Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [242]
According to a very ancient Aboriginal Creation myth, all life today is part of a connected universe that goes back to the great spirit ancestors who existed in Dreamtime. While many tribes have variations on this concept, the idea of Dreamtime, or the Dreaming, is almost universal in Australia. It goes like this: In the beginning, the earth was in darkness. Life existed below the surface, sleeping. In the Dreaming world, the ancestor beings broke through the crust of the earth, and the sun rose out of the ground. The ancestors then traveled the land and began to shape it, creating the mountains and other features of the landscape along with all the animals, plants, and other natural elements. They also created society, teaching the songs, dances, and ceremonial rituals, and leaving behind spirits of people yet to be born. Finally, tired from this activity, the mythical ancestors sank back into earth and returned to sleep. These beings never died, but merged with nature to live on in sacred beliefs and rituals. Some of their spirits were turned into rocks, trees, or other sacred places that dot the Australian landscape.
Dreamtime is more than just a period in the past—it is ever present, and reached through sacred rituals such as the walkabout, a tribal spiritual journey taken to sacred places to renew the clan’s relationship with Dreaming and the sacred landscape. An individual can go on walkabout to where the tribe originally came from, or some other place of sacred “belongingness.”
Other tribal variations of native Australian myth often include a rainbow serpent—a powerful spirit of creation and fertility—whose curving movement through the sands creates river beds and other natural features. When treated carefully, the snake sleeps, but if disturbed, it creates storms and flooding. One of these snakes, called Yorlunggur, lives by a water hole. When one of two sisters falls into the hole, her menstrual blood pollutes the water, angering the serpent. The snake swallows the sisters and causes a great flood. When the floodwaters recede, the snake spits out the sisters, and the place where this happened becomes the sacred spot where adolescent boys are initiated into adulthood, a central rite for native Australians.
Another great ancestral snake called Bobbi-bobbi is responsible for what may be Australia’s most identifiable “icon.” The serpent drives flying-fox squirrels out into the open for people to eat, but these elusive creatures are not easy to kill. From his underground hiding place, the great serpent sees the difficulty and tosses one of his ribs up to a group of men. This becomes the first boomerang, which the men use to kill the flying foxes. Later, the men throw the boomerang into the sky and make a hole, which makes Bobbi-bobbi angry, so he takes the boomerang back for a time.
There are many other myths of Australia and the Pacific islands, a legacy of ancient people who moved across vast expanses of land and open seas. One of these ancient myths seems especially salient today. It is a story told by many of the people of the Pacific islands about a mythical race of Pygmies, two feet tall. While these “little people” sometimes shot tiny arrows at careless travelers, they otherwise lived peacefully in caves.
In October 2004, scientists announced the discovery, on a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, of the skeletons of a race of people whose adults stood three and a half feet tall. The diminutive “Floresians,” as the scientists named them, lived in a cave on Flores, an island 370 miles east of Bali. This other race of humans lived there until about 13,000 years ago—a miniature version of prehistoric man.
Myths indeed are as fresh as the headlines. And perhaps, after all, Shakespeare was right:
There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anthologies, Collections, and Translations of World Myths
Abrahams, Roger D. African Folktales. New York: Pantheon