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Dans le début il y avait une période
de chaos, quand de l'air, l'eau, et la matière ont été combinés dans
un mélange informe. Sur ceci a flotté un oeuf cosmique, dont ont résulté
Gaea (la terre) et Uranus (ciel). Ces deities ont créé la terre et ses
créatures et le soleil, la lune, et les étoiles. Ainsi les Grecs ont
expliqué la création.
Dans le début il y avait des personnes
saintes, supernatural et sacré, qui ont vécu au-dessous de la terre en
12 mondes inférieurs. Une grande inondation sous terre a forcé les
personnes saintes à ramper sur la surface de la terre par un roseau
creux, où elles ont créé le monde. La femme changeante a donné
naissance aux jumeaux de héros, appelés " Monster Slayer "
et " l'enfant des eaux " qui ont eu beaucoup d'aventures.
Mettez à la terre les personnes extérieures, mortals, ont été créés,
et le premier homme et la première femme ont été formés des oreilles
du maïs blanc et jaune. Ainsi le Navajo a expliqué la création.
Parmi les questions les plus
fondamentales soulevées par les êtres humains sont ceux d'origines .
Comment l'espèce humaine a-t-elle surgi? Comment la terre a-t-elle été
créée? Que diriez-vous du soleil? la lune? les étoiles? Pourquoi
avons-nous la nuit et le jour? Pourquoi peuplez la matrice? Aucune société
humaine ne manque des réponses à de telles questions. Tandis que ces réponses
changent considérablement en détail, elles sont, pour les peuples
primitifs en général, semblable sous leur forme de base: les gens et
le monde existent parce qu'ils ont été réalisés par une série
d'actes créateurs. D'ailleurs, cette création est habituellement
considérée comme le travail des êtres ou des forces supernatural. Les
comptes des voies desquelles ces agents supernatural ont formé la terre
et peopled la sont connus comme mythes d'origine .
Jusqu' à l'élévation de la science
moderne, les mythes d'origine ont fourni les seuls genres de réponses
possibles à de telles questions. Ainsi, les mythes incarnent l'état et
la limitation de la pensée humaine au sujet des origines pour plus que
99% de l'histoire humaine.
Bien que des mythes d'origine soient
habituellement assignés à la province de la religion, ils contiennent
un élément de la science: explication . Tandis que des leçons
morales peuvent être dispersées ici et là dans tous eux, les mythes
d'origine sont fondamentalement des voies de comptabilité pour des
choses car ils sont. L'explication, alors, n'est pas seule à ni il a
commencé par la science. La Science partage l'explication avec la
mythologie. Ce qui distingue la science de la mythologie est vérification.
Non seulement la science propose-t-elle des réponses, elle procède
tester ces réponses, et si les réponses prouvent incorrect, elles
doivent être rejetées ou modifiées. La mythologie diffère de ceci.
Un mythe d'origine offre une explication qui doit être crue. Est
l'acceptation, pas vérification, ce qu'est nécessité. Norsemen
antique a cru que les borealis d'aurora (lumières nordiques) étaient
des réflexions de lumière outre des boucliers des maidens de guerrier
le Valkyrie; les astronomes modernes nous disent qu'ils sont provoqués
par les vents solaires agissant l'un sur l'autre avec le champ magnétique
et les gaz atmosphériques de la terre. Toutes les deux sont des
explications, mais seulement un de ces explications peut être vérifié.
Quelle est explication? En bas, elle s'élève
à traduire l'inconnu dans connu, le peu familier dans le familier. Et
que les êtres humains savent-ils mieux? Eux-mêmes. Ils savent les gens
pensent et se sentent et agissent. Et d'une première partie très de
culture, les gens ont projeté des pensées et des émotions humaines au
monde externe, dotant des objets et des forces de nature avec la
personnalité humaine et la puissance grand-que-humaine. Les êtres
supernatural personnalisés créés ainsi ont été assignés le rôle
de fournir des explications plausibles et satisfaisantes pour l'inconnu.
De cette façon, des mythes d'origine ont été soutenus.
Un plus de mot au sujet d'explication.
