Think Outside the Garden – Origin Myths

The Highest Cauldron

by Anita Sullivan

EUGENE Oregon—(Weekly Hubris)—12/5/11—My husband recently published a new translation and commentary on the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and subtitled it “Tales of the Earliest World.” This has prompted an extended conversation between us on the matter of human origins, and an expanded look at folktales from all over the world about Beginnings of Things.

Many of these tales, in my irreverent opinion, are way more interesting than the one that took place in the Garden of Eden. Which wasn’t really a garden anyhow, but more like a forest.

Folktales everywhere have a tendency to be local, so that a person viewing a beginning-story from a distance, will notice stuff sticking out around the edges. The Klamath Indian (Oregon) human origin myth begins “There was no land, only a great lake. Kamukamts came from the north in a canoe. It floated along. It stopped.” If this is an origin myth, what about the lake? And where did he get his canoe?

This is like asking where did Cain and Abel find their wives. Upon close examination, the Garden of Eden tale truly resembles, in its most charming parts, many other human-origin folk tales around the globe. I find this to be quite a relief.

“In the beginning, the emitted beings were greatly afflicted with hunger,” says an Origin Myth from the Mahābhārata, and this gives me goose bumps. Later, it continues, “Sprinkled with the resins of effulgence of the moon, the sun that had gone into the earth was born as the nourishing plants of the six flavors.” Doubtless if I were a local member of the ancient group who made up this tale, I would have tasted each of the six flavors, and would know their names.

Of course there are thousands of folk tales about the origins of things other than human beings: corn, mountains, spiders, fire, and so on. Some of these are quite lively and lengthy, and attain the status of epics (as in the Tzutujil Mayan tale of Holy Boy). Creation out of the void doesn’t have much scope as a story. For example, the “Genesis” myth of the Kato Indians goes like this :

“Water went they say. Land was not they say. Water only then, mountains were not, they say. Stones were not they say. . . . .” and after a long list of things that were not, the tale ends “It was very dark.”

Many early folktales – such as the Popol Vuh of the Quiché Mayans – put humans on the earth long before the sun and moon, and they stumble around in a sort of twilight purgatory for ages. In the Lower Pecos River region of South Texas and Northern Mexico, the original humans made a long pilgrimage to witness the first rising of the sun on Dawn Mountain. Local descendants of the early tribes continue to re-enact that journey every year, with great attention to detail. They believe the world would come to an end if they stopped honoring this tale. We owe them a great debt of gratitude.