Table of Content
Concept Grid for DR Courses
Introduction to HU421A - Origins
What Are Primary
and Secondary Sources?
Instructions
This course provides students with concepts, myths, and patterns of information about the origins of the physical, biological, and sociocultural world in which we live. It presents theories of the origin and evolution of the universe, our planet, the human species, and some of our fundamental civilizing tools such as language, mathematics, writing, and our industrial/technological social structures.
Pre-req.: MM311................3 sem.cred. (up-div. or grad.)
This course is designed to provide an introduction to and guidance for study of a series of concepts which are thought-provoking and broadly applicable. The perspectives presented are from diverse sources and are sometimes overlapping and contrasting. Occasionally they are even contradictory of one another. What they have in common is that each represents a careful and thoughtful representation of aspects of the human experience. Each is the product of mature, sensitive, and reasonable minds struggling to understand our place in the world and the meaning of our lives. All together they can serve to expand the studentís knowledge and understanding along a series of basic dimensions, and facilitate the student's integration of various life experiences philosophically and emotionally as well as rationally.
What does the phrase 'expanding and integrating perspectives' mean?
The material is designed for self-paced independent study by students
who have the motivation and maturity to pursue an organized series of readings
on their own initiatives. Each student is expected to individualize
his or her approach to this material so that there is a maximum of personal
interest and relevance. The scope of the project is extensive, both
in range of concepts and in sheer volume of written materials. The
student is expected to attain some familiarity with the ideas and information
presented, and to relate them to his or her own area of independent study.
Understanding our origins and evolution can provide a powerful foundation
and conceptual framework for intellectual and emotional growth. This course
presents perspectives on the creation of our world and ourselves from a
diversity of sources. After a comparison of two theories of the creation
of the universe, the 'continuous creation' and 'big bang' theories, both
derived from scientific observations and analysis, there are excerpts from
several works extending the perspectives of science through the development
of our solar system, our planet Earth, and the origins of primitive and
higher forms of life. There is an excerpt about anthropology, the study
of the origins of humanity, from The Night Country by Loren Eiseley,
and some speculations about the origins of civilization from A History
of Pi by Petr Beckmann.
We then look at ideas about creation from a variety of other cultural perspectives. First is an excerpt from the introduction to In The Beginning...Science Faces God In the Book of Genesis by Isaac Asimov. Then follow descriptions of the creation from the Bible (Genesis, Chapter 1) of the Judeo-Christian religions, the Koran of the Islamic faith, the Upanishads of Hinduism, the Tao Te Ching of Tao-ism, and from the mythologies of Persia, Scandinavia, and several North American Indian tribes.
Next are several excerpts outlining theories of the origins of language and writing.
There are two reference books with which you should become familiar. The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun is introduced by an excerpt from its foreword which outlines the usefulness and limitations of precise chronology in understanding history. An excerpt from the preface to Browserís Book of Beginnings: Origins of Everything Under (and Including) the Sun by Charles Panati describes the structure and content of this fascinating reference resource.
Next there is a section introducing "Primary Course Readings.'
This is course HU421A, the Web version of HU421. In this version,
the 'Primary Course Readings' are all from Websites on the World Wide Web
rather than from (paper) texts. The student should explore these
Websites thoroughly, and use information from them in formulating study
questions and topics (see 'Instructions' below).
What Are 'Primary' and 'Secondary' Sources?
As a rough rule of thumb, primary sources are works to which others refer and secondary sources are those which refer to them.
Sometimes it is difficult to decide clearly and surely whether a work should be considered primary or secondary. Every contribution to a field of study no matter how creative, imaginative, or original the contribution may be is based on and derived from prior works. And most review, summaries, and teaching formulations, even those which are most mainstream and mundane, have some new freshness, clarity, novelty of organization, comprehensiveness, or bias. Otherwise they would (hopefully) never have been written and certainly no one would bother with them. At times even the most explicitly secondary presentations have primary significance. For example, although encyclopedia articles are a prototype of secondary sources, someósuch as those in the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (and many topical essays in later editions which have continued this Britannica tradition)ópresent such outstanding essays by leading scholars in their fields that they become primary source materials.
Works can often be identified as primary because of their authors. To cite some obvious examples, in psychology, any works by (not about) Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung; in education, any by John Dewey or Maria Montessori; in philosophy, any by Aristotle or Immanuel Kant; in physics, any by Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking; in linguistics, any by Alfred Korzybski or Noam Chomsky.
Works can also be classified as primary because of their style or format (for example, autobiographies, letters, or notebooks even if not by leaders in a field) or because of their fresh approach or novel content. At times works are considered primary in some of their aspects or for some particular contributions even though their format or principal purpose is a secondary one (as, for example, the essays in the eleventh edition of the Britannica). In other words, some writings may be primarily secondary but secondarily primary.
In the final analysis it is often a matter of scholarly judgement as
to whether some work may be considered of primary type and importance.
Primacy is ultimately determined by those with a broad view of the field
and in the context of historical significance.
(1) Study Questions and Topics
In many forms of schooling, particularly at lower educational levels, a teacher or textbook provides organizing topics and questions for thought and study. At more advanced levels and particularly in independent modes of learning, it is important for the student to develop skill in designing interesting and useful topic headings and questions for study.
After reading the designated Websites and becoming familiar with the reference materials, prepare a series of study questions and topics. These are meant to be guides to your reading and organizing your thoughts about the material. If you are unsure how to proceed with this, one simple way to design study topics and questions is by finding significant terms and phrases (brief quotations, topic titles, names, etc.) representing key ideas from the exerpts, readings, and references covered in the course, and turning these terms and phrases into study topics and questions by setting each with an appropriate introductory word or phrase such as 'describe', 'discuss', or 'summarize.'
For example:
After at least nine of your proposed study topics and questions have been approved by faculty, you will be asked to prepare responses to them and perhaps to other questions as well. When you are satisfied with your responses, submit them via email or regular mail for review and grading
Prepare a summary of at least five of the main ideas presented in this course. Discuss their relevance to your particular area of interest or field of independent study.
Submit this summary via email or regular mail to your course instructor who will review and approve it, or provide suggestions for revisions.
(3)
Student's Annotated Bibliography
For each source, state (in standard bibliographic format) the author, title, place of publication, publisher, and date of publication. (Refer to The Chicago Manual of Style or another suitable standard reference manual for correct bibliographic formats.) Note that presentation of bibliographic entries for Websites should, in general, follow the same format as if for a book, followed by the Web address in angle brackets at the end.
For example,
Adams, John. Embarking on Liberty. Boston: Colonial Press, 1776. <http://www.liberty.com>.
Prepare an annotation for each source giving brief comments as to the content and relevance. Annotations may vary in length and content. There is no standard format or style for annotations. In general, however, an annotation should give an outline or summary of the scope and content of an article (or other item being annotated) and some ideas about its interest for or relevance to your particular field of independent study.
Your bibliography does not need to be comprehensive or exhaustive but rather should reflect some high points of interest and show some scholarly research relating the governing topic of this course to your field of independent study. There is also no prescribed length for the bibliography (although a presentation of only two or three items is unlikely to be acceptable).
Submit your proposed annotated bibliography to the instructor who will review and approve it, or provide comments and suggestions for revisions.
Each student is responsible for preparing a critique of the course.
Instructions are on the last page of these 'Guidelines.'
The Creation
of the Universe
Science Provides Two Views
by Richard Crews
A few decades ago there were two theories about the creation of the universe which vied for scientific attention. One was the theory of 'continuous creation;' the other, the 'big bang.'
The theory of continuous creation was built carefully and reasonably on a wealth of observations and the best ideas available. The universe was known to be a vast near-vacuum with what relatively little matter there was consisting almost entirely hydrogen, with helium and all the heavier elements combined amounting to barely a drop in the cosmic bucket. It was known that the universe was expanding rapidly in all directions, as if driven by some ubiquitous internal pressure. It was also known that it was riddled with complex crisscrossing energy radiations, and that these had a direct equivalence to particles with tiny masses according to Einstein's formula e=mc2. The theory of continuous creation proposed, ever so reasonably, that these vast and complex rippling energy patterns occasionally, according to definable laws of probability, chanced into extremely dense concentrations which had new stability as elementary particles such as electrons and protons. These could then easily stabilize into hydrogen atoms (each consisting of one negatively charged electron joined with one positively charged proton).
The theory of continuous creation produced an elegant harmony of scientific observations from many diverse sources. It postulated that if, on the average, one hydrogen atom were formed in a year from the background radiation in each cubic mile or so of space, the internal pressure of the universe would be sufficient to account for its observed expansion. In addition, the observed preponderance of hydrogen would be neatly explained. Moreover, this would even provide for conservation of mass/energy since the hydrogen thus formed would evolve under the influence of gravitation in clearly explainable ways into stars which would radiate almost all of their mass/energy back out into the universe to contribute to the background matrix of energy ripples from which they had come.
The 'big bang' theory, by contrast, was a clumsy construction of unimaginable conditions and strange occurrences. It proposed that some fifteen billion years ago the entire universe began concentrated in a single point of infinite density--a 'singularity' with no definable properties or physical laws. Suddenly, at a precise instant, this blew apart, exploding in every direction at the speed of light. Now, fifteen billion years later, we are witnessing this explosion still under way.
During the past few decades the elegant 'continuous creation' theory has fallen by the wayside and the strange 'big bang' theory with its non-reproducible array of unimaginable conditions has accumulated convincing scientific evidence from numerous directions.
Thus do not only the knowledge but also the imagination of our race
advance.
from
Talking Tech : A Conversational Guide to Science and Technology
by Howard Rheingold and Howard Levine
Definition:
A cosmological theory explaining that the universe began approximately
fifteen billion years ago when an infinitely hot, infinitely dense singularity
exploded. The theory has been supported by laboratory observation of high-energy
particle interactions and radio-astronomical isolation of microwave background
radiation.
What it really means:
Creation myths are one of the few truly universal cultural traits. Every tribe, culture, nation, or religious cult in history has concocted some version of how everything got started. Modern societies are no different from previous groups, and the cosmogonists are the creation mythologists of our science-dominated culture. What is different this time is the modern mythmakers' claim that their brand of creation story can be confirmed through objective measures. Strangely enough, those scientific measures and the ancient mythologizers agree on a number of crucial points.
The Book of Genesis, the Bhagavad Gita, and the big bang theory all agree that fiat lux 'let there be light' is an excellent description of the way it all started.
According to big bang theorists, there was plenty of light in the first microseconds of time/light such as the universe hasn't witnessed since. The Old Testament didn't go into detail about positrons and neutrinos, but it most definitely mentioned light, and contemporary physicists do agree that photons (light particles) were an important component of the universe during the opening scene. However, the light of that primordial dawn was physically different from the diluted light we see today. For one thing, it was a billion times denser than water. Another astonishing characteristic of that flash is that evidence of it has lasted fifteen billion years, which is fortunate for astrophysical theory, since it is the only data earthbound cosmogonists have to work with.
