A Comparison of Two Creation Myths

Can religions and cultures be anything more than their history? Why do we have a concept of history in the first place? Obviously history exists, but like the human ability to conceive of the future, history seems to be a rare phenomenon tied with our ability for language and the telling of stories. What’s even more fascinating is the human ability to make up a history or to tell a story, such as a creation myth, that seeks to explain something that has not been witnessed by anyone and does not have any role in finding food or creating shelter. We do not have a physical need to know how the earth came to be or to know how it is that we came to be here. Still, creation stories exist in almost all human cultures and, amazingly, many share many of the same elements. The question is, why? Is it a coincidence that so many of them share the same elements? By looking at a comparison of two creation stories, we should be able to understand the meaning of these similarities better.

Just look at two creation stories side-by-side and you should easily see their similarities. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to take one unknown creation story and compare it to one from one’s own culture. Below is an example of a Mongolian creation myth:

Long long ago God descended to earth and made a man and a

woman out of clay. Before returning to heaven to get some holy

water with the power to animate anything, he ordered his dog and

cat to protect the clay people from the devil. After God ascended

to heaven, the devil came to harm the people. The dog and the

cat protected them, though, thwarting the devil's plan. Finally,

the devil deceived them by giving a piece of meat to the dog and

a bowl of milk to the cat. While the dog ate the flesh and the cat

lapped the milk, the devil urinated on the people and fled.

When God returned with the holy water and discovered what

had happened, he was enraged. Scolding the dog and cat for

neglecting their duty, he forced the cat to lick the hair off the bodies

of the people whom the devil had defiled (God created humans

with hair all over their bodies). The cat licked off the hair everywhere

except their heads, armpits, and crotches, since the former