Origin myths also explain the variety of animal life that covers the world. Makunaima, a Guiana Carib culture hero, climbed a large tree and with his stone axe cut off pieces of bark which he threw into the water. One by one, they turned into all the animals in the forest. Sedna, according to the Eskimo, cut off her fingers, which turned into seals, whales, walruses, and other ocean mammals. Often, particular incidents are introduced into an animal creation myth to account for the size, shape, color, and peculiar habits of each animal.

In almost all primitive myths there is a close association between animals and men. Countless episodes tell of the transformation of human beings into animals, or vice versa. Animal-human matings occur commonly. Indeed, it is not uncommon for animals to be regarded as the precursors of the human species - a crude foreshadowing, in a way, of the theory of organic evolution.

A tribe's mythology accounts not only for its own origins but also for that of other tribes. However, the origin assigned to an enemy is likely to be unflattering. The Saliva of Columbia, for example, say that their hated Carib enemies arose from large worms in the putrefying entrails of a serpent-monster killed by a Saliva culture hero. A common belief in the primitive world is that all peoples were once a single tribe, living together and speaking the same language. But then something happened (among the Tikuna of the Upper Amazon it was the eating of two hummingbird eggs), and thereafter people began to speak different languages, split into separate groups, and dispersed far and wide. Here we see a clear parallel to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

Many primitive myths tell of a Golden Age during which life was easy and pleasant, discord was unknown, tools worked by themselves, no one ever died, and the like. Then something went wrong, and ever since, travail, misfortune, and death have been the lot of mankind. This notion of a Fall of Man is likewise familiar to readers of the Bible.

In contrast to a Golden Age, there is often a belief in the notion of a Primordial Simplicity. According to this view, the earliest stage of the human race was one of ignorance and innocence out of which the benighted were lifted by a god or culture hero. This mythical being taught them many things - how to make tools, how to build houses, how to plant crops, even how to copulate properly.

Among many elements of culture purportedly unknown to the earliest people was fire. However, rather than being given fire by the gods, most primitive peoples say they had to steal it. In myth I recorded among the Amahuaca of eastern Peru, fire was stolen from the stingy ogre, Yowashiko, by a parrot who flew away with a burning brand in its beak. Angered by the theft, Yowashiko tried to douse the flames by sending rain. However, other larger birds spread their wings over the parrot, thus keeping the flames alive so that eventually fire became available to everyone. This account is of course reminiscent of Greek mythology, in which Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind.

Origin myths often tell of a rudimentary earth with many shortcomings and imperfections that, one by one, had to be removed or overcome. One belief is that at first, night did not exist and there was only day. The sun stood at zenith all the time and its rays beat down unmercifully on the ancestors. Sleep was all but impossible, and people lacked the privacy that only darkness can afford. Some tribes say night did exist but it was the hidden possession of some mythical being, and before everyone could reap its benefits, night had to be found and released. The Tenetehara of eastern Brazil, for instance, say that night belonged to an old woman who lived deep in the forest and who kept it enclosed in several clay pots. It was finally wrested from her and given to the tribe by a native hero named Mokwani.

The Kamayura of central Brazil and many other tribes have the opposite belief. They hold that in the beginning there was only night. It was so dark, in fact, that people could not see to hunt or fish or plant, and so were slowly starving to death. Then they discovered that the birds owned day and decided to get it from them. Ultimately, they were successful, and day was sent to the Kamayura decked in the brilliant plumage of the red macaw.

The foregoing myths are not merely primitive curiosities, irrelevant to the Judeo-Christian view of the origin of the world. Many of the mythological episodes recounted here have close parallels in the Bible. These parallels, moreover, have long been recognized by students of comparative religion as being extremely significant. In his book, Folk-lore in the Old Testament (1918), Sir James G. Frazer, the well-known scholar, scoured the anthropological literature for these parallels and wrote "...I have attempted... to trace some of the beliefs and institutions of ancient Israel backward to earlier and cruder stages of thought and practice which have their analogies in the faiths and customs of existing savages." And in this effort, he was successful. There is very little doubt among anthropologists and Biblical scholars that many of the creation stories in the Bible are really pre-Biblical, going back thousands of years.

In the eyes of anthropology, no culture holds a privileged position. None is thought to be the unique recipient of divine knowledge or benevolence. Each is recognized as the product of two million years or more of a natural process of cultural evolution. During these countless millennia, each society added to its own store of origin myths elements from the mythology of near or distant tribes. The result was that each society gradually developed an elaborate cosmogony, which, while unique in certain particulars, nevertheless incorporated many features that ultimately derived from the four corners of the world.

Not until the rise of modern science during the last few centuries has a different account of human and cosmic origins emerged to challenge the picture presented by mythology. Applying newly developed concepts and instruments, science has given us a fuller and truer account of the origin of man and his universe than was ever possible before. These explanations, constantly subjected to verification and correction, have become ever more probable and more precise.

Perhaps the account of how the world began that has been patiently hammered out by science lacks the drama, emotion, and romance of mythology. But what it may have lost in color, it has gained in coherence and certitude. Anthropologists are ready to argue that the exchange has been worth it. Moreover, without having to accept the literal truth of origin myths, we can still glean from them a vivid picture of how primitive peoples interpreted their world, and how they used myth to justify the present and glorify the past. And while all this tells us little or nothing of how human beings and the earth actually began, it tells us much about the nature of human thought and its modes of expression. This knowledge is of the greatest interest and value to the science of the human race.

* The exception to this rule is provided by magic, in which cause is thought to produce effect by a kind of irresistible mechanical process working its way without the intermediacy of personal agents.
Suggested Readings
Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1961. Sumerian Mythology. New York: Harper & Row
Levi-Strauss, Claude.1969. The Raw and the Cooked. New York: Harper & Row.
Marriott, Alice, and Carol K Rachlin. 1968. American Indian Mythology. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
Robinson, Herbert Spencer. 1976. Myths and Legends of All Nations. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
Wilbert, Johannes. 1978. Folk Literature of the Ge Indians. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications.
Wolverton, Robert E. 1966. An Outline of Classical Mythology. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co. 

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