Universal Motifs in Creation Myths

Have you ever noticed why so many creation myths seem to talk about the same thing? The world being created by the body of a god is a common one. Many myths mention how humans at one point got destroyed or wiped out, or something happened that made their lives difficult forever. The most common motif I seemed to find is that humans were made from organic material such as bones left from dead gods, clay, mud, corn, trees, and even tears. It never occurred to me how so many motifs had so many similar things in them. Organic material The more commonly noticed motif is how humans always seem to come from some kind of organic material. The Yoruba and Inuit created humans out
The Chinese myth describes how when Pan-gu died, his body formed huge mountains, his skull formed the top of the sky, his hair formed all flowers and plants, his bones turned to jade and pearl, his arms and legs became the four directions. Also, Pan-gu’s blood became the rivers, his breath the wind, and his voice thunder, and finally, one eye became the sun and the other the moon. In the Egyptian myth, Geb is the earth, and Nut is the sky. These two are all tangled together, so Shu, god of air, pushed them apart. After Odin and the other gods slew Ymir in the Norse creation myth, Ymir’s huge body formed the earth, his blood the sea, his flesh became the land, his bones made up the mountains, and his hair made the trees. Odin and the other gods formed the sky with Ymir’s skull by holding it up with four large pillars. In the beginning of the Enuma Elish creation, it mentions how the two gods, Apsu and Tiamat, made the sweet water sea and the salt water sea. After a war that killed Tiamat’s army, the god Marduk raised half or Tiamat’s body to form the sky and the other half to form the earth. So many things also happened in the Maori creation. Rangi and Papa formed the earth and the sky. When their children managed to push them apart because they were so tightly embraced, Papa’s blood became the red clay land, and