Our idea of the very limits of creation--how and when it began, and how it might end--was vastly expanded by a pair of American astronomers, Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason, who conducted a series of observations in the 1920s. Working with blurry lines of light on old-fashioned photographic plates, these astronomers found evidence that led to our current model of an expanding universe.
If all the galaxies are expanding away from each other at a measurable rate, scientists theorized that it should be possible to trace the current expansion backward to a specific time in the past. This 'tracing-it-all-back' process led to the big bang model. According to this theory, our universe is expanding today because it exploded from a single point sometime around fifteen billion years ago. This was the big bang. But it wasn't an explosion in the sense that we understand the term. It wasn't a spherical wave that started at a central point and spread outward into space, like a bomb detonation. It was a total explosion that happened everywhere in space at the same tine. Everything that existed rushed away from everything else. In a real sense, the universe is that explosion. It was such a singular event that present-day scientists are still not equipped with theories sophisticated enough to describe the events of the first millionths of a second. Current astro-physical tools begin to be useful only when the first one hundredth of a second is reached.
At around one hundredth of a second after the beginning of the bang, the temperature of the universe was around 100,000 million degrees Kelvin ?a temperature that makes the interior of an exploding star seem very cool in comparison. Today, however, that incredible blast of ultradense radiation and colliding particles has thinned out and cooled down to an average cosmic temperature of about three to four degrees Kelvin. While this temperature is not the kind that can be measured by sticking a thermometer into space, the big bang theorists postulated that residual heat should still be detectable as radiation in the microwave range.
In 1965, A. A. Penzias and R. W. Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey were building a radio telescope and were having trouble with persistent interference in the 7.35 mm frequency. Like good scientists, they tried to eliminate all possible sources of the interference: They scrubbed bird droppings off the antenna, used special supercooled noise-elimination gear, painstakingly recalibrated the antenna. Nothing they did eliminated the interference, and that led to the inescapable conclusion that the noise was coming from everywhere. The predicted 'fossil radiation' from the big bang had been discovered. It was an awesome confirmation of an abstract theory; those radioastronomers had actually tuned in on the echo of creation. The big bang theory is now widely accepted as the ìstandard model, and our view of the cosmos can never be the same again.
The Anthropic Principle, the "Strong" Version
An Extrapolated Review of Nature's Destiny by Michael Denton
by Richard Crews -- August 1998
Not too many centuries ago, it was the certain belief of all serious thinkers (at least in the Indo-European, Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian tradition) that there was a God who was--in some sense--in charge. This belief was held for several reasons.
First, it was the common cultural heritage: to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, everyone thought that way because everyone thought that way because everyone thought that way. It was the background climate of expectation--all-pervasive, largely unnoticed. It was within--not outside of--this climate that any storms of discourse, deliberation, and disputation took place. The belief that there was a God in charge was as basic and unchallenged as the air we breath and the water we drink. Perhaps it modified, even stultified, peopleís lives, but if so, it did so invisibly.
The second reason for believing and espousing that there was a God in charge was that it was the politically correct thing to do. And this was backed by considerable social and legal pressure of persuasion. In fact, people were exiled and imprisoned, even hanged, beheaded, and burned at the stake for failing to comply with this cultural mandate.
Third--as if one needed a third--the daily world seemed mysterious and miraculous, fraught with blessing and tragedy. Not only was the scientific literacy on which we ground our sense of reality as yet unelaborated, more significantly, people expected the world to be magical and inexplicable, just as many of us now pretty much expect it to be orderly and predictable.
Yes, there was a God in charge. This was clear.
And there were some other obvious 'givens.' It seemed clear, a few hundred years ago, that humans were the most important creatures around, that human thoughts and actions were of all-consuming significance, that the Earth existed to serve humans, and that the Earth was the central feature of cosmic creation.
Thanks to the objectivity and scholarly relativism of the Renaissance and of the attendant and subsequent scientific revolution, we can now scoff patronizingly at such myopic and parochial views. We now recognize with smug humility that Homo sapiens is but one of many species and that the Earth is but one of several planets around a rather average star--in fact, that there are billions of stars not much unlike our Sun in each of billions of galaxies not much unlike our Milky Way.
We have escaped theism. We can be pleased with ourselves and pat ourselves on the back. In some ways it certainly seems to have been a mind-constricting paradigm.
Instead, the powerful tools of scientific theory and research have fitted together an intricate complex of pieces--from quarks to quasars, with atoms, molecules, colloids, and the intricate compounds of life from viruses to elephants along the way. We now have an enormously detailed interlocking picture of what makes up the world around us and how it works. We are no longer committed either socially and psychologically nor by wistful naiveté to a magical--God-driven--view of the world.
Yet out of our modern sophisticated views of the complex but fundamentally rational universe has emerged a series of realization that may bring us full circle. Through a subversive rubric called the 'anthropic principle,' science seems to threaten to put God back in the universe. Let's look at how.
As we have come to know more and more--scientifically--about the world around us, evidence has mounted from many directions that human life depends on a series of remarkable coincidences. It is hard--unless one is compulsively myopic--to escape the impression that from its earliest moments of creation, the universe has been designed to produce humanity. Let us look at some of the details of this apparent, remarkable conspiracy of intention.
First, from the studies of cosmology and atomic physics come realizations of a series of precariously balanced probabilities without which life--and humans--would not have been possible. As Michael Denton summarizes in Nature's Destiny (1998, page 7), "Evidence from physics and cosmology [suggests] that the laws of physics are fine-tuned for carbon-based life. . . . The fitness of the universe for life depends on a number of factors, including: the relative strength of the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces), the speed of expansion of the universe, the spacing and frequency of supernovae, the nuclear energy levels of certain atoms, etc. If these were not precisely what they are, then carbon-based life would certainly not exist." Some of these precariously tuned parameters must be as close as a few orders of magnitude to their observed values. Amazingly, some must be much closer. According the Roger Penrose in The Emperorís New Mind (1989), ìThis now tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been, namely to an accuracy of one part in ten-to-the-ten-to-the-123. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full in ordinary [decimal] notation: it would be one followed by ten-to-the-123 successive zeros. Even if we were to write a zero on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe--and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure--we would fall far short of writing down the figure needed.
But wait! (As the advertising hucksters say.) There's more. Much more. To quote Denton again (page 19):
Water [the 'vital fluid'] gives every appearance of being uniquely fit for the type of carbon-based life that exists on Earth. Every one of its chemical and physical properties seems maximally fit not only for microscopic life but also for large warm-blooded organisms such as mammals, as well as for the generation and maintenance of a stable chemical and physical environment on the surface of the Earth. Some of the [crucial] properties of water . . . include its thermal properties, its surface tension, its capacity to dissolve a vast number of different substances, and its low viscosity, which allows small molecules to enter and leave cells by diffusion and which also makes possible a circulatory system. If the properties of water were not almost precisely what they are, carbon-based life would in all probability be impossible. Even the viscosity of ice is fit. If it were any greater, then all the water on earth might be trapped in vast immobile ice sheets at the poles. If the thermal properties of water were even slightly different, the maintenance of stable body temperatures in warm-blooded organisms would be problematical. No other fluid comes close to water as the ideal medium for carbon-based life. Indeed, the properties of water in themselves provide perhaps as much evidence as physics and cosmology in support of the proposition that the laws of nature are specifically arranged for carbon-based life.
Moreover, Denton adds (page 47):
The electromagnetic radiation reaching the surface of the Earth is uniquely fit for carbon-based life. The sunís radiation is mainly in the visual range--from the near ultraviolet to the near infrared. Not only is most of the electromagnetic radiation outside this tiny range harmful to life, but the energy levels within the visual spectrum are precisely fit for photochemistry. Remarkably, the atmospheric gases, including water vapor and liquid water, absorb virtually all the harmful radiation outside the visual range and transmit only this tiny band of biologically useful radiation. These coincidences provide convincing evidence of natures fitness for carbon-based life. On top of its utility for photochemistry, the wavelength and energy levels of visual light are fit for biological vision with a camera-type eye of the sort utilized in higher vertebrates, including humans. Like water, the light of the Sun appears to be of optimal biological utility.
Denton further extends his report of this remarkable pattern of improbabilities (page 71):
[When the] biological significance of various elements of the periodic table is examined, the fitness of the cosmos for carbon-based life is highlighted by the fact that the cosmic abundance of the elements corresponds to their abundance in living organisms and that the space between the stars is filled with immense quantities of organic compounds. Further, representatives of every class of atoms in the periodic table arc necessary for life. Even uranium atom 92 is essential for life, providing the heat and energy required for tectonic activity and the turnover of the Earth's crustal rocks, which in conjunction with the water cycle ensures the chemical constancy of the Earthís surficial layers. The properties of some of the minerals which play such a vital role in the maintenance of this chemical constancy are examined. The fact that recent astronomical studies suggest that solar systems not too dissimilar to our own, containing rocky planets somewhat like the Earth, may be relatively common, can be taken as further evidence of nature's fitness for carbon-based life. It is concluded that habitats like the Earth which are so fit for a rich, complex carbon-based biosphere are not freakish events but rather the inevitable end of natural law.
Particularly (page 101):
The chemical properties of the carbon atom are uniquely fit to form the complex molecules required for life. Silicon, which is carbonís sister atom in the periodic table, falls far short of carbon in the diversity and complexity of its compounds. [Moreover,] the fitness of carbon compounds for life is maximal in the same temperature range that water is a fluid. Both the strong covalent and the weak bonds are of maximal utility in this same temperature range. Such coincidences are precisely what one might expect to see in a cosmos specially adapted for carbon-based life.
Similar coincidences seem to emerge from studies of the properties of certain metals such as iron, copper, calcium, molybdenum, and magnesium; of the vital gasses oxygen and carbon dioxide; and from the curious and unique properties of DNA and RNA, and of proteins.
Moving from the biochemical into the strictly biological realm, "the cell [seems] uniquely and ideally fit to function as the basic unit of carbon-based life." (page 209) Moreover, "[the human] species exhibits a set of adaptations which are collectively unique among carbon-based life forms on Earth. These include high intelligence, linguistic ability, the hand, high-acuity vision, the upright stance, and sociability." (page 235)
Denton summarizes the perplexing confrontation between scientific discoveries and non-theism (page 321):
In complex systems like a watch or a living system, all the subsystems are intensely integrated. Engineering changes in such systems is complex because each change to any one subsystem must be compatible with the functioning of all the other subsystems. Any change beyond a trivial degree is bound to necessitate intelligently directed compensatory changes in many of the interacting subsystems. In this context it is hard to understand how undirected evolution via a series of independent changes could ever produce a radical redesign in any sort of system as complex as a living organism. It is precisely this integrated complexity which provides a major barrier to engineering radical change in living things from viruses to mammals. In the future, if genetic engineers are ever able to radically redesign living systems from proteins to whole organisms, this will only be via intelligently directed changes which will almost certainly necessitate programmed simultaneous change in many of the basic subsystems. Artificial evolution will be per saltum and not per a succession of independent changes. Living organisms not only exhibit an immense integrative complexity but are also immensely complex in terms of the sheer number of unique components they contain. In the case of higher organisms, the number of different unique genetic readouts used throughout the life of the organism may approach several billion.
