Do not stick your fingers into the socket. Coffee at night to drink - too. Be sure to wash your hands before eating. Every day we are faced with unspoken rules that we follow. And we believe the facts known since childhood. But do they all deserve our faith? Let's figure it out

Do not stick your fingers into the socket. Coffee at night to drink - too. Be sure to wash your hands before eating. Every day we are faced with unspoken rules that we follow. And we believe the facts known since childhood. But do they all deserve our faith? Let's take a look at the biggest myths of everyday life.

Myth 1: Quickly picked up is not considered "fallen"

There is a “five second rule”: if food that has fallen on the floor is quickly picked up, it will be completely edible and harmless. In fact, germs sit on the floor, and when they see food, they immediately sit on it. This is especially true in the kitchen, where salmonella bacteria thrive. Are you still hungry from the floor?

Myth 2: The acid will burn your skin and disfigure you

In fact, there are hundreds of different acids, and most of them are not strong enough to damage the skin. We regularly consume several weak acids: acetic and citric. However, some acids can be harmful. Hydrochloric, nitric and sulfuric acids can damage the skin, but the list of strong acids is rather short.

Myth 3: Brain cells do not regenerate

In fact, they are recovering. The reason people believe this myth is because scientists have long believed that the complex brain will be damaged if new cells grow. In 1998, scientists from the Swedish and California universities found that brain cells regenerate. The learning and memory centers in the brain can create new cells. Later, at Georgia State University, stem cell researcher Steve Stice discovered the process of making copies of embryonic stem cells that can transform into brain cells.

Myth 4: A coin falling from a great height will kill a person

Not so long ago we wrote about a meteorite that landed in a woman's thigh. She got off with a bruise. People believe that if you throw a coin at a person from the height of the Empire State Building, it will pick up enough speed to kill him. But this is not true. Given the aerodynamic nature of the coin and its low weight, the person will remain alive. He will feel the blow, he may be unpleasant, but that's all.

Myth 5: Lightning does not strike twice in the same place

Lightning can strike the same place multiple times. This happens quite often. In the aforementioned Empire State Building, she hits 25 times a year, for example. Lightning targets tall buildings and trees, but in an open field, lightning is more than likely to strike the tallest object twice before moving far enough to find another tall target.

Myth 6: Evolution means growth from the bottom up

In fact, although natural selection selects more acceptable genes from the gene pool, imperfect organisms do just fine. Mosses, mushrooms, sharks and crayfish, for example, have remained unchanged for quite a long period of time. Other species have changed a lot, and not always in such a way that the improvements are obvious. Developing to be "in shape" does not mean that there will be progress in development - it will simply be easier to survive and reproduce in a familiar environment.

Myth 7: Cold causes colds

In fact, the common cold is caused by a viral infection in the respiratory tract. Viruses don't magically appear in your body just because you forgot your scarf and mittens. For the most part, we shake hands with viruses when we come into close contact with other people who are already infected, which means you put yourself at greater risk of getting sick by staying at home with a coughing family than if you wandered through a cold forest without a hat. but one.

Myth 8: Childhood vaccination causes autism

In fact, there is no evidence that childhood vaccinations cause autism spectrum disorders. This myth has a clear origin story. In 1998, an article in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet reported that a common childhood vaccine could lead to ASD. But firstly, this article was rejected and apologized, and secondly, there were no scientific works confirming the factual content of the article. Despite this, many parents refused to vaccinate their children. Well, Voltaire considered superstition the most terrible enemy of the human race.

Myth 9: Rubber tires protect the car from lightning

In fact, tires do nothing to save a car from a lightning strike. If you are caught in a thunderstorm while driving, of course, it will be safer inside the car than outside. Automobiles provide reliable protection against lightning, but not in the way you think. When lightning strikes a car, it hits the metal frame, which protects passengers by acting as a conductor and discharging the charge to the ground. It is logical to assume that a convertible or a motorcycle will not protect you in any way from a lightning strike, even though they have rubber tires.

Myth 10: Children go crazy with sugar

In reality, let the kids eat their cookies. The researchers found no significant association between sugar consumption and hyperactivity. An analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 16 qualified scientists were unable to determine a significant relationship between sugar intake and cognitive performance or behavior. Of course, sugar primarily affects obesity (and other problems), which means that parents still need to take cotton candy from their children on time.

Myth 11: The Big Bang Theory explains how the universe was created

In fact, the Big Bang theory only reflects our observations of the early universe: it initially underwent a massive and rapid growth that continues to this day. The physicist Joao Magueijo completely defends the scientific views that during the existence of the early Universe the speed of light was greater than now (why it is constant and maximum - read here). The central meaning of the Big Bang theory is to explain the beginning of the expansion of the universe, and not how it came into being. What happened before the Big Bang is another question.

Myth 12: Earth is closer to the Sun in summer

No no and one more time no. For people living at the equator, this is exactly the opposite: the Earth is closer to the Sun in January. But for people living in the Southern Hemisphere, January is the best time to sunbathe on the beach and drink cold lemonade. What are the reasons for the change of seasons? It's the tilt of the Earth's axis. The earth wobbles as it rotates. Summer is when the globe receives the most direct sunlight; in winter, the sun's rays reach the earth at an oblique angle.

Myth 13: Humans are descended from chimpanzees

In fact, when you look at a chimpanzee, you are not looking at your great-grandfather, you are looking at a distant relative. Humans and chimpanzees are descended from a common ancestor. 95% of human and chimpanzee DNA are the same, but that says a lot about how similar our bodies are. At some point, our genetic paths diverged, so humans and chimpanzees began to develop according to different genetic codes.

Myth 14: Antibiotics kill viruses

In fact, antibiotics are wonderful targeted poisons that help your body kill bacteria—bacteria, not viruses. Moreover, the virus cannot be killed at all, because it is not alive initially. When a noxious cough or cold takes hold of us, we all want to take a pill and get rid of them. Unfortunately, the germs that cause colds and flu cannot be fought this way, and in many cases, antibiotics can exacerbate the problem. Listen to the doctor, do not self-medicate.

Myth 15: The full moon drives people crazy

In fact, you will only kill on a full moon if you are a werewolf. For centuries, almost all cultures have attributed mystical powers and the influence of otherworldly beings to the bright and round face of the full moon. In English, the words "lunacy" (madness) and "lunatic" (crazy) originate from the words "lunar" - associated with the moon, of course. But despite human prejudices, science does not find a significant connection between the phases of the moon and acts of murder, aggression, madness, vandalism, or rituals of human sacrifice.

Myth 16: Nails continue to grow after you die

Not really. Just think: why would you? Body tissues need to burn energy from food in order to continue growing. Humans do not continue to eat or digest food after death. In addition, in the event of death, the heart stops pumping blood. How will the fingers get the oxygen needed to keep the tissues alive and produce new keratin? The same applies to hair.

Myth 17: A coin on the rails will derail the train

Well, try it. Freight trains weigh many thousands of tons. With that kind of success, you can claim to capsize a tanker with a single firecracker. Trains, at times, did not roll over and were under the threat of a more massive one: cars or stones. The legs of the myth grow from here: once upon a time, many people tried to align a coin on the rails and suffered seriously, even to death.

Myth 18: Bats are blind

Thank you very much, bats see perfectly. Chiroderma villosum, for example, has eyes, and those eyes work great. Where did this myth come from? Like dogs, bats rely heavily on other senses, such as hearing and smell. With the help of an advanced echolocation system, bats can navigate in the dark and hunt for almost invisible prey. Bats love the night, unlike humans, who for some reason decided that the eyes of night hunters perform a rudimentary function.

According to some, the world was created by Allah, Yahweh, the One God - whatever you call it, but we owe our lives to him. Not a big bang, not natural cosmic processes, but a creature that I think looks like Alanis Morisette. But this was not always the case, once every nation offered its own version of the creation of life with the participation of sweat, masturbating gods and other heresy.

