One of the principal aspects of Vico's New Science is the idea that mythology is sprung from actual historical events and the mythologies become debased over time only to arrive to us interwoven with allegory and metaphor. Vico frequently comes back to this idea when he needs to correct mistaken interpretations of myths by scholars of a later age, the so-called “conceit of scholars”. Since myths are created by people, they must be based in historical reality,

In a nutshell, Vichean myths can be traced back to concrete historical events. For example, the god Neptune is born from the need for early people to explain the new found seas, the tempestuousness and vastness of the seas, after living in isolated inner-country cities. Neptune is an imaginative universal or divine archetype that was used to consolidate and deify the experience of the earliest people, an all-encompassing umbrella of all sea related experiences.

For the earliest age, these myths that were developed were severe in nature. By this I mean, they were a crude record of historical events. These myths were given their content from whatever was familiar and at-hand. The content was the peoples' “own natures and the passions and habits” (220), and the material for myths comes from a very crude society with crude laws, if any laws, and harsh attitudes. This is why it is so hard for the modern mind to penetrate these severe societies and their myths. We think much differently than they do. It's even doubtful if we can even understand their positions at all.

A similiar sentiment, as pointed out by Vico via Eusebius, was that “The first theology of the Egyptians was simply a history interspersed with fables, to which later generations, growing ashamed of them, gradually attached mystical interpretations.” (222). It's sort of as if a whole people decided to translate thier mythology into a completely different language and intersperse fable into the historical myths to make the myths part-fable, part-myths. And then these fable/myths were given mystical interpretations. So true history comes out the other end as a twisted and dyed fabric, not resembling the original fabric in the least.

I think Vico despairs of even discovering what the original myths mean. First our minds cannot grasp the true historical reality of the myth and the myth has become so convoluted that unwinding the myth is like untying the Gordian Knot.

Why did Vico believe that myths are based in history? For Vico, myths like history itself were created by humans. The myths and fables of the earliest ages were precursors to the more rational histories of later ages. Myths describe real events and are mythological because they are formed from the minds of crude people from the earliest age. The earliest ages spoke the language of myth like how we speak a language of rationality. The earliest people's myths were rational to them, but difficult for us to understand today.