The evidence accumulating from science overwhelmingly implies that some
mysterious, super-intelligent designer (shall we continue to resist saying
'God'?) worked out--or is working out--in unimaginably intricate detail
the development of carbon-based life, of human beings, and of our fitness
to explore and colonize space. We do not know for sure if other (similar)
creatures on other (similar) planets share that possibility. But
we do know as surely as we know anything (if we are willing to admit it)
that we humans do--that it is our birthright, our responsibility, and our
opportunity.
by Charles Panati
from The Browser's Book of Beginnings:
Origins of Everything Under (and Including) the
Sun
The Universe, 14.5 Billion Years Ago
The universe ?the only one we have evidence of, though it may have existed in previous incarnations and may one day die and be reborn? was created 14.5 billion years ago, when a superdense ball of primordial matter, drifting through a black, formless void, suddenly exploded. This was the 'big bang.'
The scientific reason for that shattering cataclysm remains a mystery. The searing heat of those first few moments of creation forever evaporated the fingerprints of the Prime Mover ?whether they were the familiar forces of physics or a spiritual force in the form of a personal God.
We do know that in the ensuing chaos matter vigorously fought antimatter for eternal dominance. When particles of opposite dispositions approached each other too closely, both were instantaneously annihilated, producing radiant bursts of pure energy. The battle for what would become the essence of galaxies, stars, and of life itself raged on for millions of years.
The victor, of course, was matter. The legions of antimatter, what few survived, were banished to remote islands in space, and others were imprisoned, it's believed, in gravitational traps at the centers of numerous present-day galaxies, including our Milky Way.
As the universe expanded, rushing outward to fill the void, it also began to cool. By the time of its one-billionth birthday, it was sufficiently cool to start condensing into galaxies, swirling masses of primal mist.
Matter, now having few foes, was under rule of the god gravity, which gathered together inside each galaxy gases and dust, and fashioned stars. Some blazed in isolation, others in great constellations that human beings eons later on a planet that had yet to be formed would imagine resembled dippers, bears, horses, and crabs.
Stars continued to form as the universe aged, cooled, and further expanded. Gravity, in its all-pervasive reach, eventually served as a brake to slow the expansion, limiting physical reality to a bubblelike shell whose dimensions one day would be daringly estimated by a great physicist, Albert Einstein.
Populated now with clusters of matter, the universe was a few billion years old. There were countless galaxies, but only an amorphous hint of our own Milky Way; numerous stars, but not our sun; many planets, but not the Earth.
At a later point in cosmological time, either accident or the hand of God, depending on oneís personal belief, began to erect a state of high order at one infinitesimally small place in the swirling Milky Way. It was to become our solar system.
The Sun and the Earth, 4.6 Billion Years Ago
Out of the Milky Way's primal mist, hot gases and tiny particles of matter began to coalesce in a remote region of one of the galaxy's two spiral arms. Why the Earth, the other planets of our solar system, and the sun should form in that particular region has no simple explanation, but the area certainly was at a safe distance from the madhouse of antimatter that seethed at the Milky Way's center.
One ball of gases, mainly hydrogen and helium, contracted to form a new, medium-sized star, our sun. Temperatures climbed to millions of degrees, igniting a series of thermonuclear reactions, similar to those which occur in a hydrogen bomb. This fireball would burn under its own power for billions of years.
One day 6 billions years from now the sun, in a state of old age and exhaustion, will swell to what is called a red giant; the expansion will vaporize the Earth and whatever may exist on it at that time. Presumably, human civilization long before then will have escaped to a safer, cooler planet in another region of the Milky Way.
While the sun blazed at the center of the newly forming solar system, 93 million miles away, a gentler, cooler process was occurring.
Tiny particles of matter from the primal mist collided. Some stuck together, and their larger mass, under the lure of gravity, attracted additional matter, until finally a rock existed. In the same way, neighboring rocks formed, and some of those collided and combined. Over millions of years this painstaking process of accretion formed the nucleus of the planet Earth.
At some point the gravitational forces of the nucleus were rapacious enough to gather up all sorts of circling matter and gases. The gases were mainly hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and nitrogen, and the other particles were iron, aluminium, gold, uranium, and many rare elements, all of which would eventually play a role in the diverse forms of life to emerge on the planet.
The neighboring planets in the solar system formed in a similar way, though each was unique in its proportions of various gases and elements. Those mixtures, though, did not favor the complex formation of specific organic molecules that would evolve into animal and plant life as we know it. The Earth came into existence as a barren sphere, lacking all the surface features we recognize today: boulders, mountains, waterfalls, oceans. What forces sculpted it?
The initial credit goes to radioactive elements, like uranium, that were created with the birth of the universe and became trapped inside the Earth. They decayed spontaneously, emitting energy and subatomic particles, and became transformed into new and stable elements.
Radioactive disintegration raised the temperature of the planet, especially at its center. Rocks at the center, and at various pockets near the surface, became molten. Where the surface crust was thinnest, molten rocks erupted through, producing volcanos, smearing lava over featureless terrain, raining down hills of hot ash. The lava contained numerous gases that would be essential for life, and also such noxious ones as sulfur dioxide and hydrochloric acid, which would play their own corrosive roles in etching the planet.
But the lava's most vital ingredient by far was water vapor. It was this precious vapor which cooled to create the Earth's oceans.
For millions of years volcanic activity was almost incessant. It produced inland mountains, islands amid vast expanses of water, and the seeds of the continents. The Earth was now rich in complex gases, elements, and minerals, and was awash in water.
It was a planet waiting for life to begin.
SEA LIFE: SPONGES TO SHARKS
Primordial Soup, 4000 Million Years Ago
The Earth, at the relatively young age of only 1600 million years, was a boisterous, bubbling planet. Volcanos all over the globe erupted continually. Raging storms of noxious winds and acid rain besieged the surface, and the fiery sunís ultraviolet rays constantly bathed the planet, which had yet to develop a protective atmospheric blanket, one that would permit life, once it emerged in the oceans, to evolve onto land. For now, the only refuge for potential life was deep in the sea.
Although the Earth's initial climate was inhospitable to life, it also was the precursor of life's raw ingredients. Hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and carbon monoxide covered the land in a deadly vapor. To verify the existence of this early atmosphere, and the role it played in yielding organic molecules, in the 1950s two American scientists, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, blended these gases in a sealed laboratory flask and passed electric sparks through it, simulating the fierce lightning storms that once raged on earth. A dark slimy mold formed at the bottom of the flask, and analysis of it revealed all the ingredients necessary for life: amino acids, fats, sugars, and urea.
In this way the first organic molecules came into existence. They fell from the sky into the hot acid ocean, forming a sort of primordial soup. Many were destroyed immediately; the hardier ones survived, many linked together, and some soon learned how to make identical copies of themselves and were organized into genes.
Genes, 3900 Million Years Ago
Charles Darwin proposed that complexity evolves from simplicity through natural selection. This is true for plants, animals, and humans, and it is equally valid for the large DNA molecule, which makes up our genes and transmits all hereditary traits, for single cells and for human beings.
In the Earth's rich primordial soup, simple molecules continually collided to form more complex ones. Some ripped apart; others resisted cleavage by the many reactive chemicals in the ocean and picked up additional molecules, thus forming longer and longer sequences called nucleotides. These molecules were survivors; they contained information that had a future; their structure was worth replicating. In this way, they were primitive DNA molecules, simultaneously the source of all hereditary information existing at the time and the very objects to be synthesized according to that information.
Here, at the molecular level, are the roots of the ancient conundrum: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Function or the information on how to function? As biologists believe today, neither could entirely precede the other; function and information evolved together, each aiding the evolution of the other.
These first self-replicating molecules or genes were only about 100 units long, so they displayed little diversity in shape and information content. By contrast, human gene lengths today extend to millions of units, permitting the rich variety of outward physical appearances and internal bodily functions.
How did genes a mere hundred units long evolve into complex strings of millions of molecules?
Extension of gene length was possible only with the appearance of a mechanism for detecting and correcting random errors that occurred in the process of self-replication. Life, if it was to have a future, had to have a high degree of consistency from one generation to the next. The distinction between a 'right' or 'wrong' segment in a gene ?on a human scale between a normal infant and one suffering genetic malformation? also was a process mastered through natural selection: daughter molecules of 'wrong' genes soon died in the primordial soup.
The complex molecule that eventually learned the vital functions of proofreading and error-suppression was RNA. It ran up the DNA segment of a gene, searching for errors and, finding one, sliced out the faulty information, replacing it with 'right' molecules floating in the soup. The original RNA molecule, originating some 3900 million years ago, allowed genes to increase rapidly in length to produce a multiplicity of new and wondrous organisms in the Earth's oceans.
These early genes, however, were long, gangly, freefloating molecules not contained within the protective walls of cells. Hence, even with their error-detection and correction schemes, they were endlessly plagued with errors. Quite simply, to cut down on the number of mistakes from one generation of primitive organisms to the next, to ensure faithful self-replication ?and, later, sexual reproduction? an entirely new biological component was needed: the cell.
Cells, 3800 Million Years Ago
The cell, a complex and harmonious conglomerate enclosed in a plasma membrane, came into existence in part to protect fledgling genes from their hostile, reactive environment. Shielded in the heart of a cell, a gene now had to handle only those occasional random errors of its own which arose in self-replication.
The advantages of a gene living in a cell are as obvious as those of a person spending a harsh winter inside a well-insulated, well-stocked house. Each enclosure offers protection. But the need for protection alone cannot account for the high degree of organization that developed in early cells and exists today. The origin of cellular organization arose as a clever response to an additional need of genes: simplicity.
Imagine, for example, ten large families all living and working in a
single room. Regardless of the size of this space, life would be hectic
and cluttered, and the potential for infighting high. To simplify things,
the space might be divided into ten separate apartments, one for each family.
Each apartment might then be further subdivided into rooms for special
family members and specific functions, such as working, cooking, recreation,
and sleep. This kind of subdividing is precisely what nature did, again
through natural selection. To cope with the immense problem of evaluating
the quality of information in genes, the cell, in the process of evolution,
compartmentalized itself.
HOW EARTH
GOT ITS ATMOSPHERE
FOSSIL PROOF FOR A THEORY
by Charles Petit,
San Francisco Chronicle, July 24, 1986
Tiny creatures teeming in shallow seas more than 3.5 billion years ago began the process that gave Earth its oxygen-rich air, UCLA scientists reported in Berkeley yesterday.
The claim is based on studies of microscopic Australian fossils. If it is proved valid, it would push back the dawn of oxygen-producing life and support the ideas that life has played a vital role in shaping most of Earth's geological history.