Au coeur de l'explication se trouve la causation. L'idée de la
causation, encore, n'a pas été soutenue avec la science moderne, ni
des premiers philosophes grecs. Elle est beaucoup plus ancienne que
celle. En effet, la causation est très profondément enracinée dans la
pensée humaine. Parmi les Indiens de Kuikuru du Brésil central, par
exemple, d'une tribu que j'ai étudiée dans le domaine, une cause est
rapidement trouvée quand quelque chose de impropice ou peu commun se
produit. Ainsi, un homme a attribué un toothache à quelqu'un ayant
travaillé la sorcellerie sur un morceau de canne à sucre qu'il avait mâchée.
Un autre homme, dont le jardin de manioc était ravaged par des
peccaries, décidés qu'un ennemi avait mis une image d'un peccary dans
son jardin pour dessiner ces animaux à lui. La configuration causale de
la pensée j'ai trouvé parmi le Kuikuru se produit parmi les peuples
primitifs partout. Je pense qu'il est sûr de dire, puis, que la
recherche pour des causes, qui est si centrale à la science moderne,
est réellement un legs légué à la science par nos vieux ancêtres pré-scientifiques
de âge de pierre.
Cependant, le genre de causation utilisé
par les peuples primitifs est d'une sorte très spéciale. C'est causation
personnelle. C'est-à-dire, l'agent responsable d'une action a généralement
les attributs de la personnalité humaine. La causation impersonnelle,
un cachet de la science moderne, est considérée comme insuffisante par
les peuples primitifs. * Les forces impersonnelles
peuvent être la cause immédiate de quelque chose, mais elles
sont toujours étées à la base par les causes finales, qui sont
habituellement personnelles en nature. Ainsi, le Kuikuru savent que c'était
le vent qui a soufflé le toit outre d'une maison, mais portent-elles la
recherche de l'étape de l'explication une plus loin et demandent,
" qui a envoyé le vent? " Leur prétention implicite,
qu'elles ne semblent jamais remettre en cause, est qu'une certaine
personnalité, humain ou esprit, a dû diriger la force normale du vent
pour produire son effet. Comment pourrait-elle être autrement? Les
membres d'une société pré-instruite ne pourraient pas probablement
savoir que les causes physiques des orages cycloniques ont produit de la
haute dans l'atmosphère par les forces météorologiques complexes.
Pour être les peuples sûrs et
primitifs appliquez-vous la causation plus que juste aux questions immédiates
comme pourquoi la dent d'un homme blesse ou pourquoi son toit a enlevé
à l'air comprimé. Elles sont également intéressées à plus à
distance et à supporter des questions. Qui était le premier homme?
Comment les gens ont-ils appris à planter? Pourquoi le visage de la
lune est-il marqué? Que se produit après la mort? Pour des dizaines de
milliers d'années les gens avaient ouvré des réponses à ces
questions, les réponses qui sont incorporées dans le vaste corps des récits
imaginatifs que nous appelons des mythes d'origine au cours des cent
dernières années, les anthropologues ont développé un intérêt vif
pour des mythes d'origine et ont fait les collections et les analyses très
étendues d'eux.
Certains mythes sont tout sauf
l'universel, et leur distribution étendue certifie à leur grande
antiquité. Le meilleur exemple de ceci est le mythe célèbre
d'inondation. L'histoire d'inondation enregistrée dans la bible était
nullement original avec les Hébreux antiques, mais a été dérivée
par eux de l'épopée plus tôt de Gilgamesh des Babyloniens. Mais la
version babylonienne a à leur tour dessiné sur un mythe préexistant
d'inondation qu'aucun doute n'a retourné des milliers d'années plus tôt.
Si vieux est le mythe d'inondation, en fait, qu'il a eu une chance de répandre
loin et au loin. En effet, on le connaît à pratiquement chaque société
humaine d'Australie indigène à Tierra del Fuego.
On ne devrait pas faire l'erreur de la
croyance, cependant, cela juste parce qu'un mythe est connu dans le
monde entier, il doit nécessairement refléter une occurrence réelle.
L'proche-universalité d'une histoire d'inondation n'est plus de preuve
qu'une inondation a par le passé couvert la terre que la croyance répandue
dans un mythe de Fall-of-the-Sky est preuve cette le ciel est tombée
une fois réellement.
Mon ths
are not merely explanations, but also function to assure, encourage, and
inspire. They are also literary creations: narrative epics, full of
drama and romance, of novelty and imagination, of quest and conflict.
But while often having great literary merit, origin myths should not be
thought of as the work of a few creative geniuses. They are, instead,
the product of untold thousands of narrators who, in telling and
retelling a myth, have embellished it here, dropped a character there,
transposed two incidents, amplified a cryptic part, given greater motive
or justification to an action, and so on. Because they continuously
change, then, there is no "official " version o f a myth.
Indeed, even in the same village one may readily obtain half a dozen
versions of the same myth.
With these general considerations in
mind, let us turn now to a brief survey of the kinds of origin myths
found in the primitive world.
The view that the earth is the center of
the universe, which, until Copernicus, prevailed throughout Europe, was
by no means unique to Western thought. It is no doubt a legacy from
Stone Age times. After all, since the earth is the place where people
live and is what they know, and since people create the myths, why
shouldn't they place their planet at the center of the cosmos? Moreover,
if the earth is of prime importance to them - as it is - why not make
its creation primary in time as well? Thus, in primitive mythology, it
is the rule that the world was created first, and that the sun, the
moon, and the stars follow it. In fact, the sun, moon, and stars are
often mythological characters who first lived on earth but who, after a
series of adventures or misfortunes, ended up in the sky to find their
ultimate resting place as heavenly bodies.
A few societies have no myth to account
for the origin of the world. For them, the world has always existed.
More commonly, however, the earth is thought to have been created by the
actions of supernatural beings. Rarely, though, does a deity create the
world out of nothing: generally, he or she has something to work with.
Some Polynesian peoples, for example, believe that the sea was primeval,
and that the land was created by a god, Tane, who drove to the bottom
and came up with mud from which to fashion it. The Norse gods Odin, Vill,
and Ve made the world from the body of the giant Ymir, using his blood
for oceans, his bones for mountains, his hair for trees, and so on. It
is not unusual for several gods or culture heroes to be involved in the
creation, each contributing his or her portion to the final structure.
Beliefs about the origin of human beings
fall into three main types: (1) they have always existed on earth, (2)
they did not always exist but were created in some way, and (3) they
previously existed, but in another world, and had somehow to be brought
to this one.
The first belief is exemplified by the
Yanomamo of Venezuela about whom Napoleon Chagnon says, "The first
beings cannot be accounted for. The Yanomamo simply presume that the
cosmos originated with these people. " Usually, though, there is a
specific creation of the human species. The Norse god Odin created man
from ash wood and woman from alder. The Machiguenga of Peru believe the
were made by a god, Tasorinchi, who carved them out of balsa wood. The
Tlingit of Alaska say the Raven created not only the first human beings,
but also the first animals, as well as the sun, the moon, and the stars.
And of course, in the Biblical account, it was God who created the
progenitors of the human race, fashioning Adam out of clay and Eve from
one of his ribs.
The Warao of the Orinoco delta, on the
other hand, believe men first lived in a skyworld where the only animals
were birds. Then one day a hunter shot a bird with such force that his
arrow pierced the ground of the skyworld and continued to the earth
below. Peering through the hole and seeing a rich land beneath them,
teeming with all manner of game, the hunter attached a long cotton rope
to a tree and lowered himself to earth. There he was ultimately joined
by his fellows, who finally decided to abandon the skyworld and settle
permanently on earth. The Karaja of central Brazil reverse the process.
Their ancestors, they say, once dwelt in an underworld until one day one
of them climbed up a hole in the ground and out onto the surface of the
earth, where his fellow tribesmen later followed and where they
eventually settled.
Origin myths also explain the variety of
animal life that covers the world. Makunaima, a Guiana Carib culture
hero, climbed a large tree and with his stone axe cut off pieces of bark
which he threw into the water. One by one, they turned into all the
animals in the forest. Sedna, according to the Eskimo, cut off her
fingers, which turned into seals, whales, walruses,and other ocean
mammals. Often, particular incidents are introduced into an animal
creation myth to account for the size, shape, color, and peculiar habits
of each animal.
In almost all primitive myths there is a
close association between animals and men. Countless episodes tell of
the transformation of human beings into animals, or vice versa.
