Excavation of a Tale

Natural history museums hold collections of items that are categorised and named scientifically. This gives the impression that everything is logical and can be proven, influencing what society views as important. Yet this approach leaves no room for crediting the traditional stories that were once the primary way of commenting on the world around us. Zoë Prifti highlights our human ability to explain phenomena by creating myths. Her depiction of a mermaid's tail challenges palaeontologists to rely on ancient accounts of sightings to form hypotheses about how the rest of the creature might have looked. In the process, she suggests that even science can be interpreted as fiction.