"What this says, if this is right, is that the Earth's ecosystem was largely established, on a primitive level, a lot longer ago than had been suspected until very recently," said J. William Schopf, director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Evolution. The Earth is generally reckoned to have formed as part of the birth of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
"The corollary to this is that there was a great deal of evolution that occurred prior to 3.5 billion years ago," Schopf said. How long, he said, is impossible to guess, "but it must have been under way a few hundred million years to get the assemblage of fossils we're reporting here now."
The rise of life, and its ability to liberate oxygen from carbon dioxide,
plays a central role in nearly all theories of how Earth got its present
atmosphere dominated by nitrogen and oxygen after starting with methane,
ammonia, nitrogen, water and carbon dioxide. But evidence is extremely
hard to find because so few rocks are left from when the Earth was young.
The new claim arises from objects visible through a microscope as tiny
spheres, often clustered, or strung out like beads on a necklace, in a
geologic formation under study since 1980.
Researchers found the fossils in ancient chert, a quartz-rich sedimentary rock. Formed on shallow ocean floors 3.5 billion to 3.7 billion years ago, the chert is interlaced among volcanic rocks in the Warrawoona geologic formations in western Australia 50 to 100 miles southeast of Port Hedland.
They are the oldest rocks known of a kind that could preserve fossils.
Suspicion that the tiny, ancient, translucent Australian objects are the remains of living organism has been high for several years, but "what we really want to know was how they lived, how they breathed" and "what did their world look like," said Schopf.
Schopf and a colleague, Bonnie M. Packer, reported yesterday that they could identify up to 10 species of bacterial fossils in the samples taken from Australia. In size, shape and general characteristics, the fossils closely resemble modern 'cyanobacteria,' a type of single-celled microbe that includes blue-green algae that liberates oxygen molecules from carbon dioxide.
Although no proof is possible that they were making oxygen 3.5 billion years ago, "these look like no bacteria or microbe that we know of that does not produce oxygen."
The clusters of organisms identified by microscope in thin slices of the chert also are the oldest known colonies of living things known to science. They lend powerful evidence to ideas that stromatolites, strangely layered pillow-sized rocks found in ancient sediment, are fossilized remains of huge colonies of bacteria that lived in shallow seas billions of years ago.
The report on the new discoveries highlighted an international meeting in Berkeley of 270 scientists to discuss the origins of life on Earth and implications for life elsewhere in the universe. The meeting at the Clark Kerr Conference Center is sponsored by the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Until now, the oldest confirmed oxygen-producing life forms were identified in 2.8-billion-year-old shale from Canada. Until just 20 years ago, scientists could not agree on the authenticity of any fossils more than about 600 million years old, the time that multicelled creatures appeared with easily preserved hard parts such as shells.
The rapid rate at which the known appearance of life has been pushed
back has fueled speculation that, given the right conditions, life could
arise relatively quickly anywhere.
If a person could travel back 3.5 billion years to what is now the
Warrawoona Formation, Schopf said, "he'd find himself in a shallow lagoon
filled with green slime, underlain by a black mud containing literally
billions of organisms." The land would be barren of all life, and no life
forms bigger than bacteria would have yet evolved.
Such a time traveler, despite the abundance of oxygen-producing life, would have to carry an oxygen bottle to survive long.
It is estimated that oxygen levels did not rise high enough for modern animals to breathe until perhaps a billion years ago. At first, oxygen was rapidly consumed by iron dissolved in the water and soils. "Literally, the Earth had to rust before oxygen could build up," said Cyril Ponnampuruma, a professor at the University of Maryland.
At the meeting, scores of papers analyzed conditions on early Earth
that could have contributed to the appearance of life.
by Howard Rheingold and Howard Levine
from Talking Tech
Darwin's theory of evolution offers a bold solution to an important mystery; how single-celled life forms managed to grow, over billions of years, into walking, talking, thinking beings. The ideas of variation and natural selection furnished the mechanism by which that miraculous journey from the slime to the threshold of the stars could have been accomplished without supernatural intervention. The theory doesn't say much, however, about an even greater mystery; how life arose in the first place. In order to remedy that deficiency in our knowledge, biochemists, astrophysicists, and geologists are piecing together a scenario covering those crucial years before Darwinís grand drama began.
Strangely enough, the first large-scale formal effort to assemble the disparate evidence from various disciplines was initiated by NASA. As Americaís space agency, one important aspect of its program is the search for extraterrestrial life. It decided that the best way to accomplish this was to understand the events which led to the origins of life on earth. When the Viking Mars lander was designed (in part to perform experiments probing the possibility of life on that planet), it became necessary to define 'life' in terms that a machine could understand. The working definition of life at its simplest level, official NASA version, is: a carbon-based macromolecule capable of replicating and metabolizing.
Replication--the ability to reproduce--is the key criterion for distinguishing a living molecule from an inert molecule. When atoms group together into molecular chains, the resulting compounds can have amazing properties, but one thing a nonliving molecule cannot do is make a duplicate of itself. Living molecules can reproduce themselves because of the presence of complex molecules called nucleic acids. Since every living creature contains nucleic acids in every cell, the map to the evolution of higher life forms can only be deciphered by understanding how these molecular patterns duplicate themselves.
Life may be viewed as a series of specific chemical messages passed through time, written in a tantalizing code. When the self-replicating mechanism of the DNA molecule was finally explained in the 1950s, that code was finally deciphered. The laboratory search for the origins of life then shifted and now concentrate on how natural processes could have combined simple compounds to form the first DNA.
All life on earth, from the smallest microbes to 'intelligent' life, has a common chemical ancestry. This historical continuum of ever more complex, increasingly information-rich, chemical steps can be traced, theoretically, back to the creation of the universe. When our solar system coalesced from huge clouds of intersteller debris approximately four billion years ago, the complex atoms necessary for the later evolution of life were included in that conglomeration because they had been ejected from the cores of exploding stars billions of years previously. As the earth began to cool and condense over the span of a billion years, geological processes began the first steps toward biological evolution. Necessary elements rose to the surface; volcanos spewed other ingredients into the newborn atmosphere; water began to condense into liquid form.
Our earliest common ancestor, that magical chain of molecules which learned to pass itself beyond death and through time, was born in a primordial soup between three and a half and four billion years ago. In a real sense, that talented compound was a set of immortal instructions, slowly constructed from an alphabet of elements. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and other needed atoms were present in that ancestral broth, to be bombarded by ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, ionized by superbolts of lightning, gently heated by the earthís molten core.
Laboratory experiments have combined these same simple elements, subjected them to similar conditions, and succeeded in demonstrating the natural formation of the building blocks of proteins known as amino acids. It is now believed that further random stimuli fused the amino acids into longer, even more complex molecules that qualified as the first nucleotides. These long chain-like molecules then combined in just the right way to make the first DNA molecule. That was the end of random processes as the fuel for the evolutionary engine; the first DNA molecule used the nucleotides in the soup surrounding it to make the second DNA molecule . . . and biology was off and running.
In addition to their laboratory simulations of primordial conditions,
scientists have also been searching for fossil evidence of the earliest
life forms. Ironically, the two oldest and most exciting finds in the search
for life's origin have been made in two of the most lifeless areas of the
earth; a place in Australia called 'the North Pole' because of its remoteness,
and a rock formation in Greenland known by the Eskimo name 'Isua,' meaning
'the farthest one can go.' The fossils in Australia, technically known
as 'stromatolites,' were discovered in 1980, and they clearly indicate
the presence of bacteria at least three and a half billion years ago. Radioisotope
dating of the Greenland rocks indicate that hydrocarbons likely to have
been created by living organisms were present three hundred million years
before the Australia fossils.
by Loren Eiseley
The skull was black when they brought it to me. It was black from the irons and acids and mineral replacements of ice-age gravels. It was polished and worn and gleaming from the alterations of unnumbered years. It had made strange journeys after the death of its occupant; it had moved with glacial slowness in the beds of rivers; it had been tumbled by floods and, becoming an object of grisly beauty, had been picked up and passed from hand to hand by men the individual had never seen in life.
Finally it was brought to me. It was my duty to tell them about the skull.
It was my professional duty to clothe these bones once more with the faint essence of a personality, to speak of a man or a woman, young or old, as the bones might tell the story. It was my task to read the racial features in a forgotten face, stare deep into the hollow sockets through which had once passed in endless procession the days and seasons and the shed tears of long ago.
The woman had been young. I could tell from that. I could tell them she had once fallen or been struck and that after a long time the bone had mended and she had recovered--how, it was difficult to say, for it had been a dangerous and compound fracture. Today such a wound would mean months of immobilization in a hospital. This woman had survived without medical attention through the endless marchings and journeyings of the hunters' world. Even the broken orbit of the left eye had dropped by a quarter of an inch--a serious disfigurement. Nevertheless she had endured and lived on toward some doom that had come fast upon her but was not written in the bones. It was, in all likelihood, a death by violence. Her skull had not been drawn from a grave. It had come from beneath the restless waters of a giant river that is known to keep its secrets well.
They asked me for the time of these events, and again, obediently, I went down that frail ladder which stretches below us into the night of time. I went slowly, by groping deductions and the hesitant intuitions of long experience that only scholars know. I passed through ages where water was wearing away the shapes of river pebbles into crystalline sand and the only sound in the autumn thickets was the gathering of south-flying birds. Somewhere in the neighborhood of the five thousandth millennium--I could place it no closer than that--the ladder failed me. The river was still there but larger ?an enormous rolling waste of water and marshes out of which rose a vast October moon.
They interrupted me then, querulously, asking if archaeologists could
do no better than this, and was it not true that there were new and clever
methods by which physicists could call the year in the century and mark
the passage of time by the tick of atoms in the substance of things. And
I said, yes, within limits it was true, but that the methods were not always
usable, and that the subtle contaminations possible among radioactive objects
sometimes defeated our attempts.
by Petr Beckmann
A million years or so have passed since the tool-wielding animal called man made its appearance on this planet. During this time it learned to recognize shapes and directions; to grasp the concepts of magnitude and number; to measure; and to realize that there exist relationships between certain magnitudes.
The details of this process are unknown. The first dim flash in the darkness goes back to the stone age; the bone of a wolf with incisions to form a tally stick. The flashes become brighter and more numerous as time goes on, but not until about 2,000 B.C. do the hard facts start to emerge by direct documentation rather than by circumstantial evidence. And one of these facts is this: By 2000 B.C., men had grasped the significance of the constant that is today denoted by pi, and that they had found a rough approximation of its value.
How had they arrived at this point? To answer this question, we must return into the stone age and beyond, and into the realm of speculation.
Long before the invention of the wheel, man must have learned to identify the peculiarly regular shape of the circle. He saw it in the pupils of his fellow man and fellow animals; he saw it bounding the disks of the Moon and Sun; he saw it, or something near it, in some flowers; and perhaps he was pleased by its infinite symmetry as he drew its shape in the sand with a stick.
Then, one might speculate, men began to grasp the concept of magnitude ?there were large circles and small circles, tall trees and small trees, heavy stones, heavier stones, very heavy stones. The transition from these qualitative statements to quantitative measurement was the dawn of mathematics. It must have been a long and arduous road, but it is a safe guess that it was first taken for quantities that assume only integral values; people, animals, trees, stones, sticks. For counting is a quantitative measurement: The measurement of the amount of a multitude of items.
Man first learned to count to two, and a long time elapsed before he learned to count to higher numbers. There is a fair amount of evidence for this, perhaps none of it more fascinating than that preserved in man's languages: In Czech, until the Middle Ages, there used to be two kinds of plural; one for two items, another for many (more than two) items, and apparently in Finnish this is so to this day. There is evidently no connection between the (Germanic) words two and half; there is none in the Romance languages (French: deux and moitie) nor in the slavic languages (Russian: dva and pol), and in Hungarian, which is not an Indo-European language, the words are ketto and fel. Yet in all European languages, the words for 3 and 1/3, 4 and 1/4, etc., are related. This suggests that men grasped the concept of a ratio, and the idea of a relation between a number and its reciprocal, only after they had learned to count beyond two.
The next step was to discover relations between various magnitudes. Again, it seems certain that such relations were first expressed qualitatively. It must have been noticed that bigger stones are heavier, or to put it into more complicated words, that there is a relation between the volume and the weight of a stone. It must have been observed that an older tree is taller, that a faster runner covers a longer distance, that more prey gives more food, that larger fields yield bigger crops. Among all these kinds of relationships, there was one which could hardly have escaped notice, and which, moreover, had no exceptions:
The wider a circle is 'across,' the longer it is 'around.'
And again, this line of qualitative reasoning must have been followed by quantitative considerations. If the volume of a stone is doubled, the weight is doubled; if you run twice as fast, you cover double the distance; if you treble the fields, you treble the crop; if you double the diameter of a circle, you double its circumference. Of course, the rule does not always work: A tree twice as old is not twice as tall. The reason is that "the more...the more" does not always imply proportionality; or in more snobbish words, not every monotonic function is linear.
Neolithic man was hardly concerned with monotonic functions; but it is certain that men learned to recognize, consciously or unconsciously, by experience, instinct, reasoning, or all of these, the concept of proportionality; that is, they learned to recognize pairs of magnitude such that if the one was doubled, trebled, quadrupled, halved, or left alone, then the other would also double, treble, quadruple, halve, or show no change.
And then came the great discovery. By recognizing certain specific properties, and by defining them, little is accomplished. (That is why the old type of descriptive biology was so barren.) But a great scientific discovery has been made when the observations are generalized in such a way that a generally valid rule can be stated. The greater its range of validity, the greater its significance. To say that one field will feed half the tribe, two fields will feed the whole tribe, three fields will feed one and a half tribes, all this applies only to certain fields and tribes. To say that one bee has six legs, three bees have eighteen legs, etc., is a statement that applies, at best, to the class of insects. But somewhere along the line some inquisitive and smart individuals must have seen something in common in the behavior of the magnitudes in these and similar statements:
No matter how the two proportional quantities are varied their ratio remains constant.
For the fields, this constant ratio is
1 to 1/2 or 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 1/2 or 2.
For the bees, this constant ratio is
1 to 6 or 3 to 18 or 1/6.
And thus, humans had discovered a general, not specific, truth.
This constant ratio was not obtained by numerical division (and certainly not by the use of Arabic numerals, as above); more likely, the ratio was expressed geometrically, for geometry was the first mathematical discipline to make substantial progress. But the actual technique of arriving at the constancy of the ratio of two proportional quantities makes little difference to the argument.
There were of, course many intermediate steps, such as the discovery of sums, differences, products, and ratios; and the step of abstraction, exemplified by the transition from the statement 'two birds and two birds make four birds' to the statement 'two and two is four.' But the decisive and great step on the road to ? was the discovery that proportional quantities have a constant ratio.
From here it was but a dwarf's step to the constant pi: If the 'around' (circumference) and the 'across' (diameter) of a circle were recognized as proportional quantities, as they easily must have been, then it immediately follows that the ratio:
circumference to diameter = constant for all circles.
This constant circle ratio was not denoted by the symbol pi until the 18th century (A.D.), nor, for that matter, did the equal sign (=) come into general use before the 16th century A.D. (The twin lines as an equal sign were used by the English physician and mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557 with the charming explanation that "noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle.") However, we shall use modern notation from the outset, so that the definition of the number pi reads:
pi = C/D
where C is the circumference, and D the diameter of any circle.
And with this, our speculative road has reached, about 2,000 B.C., the dawn of the documented history of mathematics. From the documents of that time it is evident that by then the Babylonians and the Egyptians (at least) were aware of the existence and significance of the constant pi.
But the Babylonians and the Egyptians knew more about pi than its mere existence. They had also found its approximate value. By about 2,000 B.C., the Babylonians had arrived at the value:
pi = 3 1/8
and the Egyptians at the value:
? = 4(8/9)2
by Isaac Asimov
The Bible is the most-read book that has ever existed, and there are uncounted millions of people in the world who, even today, take it for granted that it is the inspired word of God; that it is literally true at every point; that there are no mistakes or contradictions except where these can be traced to errors in copying or in translation.
There are undoubtedly many who do not realize that the Authorized Version (the 'King James Bible'), the one with which English-speaking Protestants are most familiar, is, in fact, a translation, and who therefore believe that every one of its words is inspired and infallible.
Against these strong, unwavering, and undeviating beliefs, the slowly developing views of scientists have always had to fight.
Biological evolution, for instance, is considered a fact of nature by almost all biologists. There may be and, indeed, are many arguments over the details of the mechanics of evolution, but none over the factójust as we may not completely understand the workings of an automobile engine and yet be certain that a car in good working order will move if we turn the key and step on the gas.
There are millions of people, however, who are strongly and emotionally opposed to the notion of biological evolution, even though they know little or nothing about the evidence and rationale behind it. It is enough for them that the Bible states thus-and-so. The argument ends there.
Well, then, what does the Bible say, and what does science say? Where, if anywhere, do they agree? Where do they disagree?
That is what this book is about.
It does not argue one way or the other. It offers no polemics. It merely considers the verses of the Bible, line by line and, indeed, word by word, discusses the content and meaning, and compares them with the scientific view that pertains to the passage.
Nor does it do this for the entire Bible, for the chief area of dispute lies in the very beginning of the Bibleóthe first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis.
The Bible, as a whole, deals with the legendary Abram (called Abraham later in life) and his descendants, but in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, there is a quick overview of earlier events from the creation of the Universe to the birth of Abram about 2000 B.C. This period of primeval history is based on two documents, according to those who have most carefully studied the Bible: the J-document and the P-document.
The J-document, which is the older, contains dramatic early legends that were current among the people of Israel and Judah. The tales of the J-document may have been written down and reached their present form some time before 700 B.C., when Assyria from its base in the Tigris-Euphrates valley (modern Iraq) was the strongest kingdom in western Asia.
Even before Assyria became powerful, the culture of the Tigris-Euphrates dominated western Asia, even as far back as 3400 B.C., when the Sumerians (who lived there then) invented writing. The Sumerian legends and their theories of the creation of the Universe and of early history spread to all the surrounding peoples and exerted a strong influence on them (just as Western theories of the creation of the Universe and of early history have spread to and influenced surrounding non-Western peoples today).
The P-document is later and was gathered and put together during the time when the people of Judah (the Jews) were in captivity in the Tigris-Euphrates region in the sixth century B.C. At that time, the dominant tribe of the region was the Chaldeans, and their capital was in Babylon, so that the P-document picked up what we might call Chaldean or Babylonian views of cosmic history which in turn were based on nearly three thousand years of thought dating back to the Sumerians.
The two documents were combined by reverent editors, concerned to do as little damage to either as possible. The first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis reached their present shape by the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile--say, 500 B.C. All through the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, there is a strong tinge of the Tigris-Euphrates; a Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian thread that is unmistakable.
This is not necessarily bad. The people of the Tigris-Euphrates region were the most sophisticated people in the world at the time and had elaborated the closest approach to what we might call science. They were ahead of other civilizations in this respect--the Egyptian, the Indian, the Chinese, the Cretan? from the time when writing was invented to the time when the Bible took on its present shape, a period of three thousand years.
What's more, the Biblical writers and editors were thoughtful men who borrowed selectively, choosing what they considered good and rejecting what seemed nonsensical or unedifying. They labored to produce something that was as reasonable and as useful as possible. In doing so, they succeeded wonderfully. There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiring as that of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis.
Nevertheless, humanity does progress. Succeeding generations learn more
and deduce more. If the primeval history of the Book of Genesis falls short
of what science now believes to be the truth, the fault cannot lie with
the Biblical writers, who did the best they could with the material available
to them. If they had written those early chapters of Genesis knowing
what we know today, we can be certain they would have written it completely
differently.
THE BIBLE OF THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN FAITHS
The First Book of Moses, called
Genesis
Chapter 1
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light
from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And
the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under
the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was
so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning
were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of
the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding
seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in
itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after
his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven
to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons,
and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light
upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon
the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light
from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature
that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament
of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth,
which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every
winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill
the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his
kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after
their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind:
and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is
the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and
to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have
given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, if was very
good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
THE UNIVERSAL SELF
In the beginning this was Self alone, in the shape of a person. He looking round saw nothing but his Self. He feared, and therefore any one who is lonely fears. He thought, "As there is nothing but myself, why should I fear?" Thence his fear passed away. For what should he have feared? Verily fear arises from a second only.
But he felt no delight. He wished for a second. He was so large as man
and wife together. He then made this his Self to fall in two, and thence
arose husband and wife.
He knew, "I indeed am this creation, for I created all this."
____________________
Note regarding the Upanishads
These profoundly philosophical works representing the golden age of Indian theology belong to the period between 500 B.C. and 100 B.C. They reflect a movement away from the worship of personal gods in the direction of monotheistic pantheism ?that is the worship of the One who is All.
In the extract, the word 'self' must not be interpreted to mean the
individual personal self. What is meant here is the universal soul, or
universal self which is in each of us, that 'Self' which existed before
all else, which is the source of all life and being. Perhaps it might be
best expressed as 'God within us.' Instead of being the egotistic conception
which it might seem to be, it is, on the contrary, the most extreme humility
before that essence of divinity which pervades the human soul and mind.
29 He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth. Then turned
He to the heaven, and fashioned it as seven heavens. And He is Knower of
all things.
30 And when thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am about to place
a viceroy in the earth, they said: Wilt Thou place therein one who will
do harm therein and will shed blood, while we, we hymn Thy praise and sanctify
Thee? He said: Surely I know that which ye know not.
31 And He taught Adam all the names, then showed them to the angels,
saying: Inform me of the names of these, if ye are truthful.
32 They said: Be glorified! We have no knowledge saving that which
Thou has taught us. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower, the Wise.
