Ummmm - don"t try to test this theory at home - we're what you call "professionals"...
In other words, the findings suggest that 'myths' have more elements of truth than fiction.
Also see http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/07/is-mythology-like-facebook.html?rss=1
Interesting. Mildly.
Technically, there is nothing inherent in the word “myth” that requires it to be false or not true. The myth of Odysseus is a myth even if every word about him were (somehow) true
When I read this ( in translation ) I was quite moved by the everyday truth of its depiction, and I consulted Pope's Iliad, which includes Observations on each book. He notes, of this description:
All these are but small circumstances, but so artfully chosen that every reader immediately feels the force of them, and represents the whole in the utmost liveliness to his imagination.
And it is modern man that considers those works from the ancients as myth—— I tend to think they are true accounts
the longer article is strange, because it suggests that the people in the myth know a lot of folks that we don’t know who they are (i.e. they are not in the story) and this resembles reality...
But I suspect that a lot of people listening to the Iliad or Beowulf would probably know who these folks are (their stories were lost). So the writer of the essay is probably wrong in saying this.
Modern novels don’t tend to put someone unknown in the story, however, because that is the modern “rule”.
However, the criticism breaks down for Lord of the Rings, because Tolkien’s books are full of characters who we don’t know who they are or what he’s talking about (unless you read the 14 volume collected works)...