Mircea Eliade based his theory of man in history on the claim that "archaic man" - by which he means man within "traditional" societies - has a characteristic ontology or theory of what it means for realities within his world to be "real." Building on the insight that the limited being of our universe must be dependent for its being on a divine "ground" of being, archaic man expresses this ontological vision in mythic form, giving expression to the view that to be real is to be an earthly expression of a divine or heavenly archetype.