Die Schöpfung

Every people or tribe in Africa has its own creation myth. According to the Bushong from the Congo, there was in the beginning nothing but chaos, over which reigned the god Bumba. He created the universe by vomiting up the sun, moon, earth and all animals and plants, and finally mankind. In West Africa the story goes that two spirit beings are sent by the sky god to earth, where they get bored. The spirit beings make children out of clay, but hide them in the fire when the sky god comes to take a look. The baking in the fire turns the clay children all sorts of different colours, and thus they become the ancestors of the diversely coloured peoples of the world. According to the Zulus there was one ancestor, Unkulunkulu, who was created out of reeds, and subsequently made men and cattle, mountains and rivers. He taught the Zulus to hunt, to make fire and to provide food. Unkulunkulu is the First Man and exists in everything that he made. One of the Ancient Egyptian stories from Heliopolis recounts that in the beginning there was only water, Nu (or Nun), from which everything originated. The god Atum willed himself into being and then created an island in Nu. From Atum’s body stemmed the god of air, Shu, and of moisture, Tefnut. Their children, Geb and Nut, occupy an important place in the Egyptian creation myth and symbolise the earth and the sky.

This is one of the many Chinese creation myths. In the beginning the heavens and the earth were still one, and all was chaos. The universe was a large, dark egg, which contained the sleeping Pan Gu. After eighteen thousand years Pan Gu awoke and felt imprisoned in the egg. So he cracked it open and stretched. The upper half of the egg, which was light and pure, became the sky, and the lower, impure half formed the earth. This was the origin of the opposing forces Yin and Yang. Pan Gu stood in between, with his head touching the sky and his feet planted on the earth. As Pan Gu grew, the sky and the earth also grew further and further apart.

When Pan Gu died, his breath became the wind and the clouds and his voice the rolling thunder. One of his eyes became the moon and the other the sun. His body was transformed into mountains, his blood into swirling water. His beard formed the stars in the sky, and flowers and plants sprouted from the hairs on his body. His teeth and bones were converted into metals and minerals, his sweat became sweet dew, and the parasites on his body developed into the first human beings. And thus the giant Pan Gu created the universe.

Incas: The god Virarocha rose from Lake Collasuyu (now Titicaca) and created the sun, moon and stars in order to spread light over the dark world. He also created humans, but was dissatisfied with them and so inundated the world. He was more satisfied with the second attempt, and it is said that thereafter he, dressed as a beggar, would mingle with humans in order to teach them civilization.

Mayas: Two deities, Tepeu and Gucumatz, decide to create humans in order to be worshipped by them. They are aided in this by Huracan, the god of storm. First they make the earth, then the animals, who appear, however, not very inclined to worship the gods. Various attempts are then made to create humans out of mud or wood, with little success, until the ancestors of today’s humans were formed from cornflour dough.

Aztecs: Quetzalcoatl, ‘the light one’, and Tezcatlipoca, ‘the dark one,’ gazed down from their seats in heaven and saw only water. A great goddess ate up everything with her many mouths, so that all creation was immediately devoured. The two gods metamorphosed themselves into two snakes and defeated the goddess. Her head and shoulders became the earth and the rest of her body the sky. Other gods were enraged by this and ensured that the body of the goddess could provide everything required for life on earth: flowers and plants, rivers and caves, mountains and valleys. Nonetheless the goddess often complained of her thirst for blood, and so people made sacrifices to her.

Scandinavia:
Odin (Wotan) is the oldest and most powerful god. He created the world and rules over everything. But even he is not ‘The First.’ In the beginning there was no earth, no sea, no sky, just the great void of Ginnungagap lying in silent anticipation. To the south the fiery realm of Muspell came into existence, to the north the frozen land of Niflheim. Fire and ice interacted in the void. In the centre the air became mild and pleasant. The melting ice turned into the evil giant Ymir. Only later were Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve born, who hated Ymir and killed him. Odin and his brothers formed the earth from Ymir’s flesh and rocks from his bones and teeth. His blood became rivers, his head the sky, and the fire of Muspell was transformed into the sun, moon and stars. On the beach Odin and his brothers found two dead tree trunks, which they brought to life and moulded, giving them thoughts and feelings, hearing and sight. This gave rise to the first human beings.

Judeo-Christian-Islamic:
In the book of Genesis, Chapter 1, the world is created by God in six days. In the beginning there was nothing but void and darkness. God divided the light from the darkness: that was the first day. On the second day he divided the waters from the firmament above, thus creating the heavens. On the third day he created the dry land, on which plants and trees with flowers and fruit could grow. God made the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. On the fifth day he made the creatures of the sea and the air. On the sixth day the land animals and man were created, and God gave man dominion over the earth. The seventh day became a holy day, the day of rest. In Genesis 2 God forms from the dust of the ground the first man, Adam, and leads him to the Garden of Eden so that he can till it and provide food for himself. There is only one tree whose fruit he may not eat. So that Adam doesn’t remain alone, God makes one of his ribs into a woman, Eve. Eventually she is seduced by a serpent into eating the forbidden fruit after all, and Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise. According to the Islamic version of the story Eve is not created from Adam, but ‘of like nature’, and they are together tempted by Satan to eat of the forbidden fruit. They must then descend from Paradise to the earth.

