The ability to explain the creation of the world is one unique to mythology and religion. Practically every culture in the world has had some way or another to explain the fundamental question of how the Earth, along with its many land and life forms, came to be in existence. Many cultures however, have separate stories of how humanity came about, and how the celestial bodies were created. The creation of humanity is covered under another theme: The Making of Mankind.

Coming back to the central idea of the creation of the world itself, there are mainly two concepts that were adopted by people around the prehistoric world. The first idea was that of a divine being who single-handedly created the world by explicit intention, which is clearly illustrated in the following examples:

Africa: Divine Intervention
Most people in Africa believed in the existence of a supreme being who made the world single handedly, although the gods themselves vary. One example would be the Tiv people who populate Northern Nigeria today. They believed their god to have carved the world out of wood, in the image of what he thought was utopia.

Japan: Izanagi and Izanami
The Japanese believed that the world was created by the two gods, Izanagi and Izanami. The two stirred the ocean with a jewelled spear and later used their different genders to create the islands of Japan, and subsequently, the whole world.

The alternative form school of thought is that of the world being a natural, accidental process that needed no external help to happen.

Norse
Norse mythology tells of the creation of the world when the fire from the southern realms mixed with the ice from the northern realms in the middle, causing the formation and melting of ice, which birthed the primeval cow, and the giant, Ymir.

Yet, few cultures describe creation without any intention at all. Most cultures present a mix of both ideas, describing the world with a natural beginning and intentional creation after that.

Greek
According to the Greeks, the physical world was created and embodied by Mother Earth, Gaia. Gaia herself was a product out of the chaos that reigned before her evolution. Mother Earth later produced a son named Uranus, and together they formed the heavens and the earth.

China
Some Chinese believe in creation having been the work of the giant Pangu. Pangu was born out of a cosmic egg, whose existence seems to have been taken for granted. When Pangu broke the egg, the lighter parts became the heavens whilst the heavier parts became the land.

Yet, other common traits run deep in the different mythological pantheons across the ancient world. A common idea was that of the cosmic egg, where the world started with the hatching of some sort of an egg in the middle of the cosmos. Another common idea was the world having emerged from a body of water. This can be seen in one Egyptian creation myth, where the world started with the rising of land out from the sea. In Native American mythology, the first land was created when a toad placed mud upon a turtles back. Lastly, in Japanese mythology, as mentioned above, the islands of Japan were created from the stirring of the sea.

Next: Part Two >>