Reconstructing the Proto Indo-European Myth of Creation

What if I told you that the creation myth of Genesis in the Old Testament of the Bible, and the Vikings poem of creation, the Vilaspa, along with the Purusa's hymn in the Rig Veda in India, are all based on the same story? Your first thoughts may not be to believe it, the religions seem quite different, stories unrelated, but these Indo-European religions have a common ancestor, and a common story of creation, and this original story, the one from which these religions evolved, is known as the Indo-European creation myth, and it was told by our Proto-Indo-European speaking ancestors. And in this video, which is an updated remake of an older video I did, I will discuss how we know about this myth, how it was reconstructed, and how common aspects in religion branched off from it, and I will also answer the main questions I have received on this topic since I first posted the video. And so welcome to the story of the Indo-European creation myth, and welcome to Crecganford. So for those of you who are new to my channel, my videos have English subtitles to help clarify spellings, they have video chapters if you are looking for specific topics, and in the video description I will note the books and academics papers I have cited in the creation of this video. Please if you have any questions just ask in the comments section of the video and I will do my best to respond to as many as I can. This video is going to be in two parts as I am really keen on reading the appropriate passages of mythology that help establish the evidence I will talk about today, but to read all those passages will probably take over an hour or so in itself, which I think will make this video far too long by an hour or so. So I will produce that as a separate video and my next video, and so consider this an introduction to that, and if you haven't seen it then I would also recommend you watch my previous video on the Proto-Indo-Europeans if you want some background into who they were and how we know that. So let me start by telling a reconstruction of this Indo-European creation myth, and this version is based on the work of David W Anthony, the author of the book The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, which is well worth a read if you are interested in Indo-European migration, and is useful specifically if you want to understand the archaeology that helps support the understanding of Indo-European migration. And Anthony cites another great scholar, Bruce Lincoln, an author with many books on the subject, I have a fair number up there, and I would recommend anybody interested in this reading a few of those, and in fact if you want me to do a book review on these books, or any books I would recommend on Indo-European culture and religion, then let me know in the comments and I can easily do that. Let me tell you the Indo-European creation myth, and this is the longest, most complete version I've told to date, and uses the Proto-Indo-European names of people and gods, and I'll explain all these after I've told you the story. So settle down, hopefully with a cup of tea, and let me begin. Before there was time, before the beginning, there was darkness, and from darkness time, and when time began, so the cosmos produced fire and ice. This was the beginning of the cosmos, and within it two brothers were formed, twins, their names Manus and Yemo, and with them was a giant cow. And through time, gods were created, both good and chaotic, and through the cosmos they all travelled, through the eons they lived and grew, until the brothers decided that they needed a home, a world on which to live, to inhabit, to create a place of order from the chaos of the cosmos. But to create this world a sacrifice had to be made, and so it was that Yemo agreed to be sacrificed, and Manus killed him, offering the body to Deus Fritta, the father of the gods. Manus cut Yemo's body into pieces, and from these he created the world, the sun, the moon, the sea, the stars, created fire and the winds, and finally Manus created people, and the first of these was called Trito. Manus came down onto the world, and there became the first beast, and he brought ritual sacrifices to people to allow them to keep this world in order. And so Manus had sacrificed Yemo to Deus Fritta, the gods showed their approval, and gave cattle to Trito, a gift to allow people to be rich in food and materials. And all seemed good, but on this world chaos had found a home, and the people's cattle were stolen under cover one night, in a treacherous move by the three-headed, six-eyed serpent called Ingui. Trito was not strong enough to fight off the serpent, and so the next day he made a sacrifice to the storm god, Perkinus, offering his ritual drink to gain the god's strength for a fight with the serpent. And Perkinus was pleased and came to the world and said he would go with Trito to fight Ingui. And so together they travelled far into the mountains, beyond the borders of their land, to retrieve the cattle, and when they arrived at Ingui's cave, that chaotic three-headed serpent, they eventually slew him, allowing Trito to bring the cattle home. And with the cattle free, and back on the land of the people, Trito became recognised as the first warrior. Celebrated for recovering the wealth of his people, and ensuring the priest