33 He said: O Adam! Inform them of their names and when he had informed
them of their names, He said: Did I not tell you that I know the secret
of the heavens and the earth? And I know that which ye disclose and which
ye hide.
by Lao Tze
The way that can be told
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe manifestations
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery;
The gateway of the manifold secrets.
Another translation of these same opening lines from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse (or Tze) reads as follows:
There are ways but the Way is uncharted;
There are names but not nature in words:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.
The secret waits for the insight
Of eyes unclouded by longing;
Those who are bound by desire
See only the outward container.
These two come paired but distinct
By their names.
Of all things profound,
Say that their pairing is deepest,
The gate to the root of the world.
By John R. Hinnells
The Myth of Creation
Ohrmazd, dwelling on high in endless light, has no direct contact with the evil Ahriman in his deepest darkness, for between the two lies the void. The power of each, then, is limited by the other and both are spatially limited by the void. Ohrmazd is eternal, but Ahriman will one day be destroyed.
At first the two existed without coming into conflict. Although Ohrmazd in his omniscience knew of the Evil Spirit, Ahriman, ever ignorant and stupid, was not aware of the Wise Lord's existence. As soon as he saw Ohrmazd and the light, his destructive nature prompted him to attack and to destroy. Ohrmazd offered him peace if he would only praise the Good Creation. But Ahriman, judging others by himself, believed that an offer of peace could only be made from a position of weakness, so he rejected the offer and sought to destroy that which he saw.
Ohrmazd knew that if the battle were to last for ever Ahriman could, indeed, keep his threat, and suggested a fixed period for the battle. Ahriman, being slow-witted, agreed and thereby ensured his ultimate downfall. The point behind this idea seems to be that if evil is allowed to operate quietly, steadily, and unobtrusively it can disrupt and destroy, but once it is drawn out into the open, engaged in battle and shown for what it is, it cannot succeed.
According to the orthodox tradition, history spans twelve thousand years. The first three thousand years is the period of the original creation; the second three thousand pass according to the will of Ohrmazd; the third three thousand is to be a period of the mixing of the wills of good and evil; and in the fourth period the Evil Spirit will be defeated. In the major Zoroastrian heresy, Zurvanism, the twelve thousand years are divided very differently, the first nine thousand years being the period of the rule of evil and the final three thousand the time of the defeat of evil. It may be that this second form was the older tradition.
After fixing the period for battle Ohrmazd recited the sacred prayer of Zoroastrianism, the Ahuna Var. On hearing this kernel of the Good Religion the Evil Spirit realized his inability to defeat the forces of good and fell back into hell where he lay unconscious for three thousand years.
Knowing that Ahriman would never change his destructive character, Ohrmazd began to create. Out of his very essence of light he produced the spiritual, or menog, form of the creatures. First he created the 'Immortals,' then the Yazatas, and finally he began the creation of the universe: first the sky, then water, earth, the tree, the animal and, last of all, man.
All these creations are completely independent of Ahriman. They are not reliant on him at all for their happiness, for Ohrmazd, unlike Ahrman, does not contemplate anything which he cannot achieve. The creatures belong entirely to God. Ohrmazd is both mother and father to creation: as mother he conceives the spiritual world and, it is said, as father he gives birth to it in material form. Ahriman in his turn creates, or rather miscreates, his own offspring from his evil nature, giving rise to all that is vile; wolves, frogs, whirlwinds, sandstorms, leprosy, and so on.
The Zoroastrian creation myth is based on the ancient concept of the universe, but now it is Ohrmazd who creates the sky, which functions not only as a shell enclosing the world but also as a prison in which Ahriman is ensnared. When first produced, the material creation was in an ideal state: the tree was without bark and thorn, the ox was white and shining like the moon, and the archetypal man, Gayomart, was shining like the sun.
This ideal state was shattered by the onslaught of Ahriman on the world. After he had fallen unconscious into hell, the demons tried to arouse him with promises of how they would assault creation and inflict on it anguish and unhappiness, but all to no avail. Then came the wicked Jahi, the personification of all female impurity. She promised to afflict the holy man and the ox with so much suffering that life would not seem worth living. She also announced her intention of attacking the water, earth, tree, and fire, in fact the whole creation. Thus revived, the Evil Spirit in gratitude granted her wish that men should desire her. Then, with all the demons, Ahriman rose to attack the world. He broke through the sky which was as afraid of him "as a sheep of a wolf." Passing through the waters, he entered the middle of the earth and assaulted the material creation. The earth became so dark that at noon it seemed like a dark night. Horrible creatures were released over the face of the earth and their pollution spread so thickly that not even as much as the point of a needle was free from their contamination. The tree was poisoned and died. Turning to the ox and Gayomart, Ahriman afflicted them with "Greed, Needfulness, Disease, Hunger, Illness, Vice, and Lethargy." Before the Evil Spirit came to the ox, Ohrmazd gave her cannabis to ease her discomfort in the throes of death, but at last her milk dried up and she died. Man, the chief ally of God and the arch-opponent of evil, was then set upon by the might of a thousand "death-producing" demons, but even they could not kill him until his appointed time was come, for man's rule had been fixed for a period of thirty years. Everything was being destroyed, smoke and darkness were mingled with the fire, and the whole creation was disfigured. For ninety days the spiritual beings contested with the demons in the material world. Every archangel had an opposing arch-demon, every good thing was attacked by its counterpart: Falsehood against Truth, the Spell of Sorcery against the Holy Word, Excess and Deficiency against Temperance, Idleness against Diligence, Darkness against Light, Unforgiveness against Mercy. Throughout the whole material existence and the firmament, everything was attacked and finally even man was killed.
The assault of Ahriman now seemed to be completely successful and the Good Creation to be totally ruined or destroyed. Disorderly motion, the production of evil, appeared to have won a victory over order and peace; and the work of the Wise Lord was an apparent failure. Yet despite all appearances this was not the end of Good, for troubles were just beginning for Evil. Ahriman, after his apparent victory, sought to return to his natural home of darkness, but found his way blocked by both the Spirit of the Sky, clad in armour like a warrior, and the 'fravashis' of men.
The fravashis are a famed group in Persian mythology. As the whole of the material creation has a spiritual origin, man has a heavenly self, his fravashi. Whatever evil man may do on earth, his genuine heavenly self is unaffected, and it is only the earthly man, not the fravashi, which will suffer for his sins in hell (although one text does state that even the fravashi can go to hell). The host of just fravashis elected of their own free will to assist Ohrmazd "valiant cavaliers with spears in hand," preventing Ahriman from escaping from the prison into which he had burst.
Thus imprisoned in a hostile world, Ahriman discovered that life was beginning to flourish again. The rains were produced by Sirius; the waters washed the vile creatures into the holes in the ground, and the earth became productive. Nor was this all, for in Ahrimanís apparent victory lay the seeds of his own defeat. As the ox died, fifty-five species of corn and twelve species of medicinal herbs grew from its limbs and its seed passed to the moon where it was purified, giving rise to the different species of animals. So, too, man, as he died, passed seed into the earth. Thus his body, made of metal, the earth received the different kinds of metal, and from his sperm grew the first human couple, Mashye and Mashvane.
Just as the sky, the waters (Sirius), the ox, and man waged battle with the Destructive Spirit so, too, did the plants, the earth, the fire and other components of creation. Life was triumphant. Death, the work of the Evil Spirit, stood defeated, for out of death came life, and life more abundantly. From the one ox came the animals, from man the human race.
Never from the time of creation until the rehabilitation in purity has this earth been devoid of men, nor will it ever be, and the Destructive Spirit, not being good, cannot understand this will to succeed.
Though Ahriman may kill individuals, mankind as a whole ever increases, not only rendering his assaults failures, but even making them work against him.
Man's First Parents
The first human couple grew from the seed of Gayomart which had passed into the earth. At first they grew together in the shape of a plant in such a manner that man and woman were indistinguishable. Together they formed the tree whose fruit was the ten races of mankind. When they finally assumed human form, the Wise Lord instructed them in their responsibility:
You are the seed of man, you are the parents of the world, you have been given by me the best perfect devotion; think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and do not worship the demons.
But evil lurked at hand to seduce them away from their true path. Ahriman
attacked their thoughts and they uttered the first falsehoodóthey
declared the Evil Spirit to be the creator. Attributing the origins of
the world to evil was thus man's first sin; for the Zoroastrian it is the
gravest sin. From this moment on the first couple began to wander from
the life God had planned for them; their orientation in life was lost.
by H. R. Ellis Davidson
The Creation
We are told enough concerning the creation of the worlds of gods and men to make it clear that this formed an important part of pre-Christian teaching, as in most mythologies. The earth was formed from chaos, out of a great emptiness known as Ginnungagap. The concept behind this name seems to be that of inner reality behind an outward appearance which conceals it, like the deceiving magic which Utgard-Loki practiced on Thor; it is called 'sjonhverfing,' the deception of the eyes, when used by witches in the sagas. Behind the apparent emptiness of chaos in the abyss existed potential life. How this was revealed is told in various ways. One explanation is that the fiery realm of Muspell in the south came into contact with the cold frozen wastes of the north, and as the fire met the ice, it melted it, and from the melting ice the giant Ymir took shape. He was the ancestor of all giants, and he was nourished by another primeval creature, a cow which licked the salty ice-blocks until they formed another being called Buri.
One tradition is that the first man and woman grew out of the left armpit of the giant Ymir, while from his two feet the race of frost-giants was engendered. But the giant was slain by three gods, the sons of Bor who was the son of Buri, and these three set to work to form the world from Ymirís body. They used his flesh for the soil, his bones for mountains and stones, his hair for vegetation, and his blood for the sea. From the dome of his skull they formed the sky, giving it to four dwarfs to raise high above the earth, while his brains formed the clouds. The race of dwarfs bred like maggots in the body of Ymir, and came out of the hills and rocks when the worked was created. The name of the primeval giant has been related to the Sanskrit 'yama' and interpreted as 'hybrid' or 'hermaphrodite,' the single being who gave birth to male and female beings. This is confirmed by the name given by Tacitus to the first ancestor of the Germanic people, whom he calls Tuisto, the father of Mannus. This name is thought to mean a two-fold being. Ymir might be regarded not only as the source of both man and woman, but also of both men and giants, so that man shares his ancestry with the beings of the Other World.
The primeval giant, who is slain to create the world, and the primeval cow can be found in other mythologies. There is no trace, however, of the other widespread creation myth, known to the Finns, of the origin of the world in a primeval egg. As for the three gods who slew the giant, these are known to Snorri as Odin, Vili, and Ve. Not much more is heard concerning these brothers of Odin, but there are references to them in early skaldic verse, and according to one tradition they took over his kingdom and his wife during his absence. The same three gods, according to Snorri, created man and woman from two trees on the seashore, calling them Ask and Embla. The first god gave them life, the second understanding, and the third the senses and outward appearance, if this is the correct interpretation of some rather obscure terms used in one of the poems. The poem 'Voluspa' however makes the three gods who created man Odin, Hoenir, and Loki.
