In Greek mythology, Pontus or Pontos (Πόντος) (English translation: "sea") was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god, one of the Greek primordial deities. Pontus was Gaia's son and, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, he was born without coupling. For Hesiod, Pontus seems little more than a personification of the sea, ho pontos, "the Road", by which Hellenes signified the Mediterranean Sea. With Gaia, he fathered Nereus (the Old Man of the Sea), Thaumas (the awe-striking "wonder" of the Sea, embodiment of the sea's dangerous aspects), Phorcys and his sister-consort Ceto, and the "Strong Goddess" Eurybia. With the sea goddess Thalassa (whose own name simply means "sea" but is derived from a pre-Greek root), he fathered the Telchines and all sea life.

In a Roman sculpture of the 2nd century AD, Pontus, rising from seaweed, grasps a rudder with his right hand and leans on the prow of a ship. He wears a mural crown, and accompanies Fortuna, whose draperies appear at the left, as twin patron deities of the Black Sea port of Tomis in Moesia.

The term "mythology" can refer either to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology), or to a body or collection of myths (a mythos, e.g., Inca mythology). In folkloristics, a myth is a sacred narrative usually explaining how the world or humankind came to be in its present form, although, in a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story. Myths typically involve supernatural characters and are endorsed by rulers or priests. They may arise as overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.

Early rival classifications of Greek mythos by Euhemerus, Plato's Phaedrus, and Sallustius were developed by the neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers as in the Theologia mythologica (1532). Nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as evolution toward science (E. B. Tylor), "disease of language" (Max Müller), or misinterpretation of magical ritual (James Frazer). Later interpretations rejected opposition between myth and science, such as Jungian archetypes, Joseph Campbell's "metaphor of spiritual potentiality", or Lévi-Strauss's fixed mental architecture. Tension between Campbell's comparative search for monomyth or Ur-myth and anthropological mythologists' skepticism of universal origin has marked the 20th century. Further, modern mythopoeia such as fantasy novels, manga, and urban legend, with many competing artificial mythoi acknowledged as fiction, supports the idea of myth as ongoing social practice.

Marija Gimbutas (Lithuanian: Marija Gimbutienė) (Vilnius, January 23, 1921 – Los Angeles, United States February 2, 1994), was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced, and for her Kurgan hypothesis, the current most widely accepted of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses among scholars. Gimbutas's conclusions that Neolithic sites in Lithuania and across Europe pointed to long-term stable egalitarian societies with women at the center materially and spiritually earned a mixed reception by other scholars, but became a keystone of the matriarchal studies movement and the Goddess movement.

Gimbutas was born as Marija Birutė Alseikaitė to Veronika Janulaitytė-Alseikienė and Danielius Alseika in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Her parents were members of the Lithuanian intelligentsia, a social class which rose from the farming class during imperial Russian rule. Her mother received a doctorate in ophthalmology at the University of Berlin in 1908 and became the first female physician in Lithuania, while her father had received his medical degree from the University of Tartu in 1910. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Gimbutas' parents had founded the first Lithuanian hospital in the capital. During this period, her father also served as the publisher of the newspaper Vilniaus Žodis and the cultural magazine Vilniaus Šviesa and was an outspoken proponent of Lithuanian independence during the war against Poland. Gimbutas' parents were connoisseurs of traditional Lithuanian folk arts and frequently invited contemporary musicians, writers, and authors to their home, such as Vydūnas, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, and Jonas Basanavičius. With regard to her strong cultural upbringing, Gimbutas said: