Exploring The World Of Mythology
It is the nature of man to wonder about the unknown and explain the inexplicable. It is also this craving for knowledge that has inspired man to create wonderful stories of his origin. Though fictional, these stories have firmly established their presence in ancient artifacts, manuscripts, and paintings. Evidence from archeological discoveries has further proven that early people regard fabricated stories not as myths, but as the profound truth. The interesting component about these stories is that, despite the isolation caused by geographical barriers, many cultures have developed creation myths containing the same basic elements of nothingness chaos, creation of humans, and the explanation for natural phenomena.
People from the past wondered how the Earth was created. Every culture has its own version of the story, but only three of them complied with the curiosity of the mind. They are the Chinese, the Babylonians, and the Christians, and all agree upon the same explanation: Earth begins from nothingness chaos. The Chinese illustrates the concept of nothingness as a dark swirling confusion, over and under, round and round. Nothing exists except chaos, which is, "unformed and unillumined."(Birch, 8) The Babylonians approved of the theory. Their version of the beginning is akin to the Chinese myth, but slightly modified to compensate for the lack of water. In Babylonian mythology, nothing existed on Earth except a great deep of water, which is vast, undivided, and bottomless. The only occupants of the Earth was darkness and silence, surrounding the water in the beginning of Earth. In Christian myth, the description of the beginning is strikingly similar to that of the Chinese and Babylonian. The reoccurring idea of darkness, shapelessness, and nothingness form the core of Christian creation myth, as described in the Bible: In the beginning of Creation, when God made heaven and Earth, the Earth was without form and void, with darkness...
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