The world of men was said to be protected from the giants by a wall
made from the eyebrows of Ymir. The world of the gods was also guarded
by a wall, built by the giant who was never paid for his work, the owner
of the wonderful horse which sired Sleipnir. The gods caused time to exist
for men, sending Night and Day driving in swift chariots round the heavens,
or, an alternative image, two fair children, Sun and Moon, journeying across
the sky. This appears to be a late echo of the double journey of the chariot
in the Bronze Age. Sun is a maiden who drives furiously, because she knows
that a wolf pursues her and longs to devour her, while another wolf would
swallow up the Moon if he could.
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
by Cottie Burland
Raven the Trickster
For some reason that is not quite clear many different peoples in the world have thought that the act of creation was some kind of trickery, and that the spirit who brought the world out of the waters had demonic qualities and a talent for deceit. This is faintly echoed in the story of Genesis, though here the serpent, rather than the Creator, is the deceiver. But among primitive people, the treachery of the Creator is always startlingly clear. From the tribes of the Northwest Coast of America the stories of the Trickster concern Raven. This remarkable personality brought man many of his most wonderful gifts, but he could never refrain from making fools of people.
Raven and the Moon
One day Raven learned that an old fisherman, living alone with his daughter on an island far to the north, had a box containing a bright light called the moon. He felt that he must get hold of this wonderful thing, so he changed himself into a leaf growing on a bush near to the old fisherman's home. When the fisherman's daughter came to pick berries from the wild fruit patch, she pulled at the twig on which the leaf stood and it fell down and entered into her body. In time a child was born, a dark-complexioned boy with a long, hooked nose, almost like a bird's bill. As soon as the child could crawl, he began to cry for the moon. He would knock at the box and keep calling, "Moon, moon, shining moon."
At first nobody paid any attention, but as the child became more vocal and knocked harder at the box, the old fisherman said to his daughter, "Well, perhaps we should give the boy the ball of light to play with." The girl opened the box and took out another box, and then another, from inside that. All the boxes were beautifully painted and carved, and inside the tenth there was a net of nettle thread. She loosened this and opened the lid of the innermost box. Suddenly light filled the lodge, and they saw the moon inside the box, bright, round like a ball, shining white. The mother threw it towards her baby son and he caught and held it so firmly they thought he was content. But after a few days he began to fuss and cry again. His grandfather felt sorry for him and asked the mother to explain what the child was trying to say. So his mother listened very carefully and explained that he wanted to look out at the sky and see the stars in the dark sky, but that the roof board over the smoke hole prevented him from doing so. So the old man said, "Open the smoke hole." No sooner had she opened the hole than the child changed himself back into the Raven. With the moon in his bill he flew off. After a moment he landed on a mountain top and threw the moon into the sky where it remains, still circling in the heavens where Raven threw it.
Many stories about Raven describe his everyday adventures. Raven once met the wife of a fisherman. He had stuck a red robin feather in his head and this attracted her attention. She asked how she could get a red feather like that for her own hair. Raven said he could easily get lots of them for her, so he and her husband went out to hunt for robins on an island. Raven rushed ahead of the fisherman and gathered pieces of rotten wood which he threw away among the trees, charming them so that they changed into robins. Then Raven showed the fisherman where to get the beautiful red birds, sending him deeper into the bush.
Raven then slipped away, hurried to the canoe, paddled back to the shore, and turned himself into a man just like the fisherman. The fisherman's wife was quite sure that it was her husband who had returned home, so she was not surprised when he went straight to the special fishing pool where the finest fish were preserved and took some of them out to prepare himself a meal. As he finished eating, the fisherman returned saying that he had been fooled. He threw down the bagful of red feathers, which immediately changed back into a heap of rotten wood. He then chased Raven round the house, clubbing him into insensibility.
Then he threw away the body into the water. The drifting carcass was swallowed by a large halibut but Raven resumed his own shape inside the halibut and so tormented it that it swam ashore, where a number of Indian fishermen seized it and began to cut it up and eat the delicious fat. To their astonishment Raven burst out of the fish and flew away. He screamed and cawed as ravens do, but the fishermen mistook it for profane language and were shocked. Raven flew on and then alighted and changed himself into an old man and walked back to the shore. He could hear the fishermen talking about the foul bird that had slipped through their hands. He suddenly came among them and burst out laughing. "I have now changed myself to an old man. I'm bent on destroying you unless you leave at once." The whole tribe took to their heels, abandoning the village and all its food supplies to Raven.
The figure of the deceiver, who is also a culture-bringer and a creator, is a common one in North American mythology. The figure varies considerably in psychological significance, sometimes suggesting merely the spirit of uncertainty (like the Fool in the pack of Tarot cards), in other forms suggesting a strong demonic power more like the terrible Mexican deity Tezcatlipoca. This first story comes from the Eastern Cree Indians.
Wisagatcak and the Creation of the World
The Brothers Who Created the World
The Algonquin creation myth is more sophisticated. The general form approaches that of the Iroquois legends in that it describes a duality. In this case the creator force was Gluskap, who had a destructive wolf-brother Malsum. When their creator died, Malsum made rocks, thickets and poisonous animals, while Gluskap took the body of this mother earth to form the pleasant plains, the food plants, animals, and the human race. Malsum tried to find out what magic could kill his rival, and in jest asked him what could kill him, adding that only fern root could cause his own death. Gluskap replied that an owl feather was the only thing that could slay him. So one evening Malsum took the feather of an owlís wing and used it in place of an arrowhead to shoot his brother. Gluskap fell dead but immediately after, by his great magic, he recovered. Suspecting his brotherís treachery he went into the forest and sat by a stream declaring that only a flowering reed would kill him. A toad hearing this hopped away and told Malsum the secret, asking for the power to fly as a reward. But Malsum refused to give the toad the power of flight, and said it would look silly with wings. To be revenged the creature hurried back to Gluskap and told him of his danger. Gluskap thereupon plucked a large-rooted fern stem. With it he struck down Malsum and killed him, driving his evil magic below the earth. Unlike his brother, Malsum was unable to revive; he became a cruel and vindictive wolf. (Since the Algonquin Indians were trading with the Norse Vinlanders for four centuries and more before Columbus, this story possibly has some echoes of Norse mythology.)
Left in peace, Gluskap completed the creation of the world from the body of his mother. He drove away many evil creatures and conquered the stone giants. But he was often of a whimsical turn of mind. In one case, when four men came to him begging that he would help them, he asked them what they wished. One wanted to become gentle instead of quarrelsome, another wished for enough riches to get himself a home and not be a despised beggar, a third, who was laughed at by the tribe, wanted to become an ordinary man, as stately and respected as his fellows. The fourth wanted to be taller and more beautiful than other men so that he could rule over everyone. So Gluskap gave each a box of medicine. The first three found it gave them their wishes; and so did the fourth ?he grew tall and stately and spread his arms, and arms, and more arms? for he was the first and greatest of all pine trees.
Gluskap had one fault: pride. He had done such wonderful things and conquered so much evil that he would not believe that anyone could defeat him. But one day a poor woman told him that she knew one person who could withstand all his powers. He refused to believe her, but she persuaded him to come into her bark lodge. Making himself as small as an ordinary man, he entered. There, sitting on the floor newly dusted with white ashes, was a baby boy. The great Gluskap sang and the child smiled. He told it to walk, still the child only smiled. He changed himself into strange shapes and the child laughed happily, but it would neither walk nor talk with him. He grew angry and shouted, whereupon the child burst into tears, but still neither walked nor talked. The great wonder-worker was defeated.
Eventually Gluskap left the land in a birch-bark canoe, travelling towards the sunrise, for his work was completed, but it was believed he might return one day.
The myths of the forest Indians show the development of a more sophisticated mythology as the tribes turn from a life of hunting to an agricultural routine. The transition can be seen in the story of Wisagatcak, where a typical hunting myth about a man being punished by the spirits for his ill treatment of animals develops into the story of creation. The growth of large settled communities made possible regular tribal festivals which gave rise to the epic legend in which a hero, such as Gluskap, goes through a series of adventures. The transition from hunting to agricultural preoccupations, which is evident in the myths of the Northern Forests, is almost complete in the Eastern Woodlands.
The following is a creation legend reported in earlier times from the Iroquois as well as more recently from Huron and Wyandot storytellers.
The Creation of the World
The first people lived beyond the sky because there was no earth beneath. The chief's daughter fell ill and no cure could be found. A wise old man was consulted and he told them to dig up a tree and lay the girl beside the hole. Many people began to dig but as they did so the tree suddenly fell right through the hole they had made, dragging the girl with it. Below was an endless sheet of water where two swans floated. There was a sound, the first thunder clap, and as the swans looked up, they saw the sky break and a strange tree fall down into the water. Then they saw the girl fall after it. They swam to her and supported her because she was too beautiful to allow to drown. Then they swam to the Great Turtle, master of all the animals, who at once called a council.
When all the animals had arrived, the Great Turtle told them that the appearance of a woman from the sky foreshadowed future and good fortune. Since the tree had earth on its roots, he commanded them to find where it had sunk, and then to bring up some of the earth, so that it could be put on his back to make an island for the woman to live upon.
The swans led the animals to the place where the tree had fallen. First Otter, then Muskrat, and then Beaver dived. As each one came up from the great depths, he rolled over exhausted and died. Many other animals tried but the same fate overcame them. At last the old lady Toad volunteered. She had been below a long time, until all the animals thought she had been lost, when at last she surfaced and before dying managed to spit a mouthful of earth on the back of the Great Turtle. It was magical earth and had the power of growth. As soon as it was as big as an island the woman was set down upon it. The two white swans circled it, and it continued to grow, until at last it became the world island as it is today, supported in the great waters on the back of the Turtle. But it was dark. Again the Great Turtle called the animals. They pondered for a long time. They decided they should put a great light in the sky. But no one could take it there, until the Great Turtle called Little Turtle and she confessed that she might be able to climb the dangerous path to the heavens. Everyone invoked their own magical powers to assist her. A great black cloud was formed; it was full of clashing rocks, and from their movement lightning flashed out. Little Turtle climbed into this cloud and was carried around the sky, collecting the lightning as she went. First she made a big bright ball of it and threw it into the sky. Then she thought it was well to have some more light, so she collected still more lightning but only enough for a smaller ball. The first ball became the sun, and the second the moon. Then the Great Turtle commanded the burrowing animals to make holes in the corners of the sky so that the sun and moon could go down through one and climb up again through the other as they circled. So there was day and night.
Astronomical Myths
The sun and moon were credited with human words and deeds. They quarreled. They were like man and wife. Once the moon passed through the hole at the edge of the sky before her husband. He was enraged and beat her so violently that she disappeared for a time. Again Little Turtle set off, this time into the dark world below. There she found the Moon Woman who had lost most of her light because she had pined away. She was so thin that instead of a ball she was only a tiny crescent. Little Turtle mended the moon and set her on her course again. She gradually became her own round self; but as the sun passed in the opposite direction he looked away and refused to recognize her. Again she began to pine away. And so it has continued ever since, with the moon hoping and sorrowing each time she passes round her cycle with the sun.
