How Different Cultures Understood the World?

Our world is truly big. Even thousand years of search I think, wouldn’t be enough to fully grasp the knowledge about it. But despite physical and sometimes, psychological limits of ours, we never stopped trying to understand it.

These days, we don’t have to speculate about how our planet and things surrounding it look and what they are. We can simply browse the web and know that Earth is spherical, it spins around the Sun, which spins around the galaxy called Milky Way and so on.

But how our ancestors understood the world? They didn’t have Google or GPS. The answer is mostly tied to their religions and mythology, because for our ancestors, there was no strong difference between spiritual world and ours, so they could overlap strongly. And trust me when I say even dozens of books are not enough to convey them.

In this article, I will tell you about cosmologies of some of various nations, where idea of giant Turtle emerged, and why you still didn’t fall of the Earth.

I want to give you a small disclaimer: myths are not matter-of-fact history, they never happened. They’re allegory on our life and reflection of values people held at times.

Without further ado, let’s start.

Norse Cosmology

If you watched MCU movies, you likely know that by Norse religion, world is divided into 9 worlds. But what was there before this?

Before the creation, there was only Gunningagap. Before it was nothing, no earth, no seas, no sky. It stood between two primordial realms: Musphelheim, realm of fire and Niflheim, realm of ice and mist. Fire from the first and frost from the latter kept creeping toward eachother, until they met in Gunningagap. Eventually, fire melted the ice and from it emerged Ymir, first giant. Along with him, also emerged Audhumla, a cow whose milk Ymir drank to sustain himself. Audhumla herself was licking salty ice. Others from the race of Giants were coming out from the sweat of Ymir.

As Audhumla was licking the ice, from it, Buri emerged, first of Aesir gods, grandfather of Odin. His son Bor married to giant woman Bestla and from their marriage came 3 half-gods, half-giants: Odin, Vili, Ve.

Odin and his brother killed Ymir and made the world out of him. Out of his blood, rivers and seas, from flesh, the ground, from teeth and bones, mountains and rocks, from hair, vegetation, from his brain, clouds, from his skull, sky. And last, from his eyebrows, they made a wall to protect the place they made from giants.

Unfortunately, other worlds aren’t described as Midgard(world of man), because myths usually tell something mostly related to humans.

Mesopotamian Cosmology

Before there was soil, before there was sky, there were Apsu and Tiamat, first order and first chaos. From their mingling, emerged their children gods: Lahmu and Lahamu, Ansar and Kisar, Anu, who later begat his equal Nudimmud, Ea(Enki) and others. Gods were quite loudly and it distressed Apsu and Tiamat. And while Tiamat was distressed by them, she wished to spare them and only assert a bit of discipline. But Apsu thought more radically, he wanted to kill all gods so silence could finally come back, but Tiamat was against this.

Wife’s protests didn’t work on Apsu and he started plotting his plan, but Enki(Ea), god of water, wisdom and magic found out about his plan and killed him. Finding this out, Tiamat was enraged and waged a war against gods, created monsters like Hydra.

As war was going on, Marduk(son of Ea) compelled everyone to declare him chief god if he slays Tiamat and gods agreed. And he killed her, then divided her body into two, upper body as a sky, lower body as the ground, her eyes are places from where two main rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris flow.

That’s how world came to be by Mesopotamian thought(Babylonian to be precise).

Greek Cosmology

Before mankind, before deathless gods, there was only Chaos, endless Abyss(I know it’s translated as void or gap, but I think it’s more logical to call it Abyss). From it, came out Gaia Earth, Tartarus the Deepest Pit, Eros the Attraction, Nyx the Night and Erebus the Darkness.

Gaia gave birth to 3 beings: Ouranus the Sky, Pontus the Sea and Ourea the Mountains. She then, with Ouranus conceived more children: the Cyclopes the one-eyed monsters, the Hekatonkheires the beings with 50 heads and 100 hands and Titans.

Ouranus didn’t like his children and locked them in the depths of the Earth, which distressed Gaia and she plotted to overthrow him. She made the strongest sickle. She called upon her sons Titans and asked them to fight their father, but all were afraid. Only Cronus was brave enough to take action.

At night, when Ouranus came to his wife to lay by, Cronus sprung and castrated Ouranus. His testicles fell into sea, and seafoam caused by this gave birth to Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. This action started the reign of Titans, in which Cronus(god of time) declared himself king, taking his sister Rhea(goddess of female fertility, motherhood, and generation) as his consort.

As Titans were ruling upon the world, Cronus received prophecy from Ouranus. It was said that Cronus’ children would overthrow him. Afraid of losing control, he started devouring children Rhea would bore. He ate all of them except the youngest one, Zeus, which Rhea hid and replaced him with rock which Cronus devoured.

Rhea hid Zeus in a cave, where his grandmother Gaia took care of him, bringing him to manhood. He freed Cyclopes and Hekatonkheires, who in return made him various weapons(thunderbolt for Zeus, trident for Poseidon, helmet of invisibility for Hades, etc.). He went to confront his father. He made him vomit his siblings, and then, Titanomachy started.

After ten years of war, Olympians won, locking opposing Titans in Tartarus, while Titans who were neutral or sided with gods were spared. Gods started their reign upon the world. In their age, living beings were made.

Egyptian Cosmology

Before everything, was Nun, the primordial ocean. From it, arose first mound, on which Atum, self-created god stood. He created first divine pair: Shu the Air and Tefnut the Moisture, who then created Geb the Earth and Nut the Sky. Earth and Sky gave birth to other gods like Osiris, Set and Nephthys.

From them, other gods like Anubis, Bastet and other gods came to being and continued bringing world to order.

The problem with Egyptian mythology is that it’s not consistent, since Egypt wasn’t always a one empire. At times, it was just set of states with their own pantheons, beliefs and politics. Gods like Amon came from Thebes in Upper Egypt, while Thoth has no clear origins(he’s either eternal or came from Ra’s mouth). The cosmogony I presented above is from Heliopolis in Lower Egypt.

I hope you enjoyed the read, share this article, write comments and see you soon.