Animal-human matings occur commonly. Indeed, it is not uncommon for
animals to be regarded as the precursors of the human species - a crude
foreshadowing, in a way, of the theory of organic evolution.
A tribe's mythology accounts not only
for its own origins but also for that of other tribes. However, the
origin assigned to an enemy is likely to be unflattering. The Saliva of
Columbia, for example, say that their hated Carib enemies arose from
large worms in the putrefying entrails of a serpent-monster killed by a
Saliva culture hero. A common belief in the primitive world is that all
peoples were once a single tribe, living together and speaking the same
language. But then something happened (among the Tikuna of the Upper
Amazon it was the eating of two hummingbird eggs), and thereafter people
began to speak different languages, split into separate groups, and
dispersed far and wide. Here we see a clear parallel to the Biblical
story of the Tower of Babel.
Many primitive myths tell of a Golden
Age during which life was easy and pleasant, discord was unknown, tools
worked by themselves, no one ever died, and the like. Then something
went wrong, and ever since, travail, misfortune, and death have been the
lot of mankind. This notion of a Fall of Man is likewise familiar to
readers of the Bible.
In contrast to a Golden Age, there is
often a belief in the notion of a Primordial Simplicity. According to
this view, the earliest stage of the human race was one of ignorance and
innocence out of which the benighted were lifted by a god or culture
hero. This mythical being taught them many things - how to make tools,
how to build houses, how to plant crops, even how to copulate properly.
Among many elements of culture
purportedly unknown to the earliest people was fire. However, rather
than being given fire by the gods, most primitive peoples say they had
to steal it. In myth I recorded among the Amahuaca of eastern Peru, fire
was stolen from the stingy ogre, Yowashiko, by a parrot who flew away
with a burning brand in its beak. Angered by the theft, Yowashiko tried
to douse the flames by sending rain. However, other larger birds spread
their wings over the parrot, thus keeping the flames alive so that
eventually fire became available to everyone. This account is of course
reminiscent of Greek mythology, in which Prometheus stole fire from the
gods and gave it to mankind.
Origin myths often tell of a rudimentary
earth with many shortcomings and imperfections that, one by one, had to
be removed or overcome. One belief is that at first, night did not exist
and there was only day. The sun stood at zenith all the time and its
rays beat down unmercifully on the ancestors. Sleep was all but
impossible, and people lacked the privacy that only darkness can afford.
Some tribes say night did exist but it was the hidden possession of some
mythical being, and before everyone could reap its benefits, night had
to be found and released. The Tenetehara of eastern Brazil, for
instance, say that night belonged to an old woman who lived deep in the
forest and who kept it enclosed in several clay pots. It was finally
wrested from her and given to the tribe by a native hero named Mokwani.
The Kamayura of central Brazil and many
other tribes have the opposite belief. They hold that in the beginning
there was only night. It was so dark, in fact, that people could
not see to hunt or fish or plant, and so were slowly starving to death.
Then they discovered that the birds owned day and decided to get it from
them. Ultimately, they were successful, and day was sent to the Kamayura
decked in the brilliant plumage of the red macaw.
The foregoing myths are not merely
primitive curiosities, irrelevant to the Judeo-Christian view of the
origin of the world. Many of the mythological episodes recounted here
have close parallels in the Bible. These parallels, moreover, have long
been recognized by students of comparative religion as being extremely
significant. In his book, Folk-lore in the Old Testament (1918),
Sir James G. Frazer, the well-known scholar, scoured the anthropological
literature for these parallels and wrote "...I have attempted... to
trace some of the beliefs and institutions of ancient Israel backward to
earlier and cruder stages of thought and practice which have their
analogies in the faiths and customs of existing savages. " And in
this effort, he was successful. There is very little doubt among
anthropologists and Biblical scholars that many of the creation stories
in the Bible are really pre-Biblical, going back thousands of years.
In the eyes of anthropology, no culture
holds a privileged position. None is thought to be the unique recipient
of divine knowledge or benevolence. Each is recognized as the product of
two million years or more of a natural process of cultural evolution.
During these countless millennia, each society added to its own store of
origin myths elements from the mythology of near or distant tribes. The
result was that each society gradually developed an elaborate cosmogony,
which, while unique in certain particulars, nevertheless incorporated
many features that ultimately derived from the four corners of the
world.
