Question 1. Why does McNeil prefer/apply the term "Myth History" to history? Response History is an account of the past, whereas myth is a likely story. Mythistory, then, is a story of the past likely to have currency. A history is written to inform folks of what happened, and a myth is recycled to explain the meaning of what happened. Myth and history are similar in ways, as both explain how things got to be the way they are by telling some sort of story. But our common parlance reckons myth to be false while history is, or aspires to be, true. Accordingly, a historian who rejects someone else's conclusions calls them mythical, while claiming that his own views are true. But what seems true to one historian will seem false to another, so one historian's truth becomes another's myth. (Course Kit, pg 75) This picking and choosing of facts is what makes history elastic and evolutionary. Every culture has its own version of truth; truth about its own culture as well as the "truth  about other cultures.   Truth to one is another person's myth (mythistories). Therefore, all these outside forces of culture, background, relationships, society, etcetera, affect what is true whether the individual realizes it or not. McNeill's essay, "Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians,  emphasizes the falsehood of historical truth, seeing history as evolving through the discovery of new data and exposure to intellectual choices and subjective judgments on the arrangement of historical facts. These judgments and choices have nothing to do with scientific methodology. McNeill believes all the "evidence  becomes nothing but a catalogue; it has to be put together for the reader in order to be understandable, credible, and useful because facts alone do not give "meaning or intelligibility to the record of the past. History (or myth) becomes self-validating. 2. What are his views on the functions of myth? Response "Myths are general st