A Big Bang of Mythic Proportions: A Comparison of Ancient ...

Ron Wilcox
Freshman Monroe Project 2008

A Big Bang of Mythic Proportions:
A Comparison of Ancient Mythological Cosmologies and Current Scientific Creation Theory

Why are we here? Who are we? Where are we in the universe, and for that matter, when?
These deceptively simple questions have puzzled civilizations since the dawn of human existence.
Almost all cultures have tried to answer these questions by writing creation myths to describe the
beginning of the universe, which often reveals much about the people themselves. Many of these
creation myths embody very similar themes that hint at a deeper meaning behind these stories and
demonstrate the intricate connections some of these civilizations shared. Often, these creation myths
provide clues as to the cultural identity and self-perspective of a people, since creation myths primarily
serve to locate a culture within the larger world around it, both physically and in its universal
significance (Brockelman 23). They are also often etiological, explaining the rituals, customs, and beliefs
of a people. Even our very own modern-day civilization has developed its own “creation myth” through
science and modern theories of cosmology. When looked at from different perspectives, today’s Big
Bang theory remarkably resembles the ancient creation myths in its ability to locate us too within the
larger world, and universe, around us.

The basic plot of every creation story is in essence a movement from nothing to something,
which myths expand on in many ways (Leeming viii). Often, a chaos or nothingness exists before
creation upon which a god somehow imposes order and begins the universe (60). A common image is
that of a cosmic egg or maternal mound out of which the universe is born (59). Most ancients were
familiar with such imagery in conjunction with birth, so they explained universal birth in terms of what
they already understood. Another popular motif involves the separation of world parents which begins
creation; often it was Mother Earth and Father Sky who were separated by another god, Air. This motif
stresses that almost all of creation is a movement from comingled, chaotic union to differentiation and
variation in the world (61). “Earth-diving” is another aspect frequently found in creation myths. A god
sends an animal to dive into primal, maternal waters to retrieve a piece of mud out of which the entire
earth is formed; the animal becomes an emissary of the god’s divinity (79). Many creation myths also
feature an emergence of humans and animals into this world from another world, a sort of underworld
in which the humans had developed (58). Finally, many myths depend on the sacrifice and
dismemberment of a divine being to create the world. Such myths display an animism in which all

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beings are infused with an aspect of divinity which is directly passed down from the divine being
sacrificed to create them(60).

Greek mythology is one of the richest collections available to us. Hesiod wrote the primary
creation myth of this culture in his Theogony. In the beginning, there is chaos out of which springs the
first god, Gaia, Mother Earth, who then gives birth to the Sky, Ouranos, and mates with him to create
the titans. Kronos, the youngest of the titans, castrates Ouranos with Gaia’s help, demonstrating a
separation of world parents. He then mates with his sister Rhea to create most of the Olympic
pantheon and is later defeated by Zeus, who ascends the throne as king of the gods. The Theogony
demonstrates the major images of creation from chaos, separation of world parents, and succession
battles between father and son which are prevalent in Roman and Babylonian creation myths as well,
hinting at major cultural influences between these three.

One may wonder whether the Greek people actually believed in these fanciful myths as the
absolute truth about how the universe around them started. Most Greek philosophers condemned the
belief that the Greek gods actually existed as “higher beings,” for their flaws seem so much greater than
those of mortals. Most Greek philosophers were either atheistic or believed in a detached god who
created but did not interfere (Stenudd 49-52).

Although its mythology demonstrates much cultural borrowing from Greece, Rome developed
major philosophical ideas of its own. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, like the Theogony, begins with a chaos in
which all is simply an unstructured mass. A nameless creator drives Ovid’s creation, separating the four
elements of fire, air, earth, and water to form the world. Lucretius, the author of the famous epic on
Roman science, On the Nature of Things, argues that there was in fact no creation. He declares that
nothing could have been created from nothing, and there are no gods because perfect beings would
have no sense of incompleteness and hence no desire to create anything, let alone the highly flawed
world that exists. While the universe is eternal, the earth, sun, and seas are not, and Lucretius actually
describes a creation of the earth very similar to that of Ovid in which the four major elements are
separated, although this process is not driven by any being.

Like Lucretius, the Jain religion maintains that the universe is eternal. It too denies the
possibility of a perfect being feeling the need to create. Jains also identify two consistent philosophical
problems with any view of creation: the primal cause and the problem of evil. Their version of the
primal cause problem states that if a god created the universe, he must have existed before it and, if this
is so, where was he and what did he use to create the world? The problem of evil states that if there is a
benevolent god that created the entire universe, how could he have allowed the great evils that exist.

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The Jains therefore believe in an infinite and uncreated universe that has always existed and will always
exist (Leeming 147).

Aztec creation beliefs afford a view into how a creation myth can explain and justify a ritual. It
tells the story of the primordial goddess Coatlicue and how she was dismembered by other gods to
create the earth and sky. The Aztecs then used this myth to justify their ritual of human sacrifice,
claiming the anger of that goddess over being torn apart; Coatlicue needed to be appeased with the
sacrifice of humans (Leeming 21).

Dismemberment is also central to the Hindu creation stories, which form a coherent creation
account drawn from several different texts. Prajipati, the first being, was split into Brahman, the soul
and spark of all life, and Purusa, who was afterwards dismembered and used to create the entire
universe (Leeming 139-144). The different body parts of Purusa form different humans, giving rise to the
caste system based on which body part each group was created from. This account explains and justifies
both the caste system and the animistic Hindu belief that all existence is infused with the divine, in this
case the soul of Brahman and the body of Purusa, who were originally one.