Scandinavians

According to the Scandinavians, in the beginning there was a void with the complex name Ginungagap. Next to the void, as it should be, was the frozen world of darkness Niflheim, and in the south lay the fiery hot land of Muspellheim. And that's where elementary physics comes in. Some ancient Scandinavian, noticing that hoarfrost appears from the contact of ice and fire, ventured to suggest that from such a neighborhood the world's void was gradually filled with poisonous hoarfrost. What happens when poisonous frost melts? He usually transforms into evil giants. The same thing happened here, and an evil giant was formed from the hoarfrost, whose name gives off Muslim notes. In other words, Ymir. He was asexual, but since this, according to James Brown, is "Man's World", we will refer to him as a man.

There was nothing to do in this emptiness, and, tired of hanging in the air, Ymir fell asleep. And here the most delicious begins. Considering that there is nothing more intimate than sweat (meaning secondary urine, not the Cambodian dictator), they came up with the idea that the sweat dripping from under his armpits turned into a man and a woman, from whom the family of giants later went. And the sweat dripping from his feet gave birth to Trudgelmir, a giant with six heads. This is the story of the emergence of giantism. Yes, and with a twist.

And the ice continued to melt, and, realizing that they needed something to eat, they invented a cow with the beautiful name Audumlu, which arose from melt water. Ymir began to drink her milk, and she liked to lick the salty ice. Having licked off the ice, she found a man under it, his name was Buri, the progenitor of all gods. How did he get there? This fantasy was not enough.

Buri had a son, Boryo, who married the frost giantess Bestla, and they had three sons: Odin, Vili, and Ve. The sons of the Storm hated Ymir and killed him. The reason is purely noble: Ymir was evil. So much blood flowed from the body of the murdered Ymir that she drowned all the giants, except for Bergelmir, the grandson of Ymir, and his wife. They managed to escape the flood in a boat made from a tree trunk. Where did the tree come from in the void? Do you really care! Found it and that's it.

Then the brothers decided to create something that the world has never seen before. Your own universe with a dragon and the Vikings. Odin and his brothers brought Ymir's body to the center of Ginungagapa and created a world out of it. They threw the flesh into the blood - and the earth became. Blood, respectively, by the ocean. The skull turned into the sky, and the brain was scattered across the sky, and clouds turned out. So the next time you fly in an airplane, catch yourself thinking that you are in the skull of a giant on a huge bird, cutting the brains of giants.

The gods ignored only the part in which the giants lived. It was called Jotunheim. They fenced off the best part of this world for centuries of Ymir and settled people there, calling it Midgard.
Finally, the gods created humans. From two woody knots, a man and a woman, Ask and Embla (which is typical), turned out. All other people are descended from them.

The latter built the impregnable fortress Asgard, which rose high above Midgard. These two parts were connected by the Bifrost rainbow bridge. Among the gods, the patrons of people, there were 12 gods and 14 goddesses (they were called "ases"), as well as a whole company of other smaller deities (vans). All this host of gods crossed the rainbow bridge and settled in Asgard.
Above this layered world grew the ash tree Yggdrasil. Its roots sprouted in Asgard, Jotunheim and Niflheim. An eagle and a hawk sat on the branches of Yggdrasil, a squirrel rushed up and down the trunk, deer lived at the roots, and below all sat the serpent Nidhogg, who wanted to eat everything.

This is the beginning of one of the most wonderful world mythologies. Reading "Elder" and "Younger" Edd will not make you regret the time spent for a second.

Slavs

Let us turn to our ancestors, as well as to the ancestors of the Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs and other Slavic peoples. There was no one specific myth, there were several of them, and not one of them is approved by the ROC.

There is a version that it all started with the god Rod. Before the white light was born, the world was shrouded in pitch darkness. In this darkness there was only Rod - the Progenitor of all things. When asked what was before - an egg or a chicken, the Slavs would answer that the egg, because the Rod was enclosed in it. Sitting in an egg was not very good, and in some magical way, some, to the extent of their licentiousness, understood how, Rod gave birth to love, which, ironically, he called Lada, and destroyed the dungeon with the power of love. Thus began the creation of the world. The world is filled with Love.

At the beginning of the creation of the world, Rod gave birth to the kingdom of heaven, and under it created the heavenly. With a rainbow he cut the umbilical cord, and with a stone firmament he separated the Ocean from the heavenly waters. Then there were household trifles like the separation of Light and Darkness. Then the god Rod gave birth to the Earth, and the Earth plunged into a dark abyss, into the Ocean. Then the Sun came out of His face, the Moon out of His chest, the stars of heaven out of His eyes. Clear dawns appeared from Rod's eyebrows, dark nights from His thoughts, violent winds from His breath, rain, snow and hail from His tears. Thunder and lightning is nothing but his voice. Actually, Rod is all living things, the father of all gods and all things.

Rod gave birth to the heavenly Svarog, and breathed into him his mighty spirit, and gave him the ability to look in all directions at the same time, which is very useful today, so that nothing hides from him. It is Svarog who is responsible for the change of day and night and for the creation of the Earth. He forces a gray duck to get the land hidden under the ocean. There were no more deserving ones.

At first, the duck did not appear for a year, could not get the Earth, then again Svarog sent her for the Earth, she did not appear for two years and did not bring it again. For the third time, Rod could not stand it anymore, freaked out, struck the duck with lightning and gave it freaky strength, and the shocked duck was absent for three years until it brought a handful of earth in its beak. Svarog crushed the Earth - the winds blew the Earth from his palm, and it fell into the blue sea. The Sun warmed it, the Earth baked on top with a crust, the Moon cooled it. He approved in it three vaults - three underground kingdoms. And so that the Earth would not go back to the Ocean, Rod gave birth to a powerful snake Yusha under it.

It was generally accepted among the Carpathian Slavs that there was nothing but the blue sea and oak. How they got there is not specified. Two positive doves were sitting on an oak tree, who decided to take out fine sand from the bottom of the sea in order to create black earth, “jelly water and green grass” and a golden stone from which the blue sky, the sun, the moon and all the stars are made.

As for the creation of man, there was, of course, no natural selection. The Magi said the following. God washed in the bath and sweated, wiped himself with a cloth and threw it from heaven to earth. And Satan argued with God, which of her to create a man. And the devil created man, and God put his soul into him, because when a man dies, his body goes to the ground, and his soul goes to God.

The ancient legend about the creation of people is also found among the Slavs, in which it was not without eggs. God, cutting the eggs into halves, threw them on the ground. Here, from one half a man was obtained, and from the other - a woman. Men and women, formed from the halves of one egg, find each other and marry. Some halves fell into the swamp and died there. Therefore, some people are forced to spend their whole lives alone.

China

The Chinese have their own ideas about how the world came into being. The most popular myth can be called the myth of Pan-gu, a giant man. The plot is as follows: at the dawn of time, Heaven and Earth were so close to each other that they merged into a single black mass. According to legend, this mass was nothing more than an egg, which was a symbol of life in almost every nation. And Pan-gu lived inside it, and he lived for a long time - many millions of years. But one day he got tired of such a life, and, waving a heavy ax, Pan-gu got out of his egg, splitting it into two parts. These parts later became Heaven and Earth. He was unimaginably tall - about fifty kilometers long, which, by the standards of the ancient Chinese, was the distance between Heaven and Earth.

Unfortunately for Pan-gu, and fortunately for us, Colossus was a mortal and, like all mortals, he died. And then Pan-gu decomposed. But not the way we do it. Pan-gu was decomposing really cool: his voice turned into thunder, his skin and bones became the firmament of the earth, and his head became Cosmos. So, his death gave life to our world.

Ancient Armenia

Armenian legends are very similar to Slavic ones. True, the Armenians do not have a clear answer to how the world happened, but there is an interesting explanation of how it works.

Heaven and Earth are husband and wife separated by the ocean. The sky is a city, and the Earth is a piece of rock, which is held on its huge horns by an equally huge bull. When he shakes his horns, the earth is bursting at the seams with earthquakes. That, in fact, is all - this is how the Armenians imagined the Earth.

There is also an alternative myth where the Earth is in the middle of the sea, and Leviathan swims around it, trying to grab onto its own tail, and constant earthquakes were also explained by its flopping. When Leviathan finally bites his own tail, life on Earth will end and the apocalypse will come. Have a nice day.

Egypt

The Egyptians have several myths about the creation of the earth, and one is more striking than the other. But this one is the original. Thanks to the cosmogony of Heliopolis for such details.

