The myth that one can catch a cold from the cold. The myth of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. Myths are stories, narratives, about the origins of things that humans practice or engage in. They provide explanations for why things are as they are. Often myths co-mingle the visible, sensual world that human inhabit with the invisible world of the supernatural, the cosmological.
Myths define and explain the relationship between society and the supernatural.
The ultimate purpose of mythology is to provide humans with a sense of meaning and coherence in their world. So while myths often appear to be non-sensical, having little of the structure of common stories, they are packed with meaning, and reveal a great deal about the culture they come from. Science in our society also has a mythical dimension, and the story of human evolution, while perhaps grounded more carefully in empirical evidence than the Biblical myth, also provides an explanation of who we are and where we came from. They forced men to do the things that women are supposed to do, and made men live in women's houses. Because women couldn't hunt or do battle, they couldn't feed the ancestral spirits with meat or heads of enemies, and therefore the spirits couldn't protect human society.