received cattle for sacrifice to thank the gods for their help. And so Manus created a sacrificial fire, and over it killed a bull, offering it to the gods. The flames and smoke reaching high into the sky, there Deus Vita and the other gods received that sacrifice, ensuring their share, keeping the gods content, and encouraging them to keep chaos away. And in return the gods continued to give cattle to the people, Manus continued to sacrifice, and a new king was crowned, he was called Yemo, and he was prepared to sacrifice himself to keep the people safe and the lands fertile. And Trito continued to keep the cattle safe. Now if we were to break this creation myth down into its key component parts, we will find a pair of twins, no we will find a set of twins, Manus and Yemo, and a cow. Manus means man, and in effect represents the first man, and he sacrifices Yemo who represents a king, often considered his brother, and whose name means twin. And the motif behind the sacrifice of the king is that the sacrifice is required to create the world, and create that world in this case specifically from Yemo's body parts. And that's a motif that recurs in many Indo-European creation myths, and allows order to be formed from the chaos of the cosmos. And this theme of the king and the land being connected is a motif that appears in many myths outside of creation stories. We see stories that if the king is sick, then the land becomes less fertile, or subject to plague or drought, that's a typical piece of story from the King Arthur legends. And if the king is well, the land prospers, and the people are happy. And this probably all ties back to this motif, the king is the land, and the land is the king. And as an aside, if you want a deeper dive into understanding the importance of the twins in Indo-European creation myths, I have made a video here covering the topic with a specific look at Romulus and Remus, comparing it to other Indo-European myths. Now with the twins, we also have a cow, which is a direct symbol of the importance of cattle in these times, primarily due to the relative ease of farming them, and to the fact that literally 100% of the bovine and its waste was useful to the people at the time. It could not only be used for food, but clothing, fertiliser, disinfectant, and milk, to name a few things. Now not all versions of the creation myths across the Indo-European landscape that have evolved from this original myth stick to the core themes. There are cultural needs that the environment will shape the myth, and as time passes so these changes evolve further. As an example, in some of the creation myths it is the twin who sacrifices man, or in others the cow is sacrificed. But many have the world being created from the body parts of the sacrificed being, and it is interesting to see the similarities and differences of what those body parts are used for. And in what is probably becoming my favourite catch phrase, I'll do a video specifically on that part of the myth as soon as I can. And once the world is created from these body parts, Manus arrives, not only in his capacity as the first man, he then goes off and often is the one who creates people. And there are various ways this happens, with parts of Yemo's body, or with parts of the world, or even with monsters. And the other role of Manus that is important to know is that Manus is also considered the first priest. Now priests were important in Indo-European culture, as important as the king, sometimes more so, and so like a king was considered a sovereign figure. And in the Indo-European creation myth, priests talked of making sacrifices to keep the world in order, it was a literal reference to the fact that gods were initially feared, and sacrifice was delivered as a gift to stop the gods causing harm and chaos, like storms, or floods, or disease. And again, over time gods changed to be more ambivalent, or even purely benevolent. But when we get to the second part of the myth, things change a little. Here we are introduced to Trito, the warrior, whose name means third, and so forms a 1-2-3 pattern with man, twin, and third together in the myth. And this third man, this warrior, he was the heroic serpent slayer, rescuing stolen people, something captured in what we refer to as the cattle raiding myths in Indo-European studies. And over time this cattle raiding myth evolved into a hero rescuing a princess from a dragon. Now that in itself is such a complex topic, I suggest if you're interested in that you watch my video on Trito to get more information specifically about that. And so to kill the three-headed serpent, Trito has to make a sacrifice to the storm god, in return for the god offering him strength. And this makes sense as the storm god is often considered the god of warriors in Indo-European belief, and the three-headed serpent probably is representative of the three-headed god worshipped by the Indo-Mediterranean cultures at the time. So in effect we have gods from different cultures fighting each other. And there is also some belief that the three-headed god was a female, and that may well be because there were a number of matriarchal societies that the descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, which was an absolutely patriarchal society, took over. And this is partly due to the understanding that the serpent was female, and