In the beginning there was a great ocean whose name was "Nu", and this ocean was Chaos, and there was nothing else besides it. It wasn't until Atum, by an effort of will and thought, created himself out of this Chaos. And you complain about the lack of motivation ... But then - more and more interesting. So, he created himself, now it was necessary to create the earth in the ocean. Which he did. Having wandered around the earth and realizing his total loneliness, Atum became unbearably bored, and he decided to make more gods. How? He climbed up the hill and began to do his dirty work, desperately masturbating.

Thus Shu and Tefnut were born from the seed of Atum. But, apparently, he overdid it, and the newborn gods were lost in the ocean of Chaos. Atum grieved, but soon, to his relief, he nevertheless found and regained his children. He was so happy about the reunion that he wept for a long, long time, and his tears, touching the earth, fertilized it - and people grew out of the earth, many people! Then, while people were fertilizing each other, Shu and Tefnut also had coitus, and they gave birth to other gods - Geb and Nut, who became the personification of the Earth and sky.

There is another myth in which Atum replaces Ra, but this does not change the main essence - there, too, everyone fertilizes each other en masse.

Myths of the Old and New Worlds. From the Old to the New World: Myths of the peoples of the world Yuri Berezkin

How did the earth

How did the earth

The stone that fell from heaven

Cosmogonies are mythological narratives describing the origin of earth and sky. Further, it is usually told about the appearance of other important, but more private objects - luminaries, plants, animals, people. But if there are practically no peoples who do not have myths about the appearance of heavenly bodies or about the origin of human ancestors (exceptions are most likely due to gaps in our knowledge), then it is more difficult with earth and sky. In classical mythologies recorded in the literary monuments of antiquity and the Middle Ages (Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian, ancient Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Scandinavian, ancient Indian, West Semitic, Hittite-Hurrian), stories about the origin of the world occupy an important place. However, there are many traditions to which such a topic is alien. The mythology of Africa is problematic in this sense. In the west of the continent, complex narratives about the initial stages of the existence of the world are recorded. However, it is not always clear what is genuine in them and what is the fruit of the "creativity" of the ethnographer-philosopher and his informants. These cosmogonies defy classification and are difficult to compare with each other. Even if they are at least partially authentic, the time of their appearance cannot be long.

In Central and South Africa, in Australia, in many parts of South and Central America, the appearance of heaven and earth is not described. Even the simplest motive for separating them from each other is not always encountered. It is also difficult to classify those cosmogonies in which everything is reduced to the creative act of some deity. In essence, there is no plot in such myths; instead, a list of objects that the deity created.

The most famous cosmogonic story is the myth of the earth diver. Its essence is as follows. In the beginning, there is only the World Ocean. A certain character sinks to the bottom and brings out a piece of solid substance from there. Placed on water, it grows and turns into dry land.

A similar plot is spread over the vast expanses of Eurasia and North America, and it is easy for a reader who is not familiar with world mythology to be convinced that this myth is universal, universal. This is wrong. "Diver for the Earth" - the plot is clearly continental, the coastal peoples of Eurasia, as a rule, are not familiar with it. As for the Indo-Pacific world, another story is presented there, from which the myth of the earth diver could once have been separated. It also talks about the appearance of land in the middle of the ocean, but a piece of solid substance was not brought from the bottom, but was thrown onto the water from the sky. Sometimes there is not water below, but some kind of emptiness, an abyss, sometimes there is a tiny island below, but the plot is still the same at the core - what is descended from heaven turns into a world inhabited by people. Here are some examples.

[Mejprat (Papuans New Guinea)] A flying fox lived in a cave, its excrement fell into the water, formed a mound, it grew, became land.

[Kanaka(New Caledonia)] To create dry land, God threw a leaf on the water with earth on it, or a yam cake.

[Yap Island(Micronesia)] The tree grew with its roots in the sky, head down towards the ocean. A woman who lived in its branches gave birth to a son. The boy grew up, ascended to heaven, was killed there, his mother asked the heavenly leader to bring him back to life. He did it, gave sand, earth, seedlings. The woman threw all this into the sea, an island appeared, she and her son settled on it.

[Samoa Islands(Western Polynesia)] Tangaloa turned a stone into a woman, she bore him a daughter, Tuli ("plover"). The father sent his daughter to earth. Toolie returned, saying that there was only water below. Tangaloa threw a stone from the sky onto the water, it grew and became dry land.

[Bataki(Sumatra)] In the sky, the girl dropped the spinning wheel, along the unwound thread she descended on the head of a snake swimming in the sea, put on it a handful of earth, brought at her request by a swallow. The serpent was tired and turned over, the emerging world was flooded with water. The heavenly god created eight suns, they evaporated excess water. The maiden plunged the sword into the snake, nailing it tightly so that it would no longer turn over. Taking new soil, she created the earth anew.

[bachau(Kalimantan)] A spider descended from the sky, weaved a web. A pebble fell into it, grew to the horizon. A lichen fell on a stone, a worm fell on it, its excrement formed the soil. Then a tree fell, grew, then a crab cut valleys and mountains with claws.

[Sherdukpen (Tibeto-Burmese Northeast India)] Two brothers threw a lotus from the sky into the water, the water was covered with flowers. The brothers ordered the winds to blow from four directions, the winds brought dust, it covered the flowers, the earth appeared. The brothers began to level the ground, did it unevenly, valleys and mountains arose.

[Udege(Primorsky Territory)] A bird flew over the water, saw an old woman standing on one leg on a small island. The bird sat down, the old woman drove it away, the bird grabbed the earth in its paws, flew, threw, various lands were formed.

[Evens] A girl banished from the sky descends on an eight-legged deer to the surface of the sea. She scatters pieces of reindeer hair on the water, they turn into logs, she makes a raft out of them. At the request of the deer, the girl kills him and butchers him. The skin turned into earth, the skull and bones - into mountains, wool - into forests, lice - into wild deer, the crunch from broken bones became thunder, the dying breath - the wind; the heart turned into a hero, the lungs into a boy and a girl.

[Chukchi] The raven flies over the sea, defecates in the sky, its excrement falls, turns into islands and continents.

Similar cosmogonic plots are also found in the New World. At the same time, in South America it is not about the initial creation of the world, but about the creation of a new land after a global catastrophe. In general, ideas about the once complete absence of anything in the Universe are less common in America than in Eurasia. If we assume that the idea of ​​creation from scratch did not originate in mythology immediately, the American versions can be considered more archaic than the Eurasian ones.

[Eskimo Kodiak(Kodiak Island off the south coast of Alaska)] A bubble falls from the sky, containing a man and a woman. They blow, the bubble expands, they stretch out their legs and arms, mountains arise. A man scratches his head over the mountains, his hair falls, the mountains are covered with forest, animals start in the forest. The sea arises from the urine of a woman.

[polar eskimos(Northwest Greenland)] The earth fell from the sky, so it appeared with mountains and rocks.

[Thompson (salish British Columbia)] The old man lives in the sky, takes lands from the sky, molds the world, throws it on the waters, dry land arises.

[Aparai (Caribs Guiana)] After the global fire, the world was flooded with water. A piece of earth fell from the sky, dry land grew out of it.

[Chimane(foothills of the Bolivian Andes)] A sister invites two brothers to heaven to make their third brother the Sun stop at its zenith and keep people awake. It fails. The brothers throw a raft down from the sky, it grows, forms land.

[Kaingang(southwestern Brazil)] The flood flooded the world. The birds brought baskets of earth, poured them on the water, and a plain appeared. They started pouring earth from the east, so the rivers flow to the west.

Land is sometimes formed not from a piece of earth, stone, etc., but from the body of a person, a child.

[bikol(southeastern Luzon, Philippines)] The grandchildren of a heavenly deity have bodies made of stone, gold, copper. The stone grandson tries to take over the sky with his brothers, is killed by lightning, falls into the sea, earth is formed from his body. From the body of the golden brother, the Sun arose, from the copper - the Moon, the sister turns into stars.

[Itelmens(Kamchatka, record of the 18th century)] Kutkhu (ancestor raven) created the earth from his son, called Symskalin [symt - earth], who was born by his wife Ilkkhum, walking with him on the sea. Either Kutkha and her sister Khutlyzhich took the earth down from the sky and set it on the sea.

The “child-earth” motif is also found in those traditions, mainly American ones, in which the land is thought to be as original as the sky, but is bare stones or barren dust. Trampled and scattered over these stones, the child turns into the upper fertile layer of the soil.

[Bribri (chibcha Costa Rica)] The world is just stones. The Bat flies to suck the blood of the Earth-girl, and trees grow from the excrement of the Bat. The Earth girl's mother and grandmother lie in wait for the bat and cut it in half. To keep their insides from falling out, these animals are now hanging upside down. Seeing that it will not be possible to accumulate enough earth with the help of a bat, the deity Sibo sends people to dance in front of the dwelling of the Earth. The mother of the Earth girl comes out, attracted by the general merriment, drops the child, the dancers trample it, the fertile soil spreads over the world. Mother and grandmother of the Earth say that now they [=Earth] will devour the dead.

Myths about the descent, the dropping of the earth from the sky are also known in Northern Eurasia from Mongolia to the north of Eastern Europe.

[Khalkha Mongols] The earth was created by Burkhan Shagdzhi-Tubi. He threw a pinch of earth he brought from the sky into the ocean, the pinch grew and formed dry land.

[Northern Mansi] Our mother was sitting in a city suspended by an iron chain between heaven and the nether world. Her brother said that it was time to create a land for people. He cut the chain, the city fell down, land appeared.

[Komi] A bird dropped droppings over the sea, it became an earthly root. The root has grown, the earth has hardened. A bear came, scratched the ground, swamps and mountains formed.

[Russians(recorded in the Volga region, a type of North Russian plot)] God created the sky and water, rides on the water on a stone, spat, a Titan appeared from the abyss. He says that his name is Titaniel, but you can call him simply: Gogol, ready to listen to orders. God orders to fly to heaven, bring the earth. He brought it, but hid the pinch behind his cheek. God scattered the earth on the water, it became dry land. To hold it, he created three whales, a stone slab on them, and earth on it.

It is possible that the plot of the earth descending from the sky once spread from the east through Siberia, but was then supplanted in continental Eurasia by the more complex and standard plot of the earth diver. The probable movement of people of the Paleolithic era from the east of Northern Eurasia to the west was discussed in a review of data from genetics and archeology. The fact that the land of the Komi arises from the droppings of a flying bird that fell into the sea finds exact correspondences in mythology. Chukchi and more distant - among the Alaskan Eskimos Yup'ik.

[Nunivak Island(near the southwest coast of Alaska)] Two brothers are floating on an ice floe, getting stuck aground. The younger one is crying, this is heard by a woman - the Spirit of the Universe. She relieves herself by standing with one foot on one kayak (Eskimo boat), the other on the other, her excrement turns into Nunivak Island. The younger brother turns into a woman, from this couple come the inhabitants of the island.

The motive of the origin of the earth and the luminaries from eggs laid by a bird flying over the waters can be associated with the motif of the earth lowered into the waters. Baltic Finns And Saami this is the main myth about creation, but a parallel to it was found far from Europe, in the Eastern Sayans, near Tofalars. The myths of the peoples of the Volga region mainly belong to the same series.

[Saami(Kola Peninsula)] There was an old man's head with wells on the top of his head. Thunder crushed the hat, jets of water broke out, rising to the sky, flooded the earth. The duck sees a blade of grass in the middle of the ocean, it grows in the ground. The duck lays five eggs. Vegetation, birds, fish, animals, man and woman arise from them.

[« Kalevala»] The daughter of air descends into the sea, becomes pregnant from the wind and water, becomes the mother of water. The duck makes a nest in her lap and lays her eggs there. Eggs roll out of the nest, break, turn into earth, sky, sun, moon and clouds.

[Estonians] There is an island on the sea, an apple tree on the island, the wind threw an apple into the sea, a motley bird rose from the sea, flew to our pasture, built a nest on the top of a spruce, brought out chicks, gave one the lower world, another - clouds, the third - the Morning Star, the fourth - the North Star, the fifth - the Big Dipper, the sixth - the Month, the seventh - the Pleiades.

[Komi-Zyrians] In the beginning, there is water everywhere, the Duck swims, does not know where to lay eggs. Four were swallowed up by the abyss, the last two the Duck kept under her wing, the ducklings En and Omtsl hatched out of them, becoming the creator god and his opponent.

[Chuvash] Tura (the supreme deity) threw a seed onto the waters, it turned into an egg, fertilized, broke, producing earth and sky.

[Tofalars(in past Samoyeds, that is, relatives Selkups And Nenets; two centuries ago they switched to the Turkic language)) The first duck flew, sat down, laid an egg, it burst, the liquid formed a lake, the shell - the earth.

A piece of firmament from the bottom of the ocean

Both in Asia and America there are traditions that connect the motif of the earth thrown from the sky with the motif of the earth, which is taken out of the water or from the bottom of the sea. Asian and North American texts contain many similar details.

[Batek(Semangs of the Malay Peninsula)] A horned snake-tortoise floated to the surface in the middle of the ocean. A piece of earth or the excrement of a heavenly worm fell on her back from the sky, and the tortoise-snake herself or a bird descending from the sky knocked the sea foam into a ball. The substance extracted from the sky and from the sea became dry land, stretched out on the back of a tortoise-snake.

[Nanais(Lower Amur)] Three people send three divers and three swans to dive to the bottom of the sea. Seven days later, the birds surfaced, carried in their beaks the earth, stones, and sand brought from the bottom. Where they flew, land, mountains, plains arose.

[Tlingit(southeast Alaska)] The raven flies over the waters, the Fish promises to be his wife if he makes the land. Seal, Frog agree to bring sand from the bottom, if he gives fur to Seal, makes Frog the keeper of the treasures of the earth. The seal dives, receives from the Frog the frog skin filled with sand. The raven flies as high as possible, where there is a strong wind, it scatters the sand, the wind carries it around the world, the grains of sand fall on the water, islands grow out of them. The fish dries their hair for the first time, becomes the wife of the Raven, they are the progenitors of the crow family.

[Huron (Iroquois Canada)] In the sky, the husband of the woman Aatensik sees in a dream that a certain tree should be cut down, from which people got their livelihood. The pregnant wife cuts it down, the tree immediately falls, Aatensik falls after him. Down in the sea, the Turtle offers its back to her. Then she sends Beaver to dive, he brings silt from the bottom, land grows out of it. Aatensik gives birth to a daughter, and she in turn gives birth to twins named Taviskaron and Iuskeha. Fighting, Iuskeha kills the evil Taviskaron, he turns into flints. Aatensik - Moon, Iuskeha - Sun.

[Delaware (Algonquians New York area)] There was a sun-like object in the sky, its name was the Corn Stalk. There was a woman with a child, she fell ill, thought to be cured by tearing out the Stem. Everything was plunged into darkness, people threw her, along with the child, into the hole formed where the Stem grew. The woman was picked up by hawks, placed on the back of a Turtle swimming in the sea. The loon dived, brought the earth from the bottom.

With the plot of the earth lowered from the sky, the myth of the earth diver is clearly similar. The only difference is whether a piece of firmament was brought from the upper world or from the lower world. The transition from the first variant to the second can be considered as a random mutation. It could have happened several times independently, although special conditions had to be created for the new version to take root in the tradition and become the main one. A territorially unconnected variant with diving behind the earth to the bottom of the sea is found among the Melanesians.

[San Cristobal(Solomon Islands)] A fisherman's wife who has been thrown into the sea by a spirit woman asks the sea creatures to help her. Rejecting the help of the fish, she agrees to ride the Turtle. The turtle dives repeatedly, bringing stones from the bottom and creating an island out of them. It grows all kinds of cultivated and useful plants. The tortoise orders to make a house out of a piece of its shell, to strike a fire on another piece. The woman gives birth to a son, gives the Turtle to nurse.

That mutation, to which all the Eurasian-American myths about getting earth from the bottom of the ocean ultimately go back, most likely occurred somewhere within the boundaries of central or northeastern India, Burma, maybe Tibet (pre-Buddhist Tibetan mythology has been preserved fragmentary). This territory is directly adjacent to the zone of domination of the plot about the descent of land from heaven, and partially coincides with it.

South Asian myths about the diver describe not only diving, but also simply descending into the lower world, not always underwater. Sometimes fragments of a story about the earth brought from the sky can be traced in them. The usual participants in the action are turtles, crustaceans, insects, worms. These are the same creatures that appear in the East Asian story of the earth being thrown from the sky.

Here are typical examples of South Asian myths.

[Garo (Tibeto-Burmese Northeast India)] Tatara-Rabuga sent Nast Nypanta in the form of a woman to create the earth, giving some sand, but she could not glue the grains of sand into a lump. Sitting on a web above the waters, she sent first a large Crab, then a small one, both returned empty-handed. The beetle brought clay from the bottom, Nasta Nypantu creates land, Tatara-Rabuga creates the Sun, Moon and wind, they dry up the earth.

[Mishmi (Tibeto-Burmese northeast India)] In the beginning, water is everywhere. Techimbdum surfaced, looked around, erected a pillar. White ants crawled along it, carrying particles of earth from the bottom, put them on the water, and dry land appeared.

[Kachin (Tibeto-Burmese northwestern Burma)] In the beginning, water is everywhere. Two nat spirits, a man and a woman, descended from the clouds, took out a handful of earth from under the water, placed it on the water, and dry land arose.

[Irkhor (munda Central India)] On the water, a lotus, the great spirit of Sing-bong, came to the surface along the core of the stem, ordered the Turtle to bring clay from the bottom. The turtle dived, but the water washed the clay from its shell. The crab also did not cope with the task, the Leech swallowed the clay and brought it to the surface. The spirit squeezed clay out of it, threw it in four directions, and land was created. The earth was wet and uneven, the Spirit began to level it, but mountains remained in places.

[Gonds (Dravidians Central India)] Water everywhere, the Almighty was born from a lotus, rubbed his hand, made a Crow out of mud, ordered to bring the earth. The crow saw the Crab emerging from the water, leaning on the bottom. She sat on the Crab's back, the mark remained. For the fact that the Almighty made his body solid, the Crab agreed to dive, brought an earthen worm, he burped the earth, the Almighty scattered it over the sea, land arose.

[Koya (Dravidians Central India)] The earth sank. Bhima's daughter jumped from the sky into the sea, descended into the lower world. Sesh Nag [nagas - snakes] blew on her, turning her into a Boar. The boar rolled in the mud, surfaced, shook itself, and land formed.

[Baiga (Dravidians Central India)] The wife of the god Bhagavan complained that there were only rocks around. He ordered to bring the earth from the lower world. The tortoise walked along a crack in the rock, took the Wasp, the Clay-Eating Worm, and the White Ant with it. The wasp put the rest on wings, carried them across the river. The crab guards the entrance to the lower world, one claw on the ground, the other takes out the sky. He sleeps, the Turtle passes, Fertile Soil agrees to go to the middle world, orders to swallow it. The turtle and its companions swallowed all kinds of soil: white clay, red soil, black soil. Returning, the Turtle falls into a trap, convinces the Crab that he is her maternal uncle. The master of the lower world Ancient Serpent wakes up. Those who came were placed under pressure, the earth was squeezed out of them, and they were released upstairs. The clay-eater worm knocked out the Turtle's large teeth that were at that time, scraping off a lump of earth the size of a grain from them. For this, Bhagavan allowed him to eat the stalks in the fields, but not the grain itself. A lump of earth was placed in a huge vessel with water, they began to knock it down with a whorl-snake, the earth became huge, filled the middle world.

[Semangi(Malacca Peninsula)] In the beginning, water is everywhere. A dung beetle brings a bag of soil from under the water. The earth is growing. Everywhere there would be mountains, but the Bear rammed part of the earth, plains arose.

In some North American myths recorded in the southeastern United States from Louisiana to Tennessee and South Carolina, there is a parallel with South Asian ones, since invertebrates are also a diver in them - cancer, less often a swimming beetle.

[Shawnee (Algonquians)] Our grandmother's grandson pierces the big man's belly with a knife. From there water flows out, floods the earth. Grandson and grandmother are saved on a tree. Grandmother sends Cancer to the bottom, he brings silt. Grandmother makes a new earth out of silt, tells the Vulture to fly over the earth and dry it with the flapping of its wings.

[Yuchi] Water everywhere. Flying and floating creatures send Cancer to get the earth from the bottom. On the fourth day, he emerges, land grows out of the brought piece of earth. The vulture is sent to make it even. He gets tired, frantically flaps his wings, creating mountains.

[Cherokee(southern Iroquois)] In the beginning, water is everywhere, animals crowd in the upper world. The swimming beetle goes to explore. Swimming, he does not find land, then dives, brings clay, it turns into a vast dry land. Animals send various birds to find out if the earth is dry. He asks the Great Vulture (the progenitor of the current ones) to dry the earth. He hovers above the ground, it is still soft. When he reached the country of the Cherokees, he began to flap his wings in exhaustion. Where he touched the ground with them, valleys appeared, and where he raised his wings, mountains. The animals were afraid that the whole world would become mountainous, they recalled the Vulture, but the Cherokee country remained mountainous.

[Alabama (muskogee)] In the beginning, there is water everywhere. Birds and animals float on a raft. Their leader Horned Owl suggests diving. The beaver does not dive to the bottom, the Frog returned, frightened by the Garfish. The cancer has reached the bottom, because Sargan decided that it was not worth prey. With its tail, the crayfish scooped up the clay into a heap and made a pillar out of it, which rose above the water. The earth is growing. The vulture began to fly over it, and when it raised its wings, mountains appeared, and when it lowered, valleys appeared. The plains stretch where he slowly hovered in the air.

Particularly noteworthy is the motif of a vulture flying over the still wet earth and drying it with a flap of its wings. This flight leads to the appearance of mountains and valleys. Many North American Indians and the Chukchi have similar motifs, and they are not directly connected with the plot of the diver behind the earth. Here are some examples.

[fox (Algonquians Michigan State, Great Lakes Region)] Underground spirits cause a flood, Visaka creates the earth anew, at first it is flat. Having met the vulture, Visakya asks to raise it to the Sun. The vulture agrees, but dumps his rider. Waking up after the fall, Visakya asks the moose to pretend to be dead. The vulture descends to peck carrion, its head gets stuck in the carcass, becomes bald. As punishment, Visaka tells all the vultures to flap their wings to create valleys and mountains.

[Hopi (Uto-Aztecs Arizona)] People have risen from the lower world to the earth, it is covered with water. The vulture drove the water away with its wings, mountains appeared.

[Northern Paiute (Uto-Aztecs Nevada and Oregon)] At first, the vast sea is everywhere. The top of Mount Grant appeared first above the water. A wild hen made a nest there, fending off the water with her wings.

[Tanaina (athabaskans Alaska)] A huge bird flies over the ocean, the flapping of its wings produces thunder, lightning flies from its eyes. She touches the waves with her wings, and the earth rises from the water.

[Chukchi] People live in darkness, eat black stones instead of meat, white ones instead of fat. The raven steals the sun from the kele demons, the world is flooded with light. Flying above the earth, the raven drags its wing, making grooves with it and creating rivers and the sea. After that, he becomes thunder.

A. V. Korotaev suggested that the motif of a bird that disperses water with its wings or dries up wet earth can be remotely connected with the well-known biblical story about the raven, which Noah, who escaped the flood, sends to find out if the earth has dried up. Not only in the biblical tradition, but also in many mythologies of Eurasia and America, describing the first appearance of land or its revival after a global catastrophe, birds are sent to explore. This motif is also present among the Polynesians, but seems to be completely absent in Australia and Melanesia. In Africa, it is rare and most likely borrowed from the Arabs or from European missionaries.

Let's return to the plot of the diver. Of particular interest are the South American variants, which help to understand how the plot spread. The earth-diving myths recorded in South and Central America do not have the standard form characteristic of the Siberian and North American versions. In some cases, the characters bring a piece of earth from the bottom to the surface, in others they dive to destroy the dam holding water. One of the divers, an exotic armadillo, has clearly replaced the North American tortoise. The plot is known only in the north of South America in relative proximity to the Isthmus of Panama. Brazil and Argentina have nothing of the kind. If in some areas of North America the myth of the diver is familiar to all peoples without exception, then in South America it is, on the contrary, very rare. Everything suggests that the main stream of migrants who settled this continent either entered there before the myth of the diver even appeared, or these people came to America from areas where such a myth never existed. In the Pacific belt of Asia, the myth of the earth diver is not found either in modern folklore or in early Chinese and Japanese sources. This is consistent with the assumption that part of the ancestors of the Indians, primarily South American, comes from the Pacific regions of Asia.

