Aborigine Mythology - Creation

Many Aborigine creation myths call the period of creation Dreamtime. During this time, the world, man, animals, plants, and nature were created and named out of existing matter (as opposed to out of nothing) by supernatural beings who later disappeared into the earth or the sky.

In many myths, the earth was a featureless plain in the beginning. It was shaped into the landscape that Australia is today by awakened beings such as giant serpents who writhed across its surface and up into the void, shaping valleys and mountains where none had been before. Some of these supernatural beings became ancestors of legendary Aborigine heroes.

The structure of the Aborigine universe consisted of three planes, the earth, the sky, and the underworld. The earth was flat and circular, covered by a dome of sky, above which was the sky plane. The sky plane was where the heroes and supernatural beings lived, and was also where a human's soul went after it died. The underworld was believed to be either uninhabited and dark, or inhabited with humans much like the earth plane; it was where the sun and the moon traveled each night or day to return to the east and rise again.

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The Dawn and Dusk of Man is a Thinkquest Mythology Project by Sheila, Min, Ana and Tencia of Montgomery Blair High School.