also associating the feminine with chaos, which is again what the serpent was associated with. So now we should also consider the question of whether the storm god was a warrior god before Trito sacrificed to him, or did the storm god, through continual sacrifice to him, become a warrior god? And here we must remember that Trito is sacrificing for strength, to benefit him, not to directly stop chaos and the serpent. Now this is also interesting for the fact that perhaps the original sacrifice was probably Thaddaeus Phter, the father of the gods, that would eventually turn into Jupiter in Rome, or Zeus in Greece. And in fact we know that Zeus was originally called Zeus Perkunas, so Zeus the storm god, at one point in his early history, so fulfilling both a sky father and storm god role. Which makes sense if they are responsible for the sky, and also because they would have created the cows and the ox, that was so important. But a split as a separate storm god had occurred by the time the Vedic culture in India had written the Rig Veda, and from where we see some of the sacrificial evidence, the offering of the drink. So it is clear there were already major splits in pantheons by four and a half thousand years ago. And one other thing that may be worth noting here, from a religious point of view, is that as with many non-Abrahamic religions, the religious ritual of this offering is an important step in getting the gods power, not just having a belief, the sacrifice allows connection with the god. And this is something I see people who practice heathenry today sometimes forget due to influence on the society of the Abrahamic religions, and certainly Christian and Islamic writings and practices. They say that having faith is key in pagan and heathen religions, ritual was key, not faith, and that is something that remained true until these other religions were eventually all but wiped out by Christianity in Europe. And this is something else I am also happy to talk about if more people want to learn about that, just let me know in the comments. And so, you may be asking, how do we know all this? How do we know this myth is true? And so let's start with how we know this is as close to source as possible, how we know this is original, and how do we know about man and his twin, Manus and Yemo, as well as the cow, Trito and the third man, and the heroic warrior, and the cattle raiding myths. Well let's start with a synopsis of what being Proto-Indo-European means, and the last video I made goes into this in great detail, and I will recommend you watch that if you are interested in understanding the origins of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. But to summarise, to be Proto-Indo-European means that you speak a language which we call today Proto-Indo-European, which may sound like we are talking about the first Indo-European language, but that isn't it, the Proto means hypothetical Indo-European. In effect we are talking about Proto-Indo-Europeans being people who spoke a specific language, a hypothetical language, and not a specific culture. But because today we have no physical record of the language, no tangible evidence, direct tangible evidence of people speaking it, we can only hypothesise that it exists, then that different cultures spoke derivatives of it, which have led to the linguistic landscape we have today in Europe and India. And then to supplement this we use DNA and archaeological evidence, alongside etymology, which is a study of a word's origins, and we combine these together to help trace similarities in all this evidence, which then allows us to trace the descendants Indo-European peoples and cultures back to a single source. And it is these people who were the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and the source of the myth we are discussing today. And so what all this comes down to is that today a majority of academics now believe that at a point in time, up to 8,000 years ago, a group of people spoke Proto-Indo-European, they lived in the Russian steppe, and they all shared a similar knowledge of farming, technology, culture, and beliefs. And so they were probably told the same stories around these things, and so started the evolution of the Indo-European creations. And as populations migrated across time and across land, so stories evolved, along with the language, technology, and beliefs, leaving in place the evidence we see today. And that allows us to trace things back to one point. But some still may challenge this, and say, how do we know that these different cultures, different people, didn't just come up with the same creation myth? Even if they all agree language is related, how do we know that the plot of the creation myth isn't just a human phenomenon, a natural phenomenon, often repeated? And this theory can be dismissed, when the fact is that there is linguistic similarity across the myths, meaning that these myths have a single linguistic origin, a Proto-Indo-European origin, and therefore an original source Indo-European creation myth. And we know this by the names being the same, for example, in all these myths. Now this also then disproves any theories argued about the origin as a source not being from the Russian steppe, such as there was a view of it being an old Asiatic origin coming from China, predating Proto-Indo-European, and so making