It was after this that the thunder cloud came down and the rain made a rainbow. The deer saw this wonderful bridge and raced up its shining pathway to find a pasture in the sky. Later Little Turtle found that the other animals envied the deer, and allows many of them to climb the rainbow. They can now be seen as the stars.
Nesaru and the Creation of the World
The Arikara, a typical people of the prairies, believed man came from a previous world under the earth. The first part of their creation myth recalls that of the woodland Indians about the Woman Fallen from the Sky. The great sky spirit Nesaru (known as Wakonda in the Dakota myths) had charge over the whole of creation. Below his sky world there was a limitless lake where two ducks swam eternally at peace. Suddenly they saw Wolf-Man and Lucky-Man. These two both asked the ducks to dive and bring up mud to make the earth. Wolf-Man made a great prairie for the animals to live in. But Lucky-Man made undulating ground with hills and valleys where in the future the Indians could hunt and shelter. Between the two regions the great river began to run as it still does.
Then Wolf-Man and Lucky-Man went under the earth to find the Two Spiders. These were male and female beings, dirty and ugly. The two visitors were very surprised to find that these creatures had no knowledge of how to reproduce their species. The visitors set to work to scrub the Two Spiders. They explained to them the wonderful power of fertilization. Thus enlightened, the Two Spiders began to give birth to all kinds of animals and to a race of giants. Nesaru was displeased with these giants, who lived under the earth and would not give obedience to him as the Power Above. So he created maize, and sent down its seeds for the animals to take under the earth,. The seeds turned into a smaller race of people, like ourselves. Nesaru then sent a flood which destroyed all the giants without harming the new people who were still under the earth. They developed in their dark underworld, began to wonder if there was a better place, and cried for help. Thereupon Nesaru decided that they should come out into the open world. He sent down a woman from his corn fields, the Corn Mother. She walked far and long, but found no one. Then in the east she heard Thunder, who thrust her down into the underworld.
The people and animals clustered around her in the dark underworld. She called upon the gods and the spirits. The animals were inspired to help her. Badger began the work of digging towards the light but could not bear it as he cam near the surface. Then Mole dug further, but the first rays of light blinded him, so he remained in his underground burrows. Lastly, Mouse made the breakthrough but the light was so strong that it cut off the long snout which he once had and he became a short-nosed mouse. Then Corn Mother began to thrust her way into the light. Earth was still tight and close around her. Thunder roared again in the east and shook the earth loose so that Corn Mother and the whole creation of humans and animals would come up to the surface.
The people followed the trail westwards from the place of emergence. Many adventures followed. Kingfisher pointed the way, Owl led them through the dark forest, and Loon led them across the lake.
They were given maize to plant, and taught how to play games like shinny. Corn Mother returned to the sky. Left to themselves, the people began to quarrel and fight about the games. Many were killed. But one day they saw beside the lake a wonderful man dressed as a chief. His hair was beautiful and hung down to his waist. He carried a staff hung with captured scalps. It was Nesaru, and he told them how to live at peace together and work under the leadership of a chief. He showed them how to conduct wars, and gave them the rules of honor which included the taking of scalps. These scalps were to be marks of bravery and show which of the warriors was best suited to become a war chief. Then Corn Mother stood beside him to teach them how to grow maize. She told them of the stars, planets, sun and moon, and the gods in the sky. Lastly, she told them that they must take the sacred symbols which would be given to them, and wrap them up so they would become the sacred medicine-bundles which would help them through all dangers.
The people made offerings to the Gods of the Eight Directions of the Sky. Then there was a roaring sound. It was the Wind of the Southeast who had been forgotten. He was like a tornado, and everyone he touched fell dead from disease. But a dog was sent from the sun with medicine to cure them. It told the people about the diseases of man and how to cure them, and explained the reason for the turbulent anger of the Wind of the Southeast. Then the people made the offerings necessary to appease him and learned to cure diseases. Because of this, whenever the Arikara held a ceremony, they sacrificed a dog so that its spirit would go to take messages to the gods.
Nesaru and Corn Mother left the people, warning them that offerings of tobacco smoke must be offered regularly to the Gods of the Eight Directions. Nesaru left his medicine bundle among them and Corn Mother gave them a great cedar tree to represent her.
The Emergence Myth
The most important of the Navajo myths was the emergence myth, the story of creation. The version which follows dates from 1882 when the Navajo were not greatly influenced by European thought.
The present world is the Fifth World. In the First World there were three beings in the darkness: First Man, First Woman, and Coyote (the trickster-creator). The First World was too small for them. They travelled to the Second World, where there were two men who became Sun and Moon and where there was a dim and misty light. In the east was blackness, in the south blueness, in the west yellowness, and in the north whiteness. Sometimes the blackness would intensify and overshadow all the world, leaving night; soon the colors would glow again, bringing day; each of the four colors concealed a personage who lived within it. When the three beings arrived in the Second World, Sun tried to make love to First Woman and there was discord. Coyote, who knew everything, called the dwellers of north, south, east, and west to arbitrate. They decided that the Second World was too small and they should all climb to the Third World where there would be room for Sun to separate from First Woman forever.
They ascended to the Third World, a wide and beautiful land like the earth. At the corners there were four mountains. At the foot of the mountains there were lakes. And on the slopes of the mountains there were people. The newcomers were met at the Place of Ascent by the mountain people. They were welcomed and warned that all would be well for them so long as Tieholtsodi, the water-monster, was left in peace.
Now Coyote ignored the mountain people's counsel. He was inquisitive and went to look at the great waters. He went to the eastern waters and found two of the children of Tieholtsodi who were so attractive that he took them off to his home wrapped in a blanket. The monster searched the four corners of the world for his children. Unable to find them, he guessed that they must be with the new people. The only way he could recover them was by using his power over water. Thereupon the four oceans filled and the water began to rise. All the people held council and determined to escape the flood by removing the mountains of the four directions to pile them up on top of the other in the middle of the land. Still the flood rose. The people planted a giant reed on the top of the piled up mountain.
When the reed was fully grown, it reached the sky and pierced into the Fourth World. The ancestors and the animals they had found in the Third World all climbed inside the reed. Last to come was Turkey who was to sound the alarm when his feet were wet by the flood. When he did so, they began to climb up inside the giant reed. On the fourth night they emerged from the top of the reed into the Fourth World. Even now turkeys have light-colored tail feathers to show where their ancestors had his tail feathers washed by the flood.
The Fourth World was larger again than the Third. It was dim, lit only by three great mists of light, and obscured from time to time by misty darkness. The mountains and seas were like those of the Third World but in the central plain flowed a great river. On the north bank lived human beings, and on the south other people, who were in animal form. Time passed swiftly in that world. The year resembled a day. But trouble was to follow.
A vicious quarrel developed in which each sex claimed to be the source of sustenance and life. The women argued that they made fire, prepared cotton, planted the fields and made pottery. They also bore the children. The men countered that they hunted and worked hard clearing the fields and building the houses, and ?most important? that they knew the ways of the gods and performed the dances and ceremonies needed to make the crops grow. In the end men and women decided to separate. The men made a boat and crossed the river in the central plain, leaving the women to cultivate their little fields without the propitious dances and ceremonial. So it continued for four years. The women dug no new ground, and their crops grew less and less. The men dug fresh soil and each year they produced better crops; they also had plenty of reserve food from hunting. But the men were aggrieved that they should have to work so hard tending the fields, while the women were not happy about sowing new ones. They agreed that they were indispensable to each other, and joined forces again.
Having learned this salutary lesson in social discipline, man might have been expected to develop in peace. But Coyote was still among them, still holding the children of the water monster Tieholtsodi. The world, so recently made more secure by the new understanding between man and women, was threatened by another danger. The ground became soft, the waters burst in, and again the flood menaced the people. Again the mountains of the four directions were piled together in the central plain. Again a great reed was planted and again grew to the earthen sky above the Fourth World.
Badger was the one who went first, digging away the earth above them. But when he found that he was emerging into a muddy lake, there was consternation. No one knew what to do, and the flood was rising. Locust alone felt that he might be able to slip through and find a way. So up he went. He flew to the surface, and there he saw four beautiful swans, who were like the lights of the underworlds, black in the east, blue in the south, yellow in the west and white in the north. The swans questioned Locust and he told them his sad story. But they imposed a magical test before admitting any one. They demanded that everyone who came up into their world should take an arrow, thrust it into his mouth, pass it right through his body and draw it out of his anus. Then the process had to be reversed and the arrow returned from the mouth. The swans were able to do this without difficulty, but Locust realized that people could not do it. So he agreed, on condition that the swans in turn would do as he did. He took an arrow, thrust it apparently through the middle of his chest, drew it out at the other side, and then returned it the same way. The swans did not know that Locust was different from other creatures because he had only a narrow spine in the middle of his body, joining the head to the rest, beneath which the arrow could pass safely. They agreed that in view of the phenomenal powers on both sides there need be no further ordeals.
The way was opened and up surged people and animals, hard pressed by the pursuing flood. Each carried a bundle of his most precious possessions. They climbed into the marshy lake, but still the water below surged after them. Suddenly they saw the horns of Tieholtsodi appear in the midst of the land. Overcome with a sense of some hidden guilt, they all came together and showed what was in their packs. Unable to do otherwise, Coyote was forced to reveal the stolen monster-children. His fellows cast them back to their parent. The monsters swam away, and the waters receded to the underworld.
At the Place of Emergence the people found themselves standing on an island in the middle of a swamp. They prayed to the god of darkness in the east, and he cut open the surrounding cliffs with his curved knife. The remaining waters drained away but the swamp was dangerously soft and the people still could not move. Anxiously they prayed to the Four Winds. A gale arose and for four days they waited. Then the earth dried out and hardened, and they reached the shores of the swamp in safety. As the earth was not yet properly formed, they took piles of mud to make the four mountains at its corners. The mountains hardened and grew as the earth expanded. When the boundaries were marked, they took Sun and Moon and threw them up into the sky. At first Sun was too near the earth. On four successive days the earth was expanded and the Sun flew higher. On the fifth day Sun stood still at its zenith. Everything was in danger of being burned.
The Need For Death
The people discovered that Sun must be placated by human death, otherwise he could not move. A great chief's wife offered herself. As she did so, her life's breath ebbed away, her body grew cold and then vanished. Whereupon the Sun moved once more. This was the first intimation that every day someone, somewhere in the land, would die. The people were afraid of this prospect until a wise man went to the Place of Emergence and, looking down, saw the dead woman sitting happily by the river of the Fourth World combing her hair. She told him that all the people of the Fifth World must return to live in the Fourth after death. The wise man fell sick soon after this and one night th