Some of the humans who spend their short lives tracking the evolution of your ancestors’ stories-you call them folklorists or anthropologists-believe that the Earth Diver myths share a common narrative ancestor from eastern Asia that spread as the people migrated. But similar stories can also be found in modern Turkey, northern Europe, and eastern Russia. This kind of account, sometimes collectively called Earth Diver myths, is common among the Indigenous people of North America. The diver often takes the shape of an animal of some kind, a wonderfully whimsical picture, and many of the stories include multiple failed attempts before the mud at the bottom of the ocean is successfully retrieved. My favorites of these involve a divine creature diving to the bottom of this ocean to gather bits of mud that then get used to build the land. So many of the creation stories your ancestors told started not with chaos or nothing, but with a deep primordial ocean. These worlds were supposed to have rested among the roots and branches of Yggdrasil, the great world tree. There are nine of them in total, including separate homes for humans and their gods. His name was Ymir, and he was later slaughtered by some of the creatures who sprang from his body, and his parts were used to construct the other worlds in the Norse universe. Frost and flame met in the middle, and a giant god was born of the melted ice. The Eddas describe a great abyss that stretched between the first two worlds: Muspelheim, the world of fire, and Niflheim, the world of ice. Humanity’s Middle Ages were boring and I had other stuff to do. Honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention. Christianity was well established in the north lands by then, and it’s hard for even me to say how much the Prose and Poetic Eddas differed from the pagan stories that early Vikings shared around their fires. The stories were passed orally through countless generations, your imperfect human memories and pesky personal preferences introducing slight variations each time, until they were written down in your thirteenth century. Three thousand years later and 4,500 miles to the north, Norse tribes were telling their own cosmogonies that were somewhat rooted in truth. Or, if I know anything about immortal beings, until they get bored of doing the same thing over and over. Together, the three gods, this triumvirate, work together to keep the universe moving through its cycle, each doing their part when the time comes, until the end of eternity. But until that time comes, Shiva is said to destroy the imperfections of your world, and so he is regarded as both good and evil. To round out the cycle, there’s Shiva, who destroys the universe so that it can be rebuilt. It’s no wonder that Vishnu was often associated with the sun, as both were understood to sustain life on Earth. There is also Vishnu the preserver, who maintains the balance of the cosmos. In fact, the idea that there’s a single true god is relatively new.
While I could tell you about the most popular or widely believed creation myths, your lives are exceedingly short, so I’ll skip to the ones I favor.īrahma is far from the only god in the Hindu religion. But let’s be honest, the stories with me are always better than the ones without. And while I’m neither a god nor a believer in any, I still appreciate a good story, especially one that has just a kernel of truth in it-even, selflessly enough, if it doesn’t include me. That hard work of trying to make sense of the world around them gave them a healthy respect for yours truly. Your ancestors drew the best conclusions they could from the information available to them through their weak human senses, just like you do.
Instead, they had gods: powerful, immortal, otherworldly beings who created and maintained the ever-changing universe. They didn’t know anything about the truth of the Big Bang. Your ancestors didn’t have this book, or the fancy machinery your scientists use, or the thousands of years’ worth of accumulated knowledge that you benefit from. Even that falls short, though-she’s not supervising a hundred billion stars.
It’s like if you learned about…oh, what’s something you humans admire? It’s like Beyoncé taking time out of her “busy” schedule to personally give you singing lessons. My telling you this story-my story-is a gift. Do you understand how lucky you are to be learning this kind of vital information directly from me, an actual galaxy? You’d probably be just as nonplussed if it were that almost-dwarf Larry writing this, though I guarantee you wouldn’t find Larry’s explanations nearly as entertaining.
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