Animistic dismemberment themes similar to those of the Hindu tradition are also found in
China. The first being, Phan Ku, breaks forth from a golden cosmic egg and brings order to all by
separating Yin and Yang, the two primal opposing forces. He then creates the universe, and when he
dies his different bodily features create the mountains, trees, rivers, and valleys, and the fleas in his hair
become humans (Leeming 47-50). This myth offers an interesting example of etiology and animism.
The Yin and Yang beliefs of Chinese culture stem from one chaotic principle being separated and
brought to order; Phan Ku became part of everyone and everything, thus imbuing all with a natural
divinity that traditional Chinese still recognize today.

Native American cultures offer dozens of creation myths, yet most of them share very similar
qualities that indicate a deep cultural connection between many of these traditions. Many Native
American cultures use the motif of an earth diver represented by an animal of great significance which
the tribe is very familiar, such as a beaver, badger, or duck. Many also speak of the emergence of the
first humans into this world. These myths frequently employ the deceptions of a trickster in the form of
a coyote, fox, raven, or other ‘clever’ animal that behaves very mischievously and usually has a hand in
the creation of death and evil. Finally, almost every Native American nation places its own tribe at the
center of the universe, at the point of human emergence or where the earth diver laid the first clod of
earth. This exposes much about the cultures’ self-perspectives and serves as a fine example of how a
creation myth locates its civilization within the greater world around it.

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Hebrew creation offers a story that, although similar in some ways, departs greatly from
most other creation accounts. In the Hebrew account, man is created not to serve the gods but to hold
dominion over the rest of creation. The Hebrew God, Yahweh, is portrayed as being flawless, such that
even after he creates all other beings there is still no threat to his power. This story, unlike other myths,
is told in a pedantic nature that treats the account more as history than myth. It lays the foundation of a
religion by telling this story of damaged relationships and teaching individuals of guilt, obedience,
shame, and many other matters (Leeming 113-123).

The Big Bang and modern scientific cosmology create a framework within which to compare
these examples of creation myths. Analyzing an ancient myth’s ability to give a culture universal
significance helps us understand the meaning and significance that modern theory can still impart to a
humanity searching for relevance. As recently as the past century there were basically two competing
models of cosmology: infinite and finite. Aspects of these models can be seen within the different
myths above. In science, these opposing theories came under the guise of the Steady State model
versus the Big Bang model of creation. The Steady State model claimed the universe is infinite and
creation takes place constantly all around us, with infinitesimal particles being created out of the
quantum vacuum every moment, similar to the Roman, Lucretius, and the Jain tradition. The Big Bang
model claimed that the universe began in a single moment in which everything that now exists was
created, a concept that was related in the Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Hebrew creation accounts,
among others. Only in the past century has enough observational evidence been accumulated to state
that the Big Bang model, though still not perfect, is indeed the more correct version.

Contemporary cosmology believes that all matter first existed in a state of singularity, in which
all was one and there was no time; then, like the Hebrew and Greek accounts, among others, this
singularity ‘exploded’ into matter and time began. Most cosmologists believe there was an era in the
first second in which the universe expanded exponentially until it finally slowed to the more linear rate
of expansion we find today. In the first few seconds of the universe, subatomic particles could not join
together to form coherent atoms because of the intense amount of ambient energy that pervaded the
entire universe. This mix of particles and energy roiling and constantly changing with no structure or
form is a clear parallel to the Chaos of several of the creation myths treated above, such as those
maintained by the Greeks, Romans, and Chinese. By about four minutes, though, most of the particles
joined and settled into the atoms we see today. About one million years after the beginning of time,
photons decoupled and light was seen for the first time in our universe (had there been any eyes to see
it!). As many of the creation myths posit, there was in fact a moment when light was, in a sense,

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created. After several billion years, the universe settled into the state in which it exists today where
homo sapiens have evolved on this third rock out from a middle-of-the-road star within the suburbs of a
galaxy of billions more just like it, which is in turn an average galaxy that resides in no special place
within a universe with billions more galaxies.

The Big Bang theory offers what many believe to be the truth about the historical moment of
creation, but the sequence of events it expands can hold much more meaning for us than mere history.
It can serve to locate us within the universe and give us many insights as to the qualities of whatever
god or being one could speculate began this creation much the way the myths of ancient civilizations
and the stories of our religions do. If nothing else, the mere breadth of the universe and our place
within it teaches humility and yet, nonetheless, leads one to wonder at its expansiveness and
humanity’s ability to comprehend its existence. This modern cosmological creation process we have
discovered provides insights and lessons of the infinite creativity of Nature. If one travels back to any
moment in the development of the universe, the next step is rarely predictable (Brockelman 60-62). If
all matter is one and time does not exist, as in the Singularity of modern cosmology, how can the
concept of time or matter even be postulated? And if there is so much ambient energy within a
cauldron of particles, how could one predict the eventual coalescing of these particles into matter? And
if there is only darkness, how could a mind even dream of light? Such is the infinite creativity of the
Primal Cause. A final lesson we may take from this is that the animist views of several of the myths
above are not as primitive as they sound at first. Science itself believes that everything around us, from
this paper to the mind that comprehends it, was at one point all one in the Singularity; everything that is
now differentiated was once whole and connected (62-63). How can one say that these connections do
not still exist, whether they are called an all-pervading soul or not? In this view, there truly is an aspect
of sameness, perhaps of the “divine,” in every single thing.

While this paper cannot treat the entire subject of cosmology and the many links between
myths, religions, and science, I do hope that it can stimulate the imagination and the awe which creation
naturally brings to all. The mere story of the Big Bang and the simple scientific statistics it comprises can
boggle most minds, but attempting to grasp some meaning behind it brings the true delight and allows
us to reach for and try to comprehend the mind of a creator with exactly the same noble goal the people
of old strove for with their myths.

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Bibliography
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