Musings

 

It's rather interesting to me that all the myths show men being born, Eve gave birth to boys, no girl's names were mentioned, all of Earth's children were male in Theogony. Only the castration of Ouranous creates a female child. Was this a product of a male dominated society or was it all part of making male dominated society acceptable? Perhaps these stories were accepted more because women were more content with their roles in society.

I think in a lot of way myths are art imitating life. In all of the creation myths we read, either a younger generation of gods or god creations (in the case of Genesis) seems to rebel against authority.  As any one with teen children can tell you, children always rebel against authority. Granted, there are always exceptions to every rule but they are few and far between. 

If we look at governments in history we see that people often rebel against government as well. Even our own government is becoming more controlling and we see people protesting the controls  more and more.  It's not a stretch to state that rebellion is human nature. Perhaps the authors of the myths of creation were attempting to explain where that rebellion stems from, as well as how the earth was made.

One another note, It's kind of amazing what the ancient people were able to determine with their limited understanding of the world. They knew there were planets, they knew the sun was the center of the universe, etc. Which I find interesting considering man later thought the earth was flat and the center of the universe. When Galileo therorized that the earth revolved around the sun, the church did not react kindly.Galileo v. the Church