Here are all the South and Central American versions of the myth discovered so far.

[Guatuso (chibcha Costa Rica)] A female deity persuades her husband to destroy people for their misdeeds. He reluctantly agrees, throws stones, damming the rivers with them and causing a flood in which people and animals die. The only survivor dives to remove the stones, the gods help him return to the surface, the flood ends.

[Yupa (Caribs northeastern Colombia)] During the flood, the ancestral animals are saved on the mountain. The woodpecker flies for reconnaissance, reports that the water is held by a dam of clay. Caiman throws Boar, Tapir, other animals into the water, telling them to find out if the water is deep. They all drown. The crab dives, but returns after four days. Caiman dives, taking Turtle and Armadillo with him. The turtle digs from below, the armadillo from above, the dam is destroyed, the water rushes into the gap and leaves. The sand left on the back of the Armadillo, Turtle and Caiman is still visible to this day.

[Vapishana (Arawaks Guianas)] Agouti [a large South American rodent] learns about the approaching flood. He puts all cultivated plants in the boat, the waters raise the boat to the sky. Finally, the water level begins to drop, the tops of the forest appear. In order for the waters to completely disappear, it is necessary to dive to the bottom. The heron, the stork do not reach the bottom, two other birds dive and announce it. The sun rises, the earth dries up.

[Zion(western tucano, Colombian Amazon)] Water floods the world. God notices bubbles on the surface, concludes that there is someone under the water. This is the Battleship. God asks him to dive, he brings some silt from the bottom on his back. God makes a new earth out of this mud, steps on it, the earth grows.

[Letuama(eastern tucano Colombian Amazonia)] The land arose from a handful of the earth of the lower world, which the four brothers, relatives of the moon, placed on the water that flooded the former earth.

Who dives better?

From the little-known South American myths about diving for the earth, let's move on to more typical ones. In all the North Eurasian and North American ones, the diving episode is in the focus of the narrative, the difficulty of reaching the bottom is emphasized and the adventures of the characters in the lower world are not described. If there is a connection with South Asian prototypes, then it concerns only the identification of characters with a certain animal - a turtle. In the north, where there are no turtles, the frog acts instead. Similar variants are presented both in Asia and in North America. In various European and Asian languages, "tortoise" and "frog" ("toad") are the same root words or one is formed through the other (a turtle is a "frog in a shell"). According to the explanation recorded in Western Ukraine, the earth rested on a frog, and God “added a shell to it” to strengthen the support. In myths, as people moved north, the tortoise was easily replaced by a frog, and with the return to areas with a warmer climate, the reverse replacement took place.

To assume that the Indian myths about the tortoise or the frog as a getter of the earth from the bottom of the sea or as the support of the earth were brought from the Asian ancestral home is permissible only on one condition. In the era of the American migration, the frog was supposed to live in the territories adjacent to the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. There is no exact data on this, but the modern Alaskan wood frog, contrary to its name, lives not only in the forest, but also in the tundra, is active at the slightest positive temperature and withstands the harsh winters of polar Alaska, when the temperature drops to -60 ° C. Frogs are not now found in Chukotka, but they are found in the vicinity of Magadan, and in Yakutia their range apparently reaches the Arctic Ocean. So, most likely, the frog was familiar to the Arctic ancestors of the Indians.

We have already cited Asian and North American myths that connect the appearance and continued existence of the earth with a turtle or a frog. Here's a summary of a few more. In some, the diving episode is missing, it is only about how the turtle or frog became the mainstay of the earth.

[Khalkha Mongols] In the beginning, there is water everywhere. Ochurmany lived in the sky, he decided to make the earth, he was looking for a comrade, he found Chagan-Shukuty. Both went down to the water. The Frog, who noticed them, dived. Ochurmany sent Chagan-Shukuty to look for her in the water. He took out the Frog, put it on the water, belly up. Ochurmany sat on it, ordered Chagan-Shukuty to dive in and get the earth. He brought from the bottom an armful of liquid earth.

[Mongols-durbuts] Maji-shiri turned into a Frog, lay down on his belly, stretched out his arms and on his belly approved the earth created by him. If one finger of the Frog moves, there is an earthquake.

[Buryats] In search of land, the swan flew through the air, and the raven was under water. They saw the Golden Turtle, which held the earth in its paws, and reported this to Khukhudei Mergen. He shot at the Turtle, which overturned, a firmament was formed on which the earth with vegetation was created.

[Evenks of Transbaikalia] The assistant to the creator was the Frog. She carried the earth in her paws to the surface of the water, but the evil brother of the creator shot at her, she turned over and since then began to support our land in the middle of the water with her paws.

Similar myths of the Central Asian and South Siberian peoples are similar to the Tibetan ones and could have spread along with Buddhism. But something else is also possible: the plot in Siberia was known before, and Buddhism, which came from Tibet, only combined ancient ideas with new deities. Tibetan myths themselves, as already mentioned, are poorly known, and what they were before the spread of Buddhism, we, in essence, do not know. Here is one of the options.

[Tibetans] Bodhisattva Manchjushri created a monstrous Turtle, let it into the water, shot it with a golden arrow. Fire blazed, blood flowed, feces poured out. The tortoise rolled over on its back, the world resting on its chest shell.

In America, the tortoise or frog is most often involved in diving for land in the myths of the Indians of California and the central regions of the Great Plains.

[Wintu (penalty California)] In the beginning, there is water everywhere. Waterfowl do not dive to the bottom. The turtle dives, it is pulled up by the rope, There is a little dirt left on its ears and under its claws, an island is made of the mud, the earth grows out of it.

[Patvin (penalty California)] Falcon, old man Coyote, Turtle sit in the sky and watch the flood. The turtle dives, tying a rope to its leg, emerges. The falcon scrapes the dirt from under her nails, puts it on the water, the earth dries up.

[Coast Miwok (penalty California)] In the beginning, there is water everywhere. The frog suggests to Coyote that he create the earth. Coyote is looking for the best diver among animals. The duck and the water snake do not dive to the bottom, the frog brings two handfuls of sand. Coyote scatters sand, earth appears.

[Sheyenne (Algonquians Great Plains)] Maheo creates the sky, salt water, light, waterfowl, tells them to dive and get dry land from the bottom. Goose, Duck, Loon do not dive; The coot brings silt from the bottom in its beak, puts it in Maheo's hand. He sculpts a lump, creates land, looking for on whose back to approve it. Snails, crustaceans, fish are not suitable for this. Only Grandma Turtle is able to hold the weight, she is Mother Earth.

[Mandan (Sioux in middle Missouri)] Lonely Man wants to make a powerful tambourine. The skins of a beaver, a badger, the shell of an ordinary tortoise are not suitable. The head tortoise says that the world rests on the backs of four tortoises, but Lonely Man can make a tambourine out of buffalo skin, using the tortoise shell as a model.

Let us now turn to the classical, Siberian versions of the myth of the earth diver. They were studied in detail by V.V. Napolskikh, who, among several characteristic features for them, singles out the avian nature of divers. These are always waterfowl, often two - a loon and a duck. The motive of repeated diving is also common, when only the last attempt ends successfully.

[Forest Nenets] In the beginning, there is water everywhere. Num sent swans and geese to search for land. They came back and said there was no land anywhere. Gagara returned on the sixth day, said that there was something at the bottom, but she did not have enough strength. A luri bird [apparently a duck] dived, emerged on the seventh day with earth and a stalk of grass in its beak, built a nest for itself, it was driven by the wind from one coast to another. Num ordered Luri to dive again, she returned after seven days, Num created the earth.

[Mansi] A husband and wife lived on a patch of peat among the waters, they had a loon and another waterfowl - Lula. They ask Lula to get the earth from the bottom, she brings a lump on her beak, it grows. The White Raven flies to see if the earth is big, eats a corpse, turns black. At first the ground was smooth, then it rumbled for seven days, mountains appeared.

