A Comparison Of Origin Stories

Origin stories tell how the Earth and humans came to be and are diverse among many cultures but there are also similarities among many told around the world. Traditions and religions are significant factors, which shows the overlapping of thoughts as well as the variety in ideas of how the world has come to be. The origin stories in our textbook focused mainly on stories told by Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, Greece and Rome, Islam, Japan, Maya, and Judaeo-Christian. All of these countries have different cultures and beliefs, but somehow their origin stories showed some similarities in how they thought the Earth and humans developed. While reading these creation stories and from our discussions in class, similarities stood out mostly in

Mainly in the stories of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, Judaeo-Christian and Islam all explained how humans were either made from clay or from dust and the gods breathed life into the figurines, creating humans. As well as in many of the stories, they all contained how god wanted company or wanted someone else to have a role in maintaining the life on Earth and therefore they made humans serve, worship and praise them of their creation. A prominent element in all of the stories would be the relation to water and to animals. Some events would be how Earth was formed from the waters of chaos, how the lotus came into being, how Earth was created by the stirring of the ocean and the creation of humans from clay. As for animals, there was a resemblance in many of the stories of animals being made prior to the creation of humans. These events significantly showed how important the factors of water and animals were to people and how everyone around the world greatly valued them. These sources provided them to be able to hunt for food, have fur for clothes, to drink, to irrigate crops, to bathe but also many more. Overall, the origin stories contained many similarities that not only a couple of them shared by many of them did, it shows although how diverse other cultures may be but the necessities and belief and thoughts that we have are all shared among

In Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Japan, and Greece and Rome stories, they were all polytheistic. They had various creators and involved many gods and goddesses which in ways they all had a role in creating Earth, while the other stories were monotheistic, containing a single creator in many cases it was only god. Another distinction among these stories was how the Earth was created. The Maya and Islam stories both believed that Earth was already created and many of the others indicated that Earth had been created from chaos and the gods were the ones who formed Earth and many other elements, amidst of the chaos. Another interesting difference in some particular stories, was when Earth formed it was then destroyed by calamity and therefore had a god whose role was to recreate Earth. Although there were few prominent differences in the origins stories, the diversity in the stories displayed a wide range of cultures and religions around the