Almost all creation myths before those related in Genesis are characterized by a holistic vision of the universe, in which nature precedes all other elements of the creation, that is to say, the human world, the animal world, and the world of spirits that will later become the world of divinities. “In bygone days, a long time ago, spirits and men lived in the same world, created by A-poe-mi-yeh, the great ancestor,” according to Akha and Hani legends (Southeast Asia) [Chenevière, 1986]. For the Iatmul of the Sepik River (Papua New Guinea), the earth acquired its shape when a spirit put its foot in the original muddy mass. In Samoa, plants are at the origin of life: when rotting, the first worms appeared from which the first humans were born. “At the beginning (that is during the mythical period), an Aranda myth says that in Ankota lived a man who came out of the earth without having a father or a mother.” [Levy-Bruhl, 1935] In every instance, nature, that these mythical and other beings populate, precedes them, and they depend on it for their survival.
Such a vision of an all-embracing nature does not allow any externality. In primitive mythologies, nature is the initial element – primordial waters, formless matter or chaos – and no one tries to ascertain its origin since it would forcibly destroy its primordiality. In other words, the idea of an entity that would exist outside nature and that would have created it is incompatible with the holistic vision of a primeval nature that acts as context preceding all creation.
Most creation myths use earth or water as primordial elements. For the Maidu Indians (North America), the universe was, at its beginning, only water and obscurity. For the Incas (Peru), obscurity reigned until the first creatures came out of the waters of the Titicaca Lake (Bolivia). And while obscurity was everywhere for the Kiowa (North America), water was omnipresent for the Cherokee, Creek and Iroquois Indians (North America) who concluded that the earth was first populated by creatures capable of surviving in a liquid element. For the Oneida Indians (North America), the earth was covered with water, and humans lived in a country situated in some superior region of the sky. In that country, death, illness, jealousy, hate and revenge did not exist.
Water is also at the origin of all life for the Tewa Indians (New Mexico), as well as for the Orok (Sakhalin). For the Tagalog (Philippines), in a country ravaged by cyclones, the collision of the sky and the earth gave birth to the spirits. At the beginning for the Diegueño Indians (North America), there only was the sky and the earth, the male sky weighing on the female earth. An identical idea is found among the Maori (New Zealand) for whom the sky and the earth were united in an eternal embrace. Their children separated them to create light.
In Nordic mythology as described in the poem Voluspa (Scandinavia), the confluence of two natural elements is at the origin of life. In the abyss that separates northern ice from southern fire, pieces of ice came in contact with fire and formed two initial bodies: the giant hermaphrodite Ymir and the cow Audumbla, whose milk fed Ymir.
The cow appears in Egypt under the shape of Hathor, who is the mother of the gods, and in India where it plays the role of “the envelope of the universe, because it is by having been sewn into the skin of a cow that the first man is born.” [Clement & Kristeva, 1998]
The raven is another animal that played an important role in the creation tales of human beings, though always against a background set by nature. In Haida mythology (North America), a raven frees the first humans jailed in a shellfish. This bird is also found in the Inuit mythology (Arctic Circle) in which the world is only water, flown over by a raven. For the Tlingit (North America), the raven must find its way in a world without light and water.
For others, the universe is born from an egg. It is out of a cosmic egg that Brahma arises, according to old Vedic scripture: “The divine one resided in that egg during a whole year, then he himself by his thought (alone) divided it into two halves; And out of those two halves he formed heaven and earth, between them the middle sphere, the eight points of the horizon, and the eternal abode of the waters.” [Laws of Manu]
Finally, we have seen in the first part the importance of the totem that in many places around the world (Australia, North America, etc.) refers to an animal (or a plant) as creator for every clan and sub-clan. The Kiwai of Papua New Guinea think that their original father is a crocodile, while the ancestor of the Orok (Sakhalin) is an eagle. For the Trobrianders (Papua New Guinea), every clan possesses an ancestor coming from a place situated in a group of rocks or coral that associates the clan with a territory, and that determines its hereditary customs. A particularly famous site in Kiriwina is Obukula, the place that saw the first four totemic animals appear – the iguana, the dog, the pork and the snake: these are the ancestors of the four matrilineal clans. [See also Totemism in Appendix Lang and Appendix Spencer]
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