[Nganasany] The water reached the sky, on it lay Gagara. The voice asked her to dive for the earth. She got scared and didn't dive. Kamenushka dived, surfaced on the fourth day with blades of grass, reindeer moss in her mouth. The loon was punished by ordering her to build nests in the water, to carry only two eggs. Kamenushka nests in a dry place, has many chicks.

[Western Evenks(Turukhansk region)] Amaka made water and let the birds float on it, rushing - it took land. Amaka ordered Gagara to get sand from the bottom to make earth out of it, Gagara got it, but did not give it away, she wanted to make earth herself. Amaka ordered Gogol to dive, he brought grains of sand, Amaka created dry land from them, while Gagare tore his paws from his belly, stuck them to his tail so that he could not live on earth.

[Yakuts(Turukhansk region)] The Mother of God created the white-nosed Loon and the long-nosed Krokhal, sent them to the bottom for the earth. Crohal emerged first, handed over the earth he had brought, then Loon, who, although she had earth in her beak, said that she did not get the bottom. The Mother of God cursed Gagara, saying that she gave her a holy name and hoped for her, but she did not justify her hopes. She doomed Gagara to live on water and eat rubbish, but Krokhal was granted agility.

V. V. Napolsky connects this myth with the peoples of the Uralic language family. In ancient times, the Uralic languages ​​or languages ​​close to them could have been common in Eastern Siberia as well. Therefore, the Evenki, Even and Yakut versions resemble the Samoyed ones ( Nenets, Enets, Nganasans) and Ob-Ugric ( Khanty And Mansi).

The plot of the diver for the earth is also in Eastern Europe, where the character pulling the earth from the bottom is associated with Satan. After analyzing the records of this myth among the Eastern Slavs, V. S. Kuznetsova noticed that in the northern versions, Satan, diving, turns into a bird and brings the earth in his beak, in the southern versions he brings the earth in his hands, and in the intermediate ones he retains a humanoid appearance, but brings earth in the mouth, behind the cheek. The conclusion is obvious - in the northern versions, the ancient Ural myth was mostly preserved, and the farther south, the stronger the influence of a completely different tradition based on the opposition of two creators - good and evil. True, it must be said that in many South Siberian versions, the diver is associated with the ruler of the lower world and the enemy of the heavenly god. How these options relate to Eastern European ones is far from clear.

The time of the appearance of the Ural myth can be calculated by comparing it with the most common North American variants. This refers to those myths about the diver among the Indians, in which the muskrat, beaver and waterfowl participate. In different versions, any of them can be a successful diver, but the muskrat prevails. Similar versions are widespread mainly in the northern taiga and forest-tundra regions of the continent near athabascans in the west and Algonquin in the east, only in places going south and meeting with Indians of other language families. Here are examples of a successful animal diver.

[Koyukon (athabaskans western Alaska)] Huge creatures enter the sea, water floods the land. People-animals are rescued on a raft. Raven and Seagull fly, do not find land. The muskrat takes clay from the bottom, the Beaver helps to put it on the raft, to create the earth anew.

[Career (athabaskans British Columbia, Western Canada)] At first everything is covered with water. The muskrat swims in search of food, dives, takes out clay from the bottom, spits it out on the surface of the water; an island and land gradually form.

[menominee (Algonquians west of Lake Michigan)] Myanyabush kills three underground gods with arrows, they fall into the lake, the water rises. Myanyabush climbs to the top of a pine tree on the mountain, tells Beaver and Muskrat to get the earth from the bottom. Both float up dead, but on the paws of the Muskrat Myanyabush finds some silt, makes an island out of it, the waters go down.

[Naskapi (Algonquians peninsula of Labrador in eastern Canada)] During the flood, the wolverine sits on the last stones left above the water. Asks the Otter to dive, she brings grass and fish, asks the Beaver - he does not dive. The muskrat dives and brings a mouthful of earth. Wolverine blows her ass, the earth flies out of her mouth, land is formed.

And here are the northern Indian myths with a successful bird diver.

[Helmet (athabaskans upper Yukon, western Canada)] During the flood, God sends the Rat [muskrat?] to get the earth from the bottom. The rat is drowning. Little Duck takes out mud, the earth grows.

[yellowknife (athabaskans northern Canada)] Melted snow fills the ground. Grandfather escapes in a boat. First the Eagle, then the Dove fly in search of land, return, next time they bring a spruce branch. The muskrat, the otter cannot dive to the bottom, the duck brings silt from the bottom, they make new land out of it.

Entering the role of muskrat and beaver divers is clearly a local North American plot mutation. There is no such thing in any Eurasian text. As for the bird divers, these images should have been known already at a time when the settlement of the North American continent had not yet ended, that is, 10-12 thousand years ago. Later in America, birds were not excluded from the number of divers, but they did not become heroes of the standard plot either. On the contrary, in Northern Eurasia it was the "bird" myth that became the main one.

A distant parallel for the North Eurasian variant of the plot was found where it is not customary to look for the myth of a diver - in the very heart of highland Asia, in the upper reaches of the Indus, near dards And burish. Dards belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family and are, apparently, the descendants of one of the first groups of Indo-Europeans who penetrated the Indus basin. Language Burishi has no relatives. This people is the last remnant of that ancient population that lived in Central Asia before spreading here. Indo-Iranians And Turks. In myth Burishi And dard-tire diving is not described in detail, the earth from under the water is taken out by a character that is not very suitable for this role - a mouse. They pour earth on the outstretched wings of a bird.

[Sheena, burishi] The world is covered with water, partly frozen. Several giants live under the rule of their lord Gal Singh. Bojara Shal ordered to bring the Mouse, ordered Gal Singh to stand in the water as a support. The bird Garai Patan, living in the snow, sat on it, spread its wings, The mouse made a hole in the ice, took out the earth, poured it on the bird's wings. When the wings covered the water, the Mouse carried out all the land under the water.

This version survived miraculously. On the plains of Central Asia, archaic mythology has long been swept away by numerous waves of nomads and conquerors who were influenced by world religions. On the vast territory of Kazakhstan, cosmogonic plots have not been preserved; Kirghiz, Tuvans, Uighurs. Having the Kashmiri and East Indian versions, on the one hand, and the North Eurasian ones, on the other, it can be assumed that the myth of the diver, in one form or another, was also known in the intermediate territories.

At the Greeks. The only people who survived the flood were Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha. And the great gods offered them to create a new humanity. According to legend, Deucalion and Pyrrha began to throw stones behind their backs, and the stones began to turn into statues. The statues sang songs, Deucalion and Pyrrha had to choose one song about humanity that they liked, and from all the songs they chose a story about Greek heroes: Theseus, Hercules and other demigods. And thus humanity was reborn on earth. Deucalion and Pyrrha died, and the singing statues they rejected began to demand a fair trial from the gods. The gods decided to make a verdict, weighing the decision of Deucalion and Pyrrha on the scales. And the court of the gods recognized the choice of the married couple as the right one! Mankind, singing the Greek heroes, has become the only one on earth.

At the Turks. Mankind was born on a black mountain. In a cave, a pit was formed, which in shape resembled a human body, jets of rain carried the clay with them and filled the mold. The clay, warmed by the sun, remained in shape for nine months. And nine months later, the first man came out of the cave: AY ATAM, who is called the father of the moon.

The Mexicans (XVII century). Everything is a little more confusing here, since the formation of the legend was equally influenced by ancient cults and Catholicism. God made a man out of potter's clay and put him in a furnace. But he left it in the oven for too long. The man therefore came out of the oven burnt and black. God decided that he was mistaken, threw his offspring to the ground and ended up in Africa. But God did not stop there and created another man, whom he left in the oven for a much shorter time. The man is completely white. God again decided that he was wrong. And again he threw the man to the ground and ended up in Europe. On the third time, God approached the process more carefully and followed the degree of readiness of his product. He waited until the man was baked properly, until golden brown. This time, God got it right. And slowly, very carefully, he placed a successful person in America. This is how the Mexicans came about.