Not until the rise of modern science
during the last few centuries has a different account of human and
cosmic origins emerged to challenge the picture presented by mythology.
Applying newly developed concepts and instruments, science has given us
a fuller and truer account of the origin of man and his universe than
was ever possible before. These explanations, constantly subjected to
verification and correction, have become ever more probable and more
precise.
Perhaps the account of how the world
began that has been patiently hammered out by science lacks the drama,
emotion, and romance of mythology. But what it may have lost in color,
it has gained in coherence and certitude. Anthropologists are ready to
argue that the exchange has been worth it. Moreover, without having to
accept the literal truth of origin myths, we can still glean from them a
vivid picture of how primitive peoples interpreted their world, and how
they used myth to justify the present and glorify the past. And while
all this tells us little or nothing of how human beings and the earth
actually began, it tells us much about the nature of human thought and
its modes of expression. This knowledge is of the greatest interest and
value to the science of the human race.
* The exception to
this rule is provided by magic, in which cause is thought to produce
effect by a kind of irresistible mechanical process working its way
without the intermediacy of personal agents.
Suggested Readings
- Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1961. Sumerian
Mythology. New York: Harper & Row
- Levi-Strauss, Claude.1969. The Raw
and the Cooked . New York: Harper & Row.
- Marriott, Alice, and Carol K Rachlin.
1968. American Indian Mythology . New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Co.
- Robinson, Herbert Spencer. 1976. Myths
and Legends of All Nations . Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams
& Co.
- Wilbert, Johannes. 1978. Folk
Literature of the Ge Indians . Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American
Center Publications.
- Wolverton, Robert E. 1966. An
Outline of Classical Mythology . Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams
& Co.
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Myths of the Gods
Many myths do not directly concern human beings, but focus rather on the
activities of the gods in their own realm. In many mythologies the gods
form a divine family, or pantheon (from the Greek pan, meaning
"all, " and theos, "god "). The story of a
power struggle within a pantheon is common to a large number of world
mythologies?for example, the Babylonian Enuma elish centers on
Marduk's struggle for supremacy and his eventual victory over Tiamat.
Greek mythology features a similar story of struggle between
generations. In Greek mythology, the earliest gods were Gaea (Earth) and
Uranus (Heaven), and their children were called the Titans. The eldest
of the Titans, Cronus, overthrew his father and was eventually
overthrown by his own son, Zeus, who became the new master of the
universe. Similarly, the Aesir?the pantheon of the Norse gods?had to
overcome an older group called the Vanir before gaining power.
Across cultures, mythologies tend to
describe similar characters. A common character is the trickster. The
trickster is recklessly bold and immoral, but through his inventiveness
he often helps human beings. In Greek mythology, Hermes (best known as
the messenger of the gods) was a famous trickster. Other tricksters of
mythology are the West African god Eshu, who tricked the supreme god
Olodumare into abandoning the earth to dwell in heaven; the Indian god
Krishna, whose trickery often aims at a higher moral purpose; and the
Native American Coyote, who scattered the once-orderly stars in the sky
and strewed the plants on earth.
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Myths of
Heroes
Nearly all cultures have produced
myths about heroes. Some heroes, such as the Greek Achilles, have one
mortal and one divine parent. Others are fully human but are blessed
with godlike strength or beauty. Many myths about heroes concern
significant phases of the hero's career, such as the circumstances of
the hero's birth, a journey or quest, and the return home.
The birth and infancy of a
mythological hero is often exceptional or even miraculous. In the
ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world, the births of many heroes
followed similar patterns. Many heroes were often left to die at a ver
young age but miraculously survived. Other heroes were immediately able
to care for themselves. They performed astonishing feats of strength as
children.
Most heroes set off on a quest or a
journey of some kind. One of the earliest tales of a hero's journey is
the Babylonian story known as the Gilgamesh epic, written in cuneiform
on 12 clay tablets in about 2000 BC. The hero, Gilgamesh, embarks on a
quest for immortality. In Greek and Roman mythology the stories of Jason
and of Aeneas likewise describe journeys or quests. Another narrative
that may be interpreted as a heroic journey is the biblical story of the
Hebrew prophet Moses.
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