I'm curious what mythology has time travel? I can't think of any in Greek and Roman mythology. Celtic mythology doesn't seem to have time travel either, unless you count going forwards at different perceived speeds.
It's all over Greek mythology. When Althaea has a vision that tells her that her son's life will end at the point when the log in her fireplace burns away, that's time travel. When Laius learns he will be killed by his own son, that's time travel. When Agamemnon learns he will die with one foot on land and one in the water, that's time travel.
That's prophecy, not time travel. Where in Greek or any mythology does anyone travel back in time or otherwise alter causality?
It doesn't happen because the concept of time as variable, a "dimension" that can be "traveled in" like space, didn't even exist until modern science came along. Prophecy doesn't derive from the principle of time being variable but of fate being absolute and unavoidable by mortal cunning, sometimes (as in Norse mythology wrt Ragnarok) even by the gods themselves.
Myths were meant to teach stories about reality as people understood it, and in reality, you don't get a do-over. Within that framework, "time travel" as it exists in any modern science fiction story is nonsensical.
That is an incoherent statement. Prophecy is a form of time travel, in which information moves from the future to the past. It presents exactly the same questions that an object moving from the future to the past does, and is indistinguishable from that circumstance if the object has writing on it.
You might note that Frequency is a modern time travel story that is explicitly characterized in terms of time travel, while the only thing that can cross the time loop is a radio signal.
> Within that framework, "time travel" as it exists in any modern science fiction story is nonsensical.
I just observed that the ancient model is still a major prong of how time travel stories treat the subject today. They don't all use it, but many still do.
How in the world did you think it made sense to respond to this:
time travel also features really prominently in traditional mythology and the message there is always that the timeline can never be altered by any means.
with "where in Greek or any mythology does anyone [...] alter causality?" Why not read the comment before you respond to it?
>Prophecy is a form of time travel, in which information moves from the future to the past.
No, it isn't. You're thinking in a modern framework for which only physics and information are involved, but mythology presupposes metaphysics. Prophecy is not simply looking into the future, it's being aware of divine will. The information from prophecy doesn't come from the future, but the past, because the future it describes has already been predetermined.
Look at the common motif in mythology of the king/god whose child is destined to kill them. The prophecy in these myths are always set in general terms - a set of conditions that will be met, not specific information from the future but information about the future. At no point does information travel back in time.
>How in the world did you think it made sense to respond to this:
>>time travel also features really prominently in traditional mythology and the message there is always that the timeline can never be altered by any means.
>(...) Why not read the comment before you respond to it?
I did read it. I disagree with you that anything in mythology counts as time travel by any definition that would make sense to a modern science fiction reader, unless you stretch the term to near meaninglessness. Again, it isn't a matter of the future being fixed, but of information about the future not coming from the future.
I see you intentionally omitted the specific part of my quote that made it plain you hadn't bothered to read it. You wanted me to provide an example of something I explicitly stated never happened... and you think that made sense?
Time travel is found in several mythologies. Some examples include the Hindu Mahabharata, the Greek tales around Chronos and Kairos, and the Irish tale of Naimh.
I know there are more, those are just the ones I thought of immediately.
