Humanity’s Beginnings In Creation And Origin Myths From Around The World

Abstract

Over past years, central topic of author's creation myth research has been origin of human race, as imagined in stories about humanity's primordial times. Here, author goes into a few aspects of patterns in creation and origin myths, using examples from Chinese as well as other stories. Time plays a special role in origin myths. Formally speaking, most stories refer literally to the beginning in their first sentences. All creation and origin myths are set in a context of time and space, they all present events and characters. And most of stories discuss a general process going from chaos to order, and describe, briefly or extensively, what happened before heaven and earth had taken form, and how gods prepared earth as a more or less bearable place where people have spent their lives ever since. Keywords: beginnings; creation; humanity's primordial times; origin myths