The World on Turtle's Back

Cosmogonies are a subcategory of myth that attempt to explain how the world began. Before scientific theories about the origins of the universe, such stories usually ascribed the creation of the universe to one or more divine powers. Although quite varied in their details, cosmogonies also tend to fall into a few categories: Some depict the world as emerging from a primordial state of chaos, others feature an act of creation from nothing (ex nihilo), still others speculate that the world was birthed like a child, etc. “The World on Turtle’s Back” most closely corresponds to a “genre” of cosmogony sometimes referred to as “earth-diver” stories, as it involves a figure fetching soil that will become North America from deep within the ocean. However, it also features a second act of creation (by Enigorio) that is responsible for most other elements of life on Earth, from the existence of the sun to the arrival of humans.

The latter is another central concern of many cosmogonies, which explore not only the creation of humanity (or even a particular ethnocultural group) but also its place in the world. Hierarchies appear in many cosmogonies: Divine gods rule the action at the top, evil spirits lurk in the depths below, and humans must navigate their way between them.