In the beginning were only Tepeu and Gucumatz.
These two sat together and thought, and whatever they thought came into
being.
They thought earth, and there it was.
They thought mountains, and so there were.
They thought trees, and sky, and animals.
Each came into being.
Because none of these creatures could praise them, they formed more
advanced beings of clay.
Because the clay beings fell apart when wet, they made beings out of
wood; however, the wooden beings caused trouble on the earth.
The Gods sent a great flood to wipe out these beings, so that they could
start over.
With the help of Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, and Crow they fashioned
four new beings.
These four beings performed well and are the ancestors of the
Quiché.
Maya
Creation Myth
It should be well known that each human group have a particular cosmogony
and not only the Christians. With myths and other tales humans try to
explain their origin, usually just in the centre of the (known) universe.
Cultural anthropologists know a lot about that. If we claim a respect for
the minority nationalities... Why not to discuss also in the schools the
Navajo (just as another example) origin of the world? The forum should be
ethics or religion courses, not the natural sciences courses.
Curiously enough in the free countries of the "old Europe"
(ops, sorry, I said blithely unconcerned "free", a
curious word in the Constitutions of our "old" countries) we
had this debate about one or two centuries ago -or just some decades as I
realized in my school where masturbation seems to be
s
lightly worse than the belief in
"Darwin theories" (please note the quotation marks)
Si nescis stude, myths are just funny literature...
Patricio Dominguez
### NEW PHONE NUMBER ###
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Dr. Patricio DOMINGUEZ-ALONSO
Department of Palaeontology
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK
patd@nhm.ac.uk
patricio@geo.ucm.es
padomin@terra.es
Tel 0207 942 5335 (internationally 0044 207 942 5335)
Fax 0207 942 5546 (internationally 0044 207 942 5546)