My secret superpower is that I can time travel to the extinct civilizations.

My first trip was back to the Aztec empire. I became a child, just around the age of being curious about learning everything. One night, when everyone was talking by the bonfire just before sleep, I overheard the chief discussing sacrificing our human victim the next day. The idea of human sacrifice troubled me because I still had my memory as a girl living in 2020. I asked the wise man of our clan: “Sir, can you tell me why they have to kill him?” The wise man of our clan would rather not discuss such a matter with a child, but as I begged him and since he had always been impressed by my curiosity, he said: “Everything on earth came from a monster goddess who wouldn’t be happy without human sacrifice. If she isn’t, the tree would no longer bear fruits.”

“But who is this monster goddess?”

To answer my question, he began telling the story of a goddess whose body was torn apart to form all the earthly beings, including ourselves. Despite being shattered, the goddess had to be satisfied by the sacrifice of human blood. Though intrigued, I was scared. In the version of the creation myth that I remembered from before my time travel, humans were the artwork of, rather than the body pieces of, a goddess named Nuwa. Nonetheless, I understood the reasoning behind human sacrifices, and I fell asleep. In my sleep, I traveled back to the real world.

In the same way, time-traveling allowed me to learn so much about the civilizations that fascinated me. I learned…. All along the way, I was a curious child who listened to stories, asked questions, and when I traveled back to the real world, I wrote down what I could remember from my conversations with the wise man, the chiefs, and my “host mom.”

Of course, I can’t time travel, but I did hear the myths from long ago through the mouths of my Latino friends, and I was as curious as that child in the story.

My interest in mythology started in a conversation that I had with a friend from Mexico. He told me the story so that I could practice listening in Spanish, but I got so intrigued that I urged him to explain more about the significance of the myth: Why did the Aztecs believe that they came from the body of a woman, while the bible relates that God created man first? Does that show the first myth tellers' subconscious perception of women’s social role? There is no exact answer to my questions, which left room for interpretation and discussion between me and my Latino friends. Through our discussion, I learned that women occupied an equally important social position as men did.

And that was the beginning of many more conversations about mythology that I had with people from Colombia, Chile, Argentina ... 

I’ve never been a big fan of reading history textbooks and listening to lectures, but when I talk about myths with my friends, history comes alive. Myths are not only carriers of messages and norms from ancient societies, but also interesting ways to learn about Latin American cultures. They show me the Aztec’s reverence for nature, the Mapuche’s admiration for marine creatures, and the Guaraní’s pursuit of hospitality and doing good. In the long “run” of history，myths offer me a new pathway to learn about the civilizations whose cultures and traditions are no less interesting than that of China.