Ancient Greece:
In the beginning there was nothing but a dark void. Only one creature existed: a black bird called Nyx. She laid an egg and sat on it for a long time until it finally hatched and Eros was born. The one half of the eggshell rose up and became the sky and the other half became the earth. Eros named the sky Uranus and the earth Gaia. These two had children and grandchildren together. One of the children, Kronos, became scared of his own children and devoured them. Zeus, the youngest child, was hidden by his mother and later rebelled against his father. After much warfare Zeus won back his brothers and sisters, and went on to become ruler of the gods. He gave his sons Prometheus and Epimetheus the task of creating men and animals on earth. Prometheus granted mankind the gift of fire, greatly angering Zeus, who punished him by chaining him to a mountain where, for all eternity, an eagle came every day to pluck out his liver. Zeus also punished mankind by giving Pandora, Epimetheus’ wife, a gift she was not allowed to open. She did so anyway, and as a result, before Epithemeus could rush in and close the box again, a host of evils, such as sickness, pain, jealousy and greed, escaped into the world. But hope also lay concealed in the box, and was ultimately allowed to be released as a comfort to the world.

The Hindu creation myth also states that in the beginning there was nothing but darkness and chaos. In a great gloomy ocean there floated a giant cobra, with Vishnu asleep in its coiled up body. Out of the depths arose a sound: ‘Aum’, which grew and rapidly filled the void with vibrant energy. The night came to an end and Vishnu woke up. From Vishnu’s navel sprouted a lotus flower, in which sat his servant Brahma. Vishnu instructed Brahma to create the world, which Brahma did. He calmed the wind and the ocean, and split the lotus flower into three parts to form the sky, the earth and the air between them. He then created plants and animals.

According to current scientific opinion the universe came into being some twelve to fifteen billion years ago with the Big Bang singularity, a point of zero volume but infinite density. This point expanded at unimaginable speed to reach the size of the universe. By means of this process matter came into existence, principally hydrogen atoms, which coagulated into nebulae, stars and galaxies. But stars are still being born now, and dying again. Atomic reactions in large stars produced heavier elements such as gold and iron. Our sun - also a star – was formed about four-and-a half billion years ago from a huge hot gas cloud, and its remnants gradually formed the Earth and other planets in our solar system, together with their respective moons.

For the first billion years of the Earth’s existence there was no life. The surface of the Earth, initially consisting of still molten lava, slowly solidified, and a thick layer of gasses surrounded the planet. Within these gas clouds molecules ultimately condensed into water vapour, and a prolonged period of rain began. It rained for so long that the oceans were filled up. Following this, conditions probably became favourable so quickly that life could develop.

One of the theories concerning this is that the building blocks of life came into being in the ‘primordial soup’ of molecules present in warm, shallow seas. Bacteria are one of the oldest life forms, which in some cases have also barely altered since the beginning. Early bacteria were able to produce energy from sunlight – which most plants still do – and hereby to manufacture oxygen. Once there was sufficient oxygen present in the atmosphere, the way was paved for more complex life forms. That would, however, take a long time: it was a billion years later before the first multicellular organisms emerged. But after that it went (relatively) fast, with the appearance of larger classes of life – fungi, bacteria, plants and animals – and an explosion in the development of species.

The English biologist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was the first to describe the mechanism behind this development, in his book “On the Origin of Species” of 1859. During his voyages (including one to the Galapagos Islands) and at home in the greenhouse where he grew peas, Darwin discovered that each generation of animal or plant may display small differences in certain areas: the beak of a finch may, for instance, be a little longer than those of its parents. Such a property may then be passed on to a future generation of finches. Certain variations appear to enhance the chance of survival (and therefore of reproduction.) The new property may then at some point become standard to the species. If it turns out that the finch with the longer beak finds it much easier to peck seeds, then the chance that he will survive to pass on that property to his offspring is also much greater. And in this way a new species - of exclusively long-beaked finches - may ultimately evolve.

What we now know, which Darwin could not have known, is that all the hereditary properties of an organism are recorded in its DNA, and that in that DNA changes (mutations) can occur, which are then passed on to the children. It can be seen from the DNA which species are related to one another, and therefore had a common ancestor. By means of DNA it is possible in the case of all living creatures to trace the line of common ancestry back to the very beginning. Born of the dust of the stars, we are all – from bacteria to plants and from animals to man – related to each other.