Cosmogenic Myths and the creation of others
Rodney D. Coates*

	Cosmogenic myths, developed by human groups throughout history and across all cultures, are attempts to give meaning to existence and situate group identify.  Typically, most groups use cosmogenic myths to order the creation by pre-eminently placing their group at the center.  In this way both god-constructs and all life apparently flows from this creation event.  When different groups are encountered they are either absorbed into this already existing identity or are defined as others. The more mobile the group, as was the case with early hunting and gathering societies and increasingly thereafter, the more these myths become extremely complex, layered, and all encompassing.  Cosmogenic myths, at their simplest stage, explain existence through some act(s) of divinity.

	Several examples of these simple cosmogenic myths can be identified across geographical and cultural groups.    Cosmogenic myths fall into four basic types with respect to othering -pre-contact and post-contact, and post-contact can be further broken down into two sub-types depending upon whether the original group came to dominate or was dominated by the external group.  Regardless of types, all cosmogenic myths began as oral histories and were subsequently written by one literate group or another.  Whether or not this literary rendering is accurate or not, or indeed, whether or not the rendering borrowed or authentically produced by the current group is debatable.  Given the nature of oral histories, the overwhelming majority of those myths that we are aware of are those that have been preserved in printed texts. While we can identify a small number of oral histories, we are not as certain of their dates as those that are written.  

Pre-contact cosmogenic myths

Perhaps the oldest cosmogenic myth comes from the Eridu Genesis of the Sumerians written about 2150 bc.  These myths, comprising a total of14 conical tablets, definitely were transcribed from a previous oral period that might go back another 1 - 2, 000 years.  Possibly the most significant and controversial observations associated with the Eridu Genesis cosmogenic myths are that they appear to be the first to start with an human pair and to describe the great floods.  These two themes appear both among Greek and Jewish cosmogenic myths.  What is also significant of this and many other cosmogenic myths a major event, in this case a great flood, led to the first contact situations involving distinctly different peoples. We will come back to this point when we begin the section on post-contact myths. 

	According to the Eridu Genesis, the gods An, Enlil,Enki, and Ninhursanga create the first   people described as "black headed" who they situate in a heavenly garden with all the other animals and plants and told to procreate.  With time, these people leave heaven and come to earth to found the first cities of Eribu, Baditibira, Larsa, Sippar, and Shuruppak.  For some unknown reasons, the gods became angry with the people and decided to destroy them with a great flood.  Only one family was saved -   from this family some of the earliest civilizations derive to include Babylon and Egypt.   


*Note:This a work in progress, distributed for discussion but not citation.  I retain all copy-writes to this work.  In fact one of the reasons to post it is that it is then time stamped, thus authenticating my claim to originality.  But with all works this one relies on the works of various other scholars that will be fully cited in the published version of this chapter.
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