Yes, and the stories of Homer helped Schliemann rediscover the location of Troy. The Inuit of northwestern Greenland had a myth that the three pieces of the Cape York meteorite were a woman, her dog, and her tent that had been 'hurled from the sky by the evil spirit, Tornarsuk.' (https://books.google.com/books?id=6saFpP5aticC&lpg=PA212&ots... ). We know that everything about that is wrong, except for the 'from the sky' part.
My question is, given a myth, how can we identify the kernel of truth? Did humans in early Zuni culture live "crowded tightly together in total darkness in a place deep in the earth known as the fourth world"? Or is there something else we should consider that kernel?
If we are not careful, then we can look to a modern myth, like the 'myth of Superman', and posit that the breakup of Krypton explains why there are meteorites.
The specific claims from the myths which are testable are the kernels of truth of interest. In the Australian example those claims have been shown to be credible and are worthy of investigation despite being from an oral tradition. Claims from myths that can not be tested are of little scientific interest and do not merit effort.
Modern myths must also stand the same scrutiny which is why we should be careful but not alarmed or dismissive without testing.
Many of the statements in myths are testable. Some claims are credible. Most testable claims not true. Some of the things that are true are trivially true, as the example I gave where a tree can indeed grow from a seed.
If one creation myth says that humans came from "the nethermost of the four cave-wombs of the world", another creation myth say that humans come from logs given spirit and life, and a third says that people come from the tears of Khepri, then we know that at least two of them, if not all three, are incorrect - even if we cannot test them directly.
(In any case, we can test them - none of those myths are compatible with the physical evidence of human evolution.)
The original statement was that "many [myths] must, necessarily, contain a kernel of truth". My question was, how do we tell which is the kernel of truth? That trees grow from seeds? Or that humans come from cave-dwelling creatures? Or that the Zuni people tried to make sense of the petrified bones and landscape forms by creating a post-hoc story to explain things?
At some point the suggestion that there is a 'kernel of truth' become useless, as there is a kernel of truth in nearly everything that humans do.
Your statement, that myths could be used to understand history, is not controversial. I gave examples from the 1800s and 1900s as previous examples, and there are certainly many more.
My question is, given a myth, how can we identify the kernel of truth? Did humans in early Zuni culture live "crowded tightly together in total darkness in a place deep in the earth known as the fourth world"? Or is there something else we should consider that kernel?
If we are not careful, then we can look to a modern myth, like the 'myth of Superman', and posit that the breakup of Krypton explains why there are meteorites.