The Sioux tribes. According to Sioux legend, man was created by a rabbit, the universe, who found a blood clot on the road. The rabbit began to play with it with its paw, and the clot turned into intestines. The rabbit continued to play, and a heart appeared on the intestines, then eyes, and finally a real little boy turned out, the first boy in the world. Rabbit called this first person rabbit boy. This was the ancestor of the Sioux.

The Arabs. There is an option to create the Old Testament. In their cosmogony, in order for a person to be born, earth of four different colors is needed: blue, black, white and red. God sent the angel Gabriel after her, but when he bent down to collect the earth, the earth spoke and asked what he wanted. “Earth so that God could create man,” Gabriel explained. The earth replied: "I cannot allow you to do this, because the person will be out of control and will want to destroy me." The angel Gabriel conveyed her opinion to God. Then God sent the angel Michael. The same story happened. Exactly the same failure. The earth again opposed the birth of man. Then God sent the angel Azrael, whose peculiarity was that he was the angel of death. He was not convinced by the arguments of the earth. Thus, man exists because of the angel of death, and therefore man is mortal. God created Adam from the earth he brought. But he did nothing for forty years, he just lay on the ground. The angel could not understand why the man did not move. He looked into Adam's mouth to see what was inside him and understood why Adam remained motionless. Inside the human body was empty. Then the angel told God about this, and he decided to give the man a soul. Adam came to life, and God, in order to give him an advantage over the earth, nature, plants and animals, allowed him to name everything that surrounded him. Man alone has the right to give names even to spirits (genies) and mountains. And every time he pronounces a name, he conquers the one he names. (Taba ri, Arabic chronicler of the 9th century, caliphate of the Abbasids.)

At Mongol. Man was created by God who dug a hole in the ground in the shape of a human figure. Then God caused a storm, and clay with streams of water filled the pit (very similar to the Turkish version). The rain stopped, the moisture dried up, and the man, like a cake from a mold, came out of the pit.

The Navajo Indians. In the beginning, half-humans, half-beasts lived on earth. They crossed the three heavens from where they were expelled because of their foolish deeds. Eventually they descended to earth, where the four local gods, blue, white, black and yellow, came to watch them. The gods tried to teach them something with the help of gestures, but the subhumans did not understand anything. Then all the gods, except one, black, left them. The black god told the demihumans that they were dirty and smelly fools. “The rest of the gods will return in four days,” he told them. “Wash, and we will indulge in the ceremony of creating people.” The gods brought with them various objects, deer skins and two ears of corn, yellow and white. A man came out of a white ear, and a woman came out of a yellow one. They made love under a canopy and gave birth to five pairs of twins. The first twins were hermaphrodites, but the rest gave birth to children, and these children married with the alien people. This is how modern humanity appeared.

Guys, we put our soul into the site. Thanks for that
for discovering this beauty. Thanks for the inspiration and goosebumps.
Join us at Facebook And In contact with

We are sure that many of you still believe in unicorns. It seems wonderful to imagine that they still exist somewhere, and we just haven't found them yet. However, even the myth of such a magical creature has a very prosaic and even somewhat frightening explanation.

If it seems to you that website very skeptical and no longer believes in magic, then at the end of the article a real miracle awaits you!

great flood

Scientists believe that the legend of the Great Flood was based on the memory of major flood, the epicenter of which was Mesopotamia. At the beginning of the last century, during the excavations of the tombs of Ur, a layer of clay was found that separated two cultural layers. Only a catastrophic flood of the Tigris and Euphrates could lead to the appearance of such a phenomenon.

According to other estimates, for 10-15 thousand years BC. e. an incredible flood happened in the Caspian, which spilled over an area of ​​​​about 1 million square meters. km. The version was confirmed after scientists found sea shells in Western Siberia, the closest distribution area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich is located in the zone of the Caspian Sea. This flood was so powerful that there was a huge waterfall in the place of the Bosphorus, through which approximately 40 cubic meters were poured per day. km of water (200 times the volume of water passing through Niagara Falls). The flow of such power was at least for 300 days.

This version seems insane, but in this case, it is by no means possible to accuse the ancient people of exaggerating events!

Giants

In modern Ireland, legends are still told about gigantic people who can create an island by simply throwing a handful of earth into the sea. Endocrinologist Marta Korbonitz came up with the idea that ancient legends might have a scientific basis. Incredibly, the researchers found what they were looking for. Huge number of Irish people have mutations in the AIP gene. It was these mutations that caused the development of acromegaly and gigantism. If in the UK the carrier of the mutation is 1 per 2,000 people, then in the province of Mid-Ulster - every 150th.

One of the famous Irish giants was Charles Byrne (1761-1783), his height was over 230 cm.

Legends, of course, endow the giants with great power, but in reality, not everything is so rosy. People suffering from acromegaly and gigantism often suffer from cardiovascular diseases, they have vision problems and frequent joint pain. Without treatment, many giants may not live past the age of 30.

Werewolves

The legend of werewolves has several origins. Firstly, The life of people has always been connected with the forest. Rock carvings of hybrids of people and animals have come down to us from the deepest antiquity. People wanted to be stronger, they chose a totem animal and wore its skin. On the basis of these beliefs, narcotic drugs also worked, which the soldiers took before the battle and imagined themselves as invincible wolves.

Secondly, belief in the existence of werewolves was also supported by the presence in people of such a genetic disease as hypertrichosis- profuse growth of hair on the body and face, which was called the "werewolf syndrome". Only in 1963 did the doctor Lee Illis give the disease a medical justification. In addition to the genetic disease, there was also a mental disease, known as lycanthropy, during the attacks of which people lose their minds and lose their human qualities, considering themselves wolves. In addition, there is an exacerbation of the disease in certain lunar phases.

By the way, the wolf from the world famous Little Red Riding Hood, according to, was none other than a werewolf. And he didn’t eat his grandmother, but fed his granddaughter.

Vampires

As for the scientific substantiation of these myths, in 1914 the paleontologist Otenio Abel suggested that the finds in antiquity of the skulls of pygmy elephants caused the birth of the myth of the Cyclopes, since the central nasal opening is easily mistaken for a giant eye socket. It is curious that these elephants were found precisely on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Malta, Crete.

Sodom and Gomorrah

We don't know about you, but we always thought that Sodom and Gomorrah is a very large-scale myth and more like a personification of vicious cities. However, this is quite a historical fact.

Excavations of the ancient city have been under way for a decade in Tell el-Hammam, Jordan. Archaeologists are sure they have found the biblical Sodom. The approximate location of the city has always been known - the Bible described the "Sodom pentagon" in the Jordan Valley. However, its exact location has always raised questions.

In 2006, excavations began, and scientists found a large ancient settlement surrounded by a powerful rampart. According to researchers, people lived here between 3500 and 1540 BC. e. There is no other option for the name of the city, otherwise the mention of such a large settlement would have remained in written sources.

kraken

The kraken is a legendary mythical sea monster of gigantic proportions, a cephalopod known from the descriptions of sailors. The first extensive description was made by Eric Pontoppidan - he wrote that the kraken is an animal "the size of a floating island." According to him, the monster is able to grab a large ship with its tentacles and drag it to the bottom, but the whirlpool that occurs when the kraken quickly sinks to the bottom is much more dangerous. It turns out that a sad end is inevitable - both in the case when the monster attacks, and when it runs away from you. Really creepy!

The rationale for the myth of the "creepy monster" is simple: giant squids still exist today and reach 16 meters in length. They really represent an impressive spectacle - in addition to suckers, some species also have claws-teeth on tentacles, but they can threaten someone only by crushing it from above. Even if a modern person, having met such a creature, is very frightened, what can we say about medieval fishermen - for them the giant squid was definitely a mythical monster.

Unicorn

When it comes to unicorns, we are immediately presented with a graceful creature with a rainbow horn in its forehead. Interestingly, they are found in the legends and myths of many cultures. The very first images were found in India and are over 4,000 years old. Later, the myth spread across the continent and reached Ancient Rome, where they were considered absolutely real animals.

Jindo in South Korea. Here the waters between the islands part for an hour, opening a wide and long road! Scientists explain this miracle by the difference in the time of ebb and flow.

Of course, many tourists come there - in addition to simple walks, they have the opportunity to see the marine inhabitants who remained on the open land. The amazing thing about Moses' Path is that it leads from the mainland to the island.