimension of human culture.

Originally published in the journal Daedalus in 1959, this essay is also available in print in the collection The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959–1987.