the myth nearer 10,000 years old. But the linguistics just do not support this. However, there are some issues here, and the reason this is, I should say, is that scholars were struggling for some time with understanding how the myth exactly spread. There was a link between Persia and Rome, and we can see this in Persia to India, and Persia to Greece. But the Germanic, and specifically the Old Norse version in Scandinavia, was the sticking point, its age meant that recent migration in the last 1,000 years was not an option, so how could it have travelled to Scandinavia and evolved so much? Well it was eventually deduced that the Old Norse version of the myth hadn't evolved picking up new motifs on its way to Scandinavia, but it had in fact preserved the original myth, and so had details within it that were lost in other versions of the myth around Europe and in India. It hadn't evolved, it is in the oldest version of the myth we know. And once this was understood, then the understanding of the myth's evolutionary journey was far better comprehended. And so I will now show a video of the Proto-Indo-European language migration across Europe, starting around 12,000 years ago. The maps themselves are from a book called The Feet of Rhaodes, and it is the fourth book in a volume called A Song of Sheep and Horses, and is available from the Indo-European website run by Carlos Quiles, and I will link to this in the description of the video below if you are interested in getting a hold of them. The books themselves are available as free PDF downloads, and are sold in a not-for-profit manner from some bookshops, making them very affordable, and offer some great background to the research behind the data that allowed the maps you are about to see to be produced. Now let's watch the video, you'll see how the Proto-Indo-European forms around 8,000 years ago, and their separate languages, New Relic is separate from Anatolian, and the Indo-Tocran split also coincides with a split of beliefs, which I talk about in my video on the Ferryman. And then the Proto-Indo-European language in its native form is completely lost as derivatives form, the Vedic languages form, and the European languages form. And then towards the end of the Bronze Age we start seeing multiple numbers of derivatives of languages that we are now used to seeing today. And I post these maps of animations of language and culture migrations separately on my YouTube channel, people have asked to see these, so you can have references directly to them. And so seeing these we can see how the language spreads, and this allows us to position the creation myth and religious practices and their migrations, and we can get a better understanding of how the creation myth spread the languages and cultures of the people across the Indo-European landscape. And for this I'll put up another map, and what we'll do is go over the myths we know that are related, and once I've done this, and shown their relationship based on their linguistic evolution, we can then specifically look at most of these to discuss their specific similarities. So first I'll put up a Proto-Indo-European marker on the map to show where the myth was probably first told, and the language it was told in. Now as I said, in my next video I'll go through each step of migration, reading the passages that support this, and delving deeper into the text and any analogues that may be useful. But for now we'll discuss just at a high level the main evidence that supports the connection, in effect consider this an introduction to the next video. And so as discussed earlier, we know that one branch of the myth went through Germania, and that was known through the writings of Tacitus, and within those he talks of Twisto, meaning twin, and his son Manus, and from Manus three tribes were born. But the writings here are limited, but these observations were obviously important differentiators between the Germanic tribes and Rome, which is why they were written about. The names are cognates with Ymir and Manus, with the creation of the people. The Old Norse myth, a close descendant of the original myth as we discussed, was also a story told by the Vikings across Scandinavia, although without doubt there would have been variations of this, and we actually see this in some texts. Two main books we can refer to are the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda. Now the Prose Edda was written in the 13th century by a Christian scholar, Snorri Sturluson, and it talks about the beginning of the cosmos between fire and ice, and the creation of the primordial being Ymir. And again we see a word cognate with Yemo, of the Proto-Indo-European myth, meaning twin. And with Yemo the text talks of a cow named Thumla, from which Yemo drinks milk to maintain his strength. And alongside this we have the text of the Poetic Edda, which in poetic form tells of how the gods are created, including Odin. And it is he and his brothers who sacrifice the twin figure of the Old Norse Ymir to create the world, and then the gods go to this world and create man. And this is where we see different versions of the story with different gods, depending on whether you are reading the Prose Edda or the poem in the Philosopher of the Poetic Edda. But the creation of man is an entirely separate subject, and I'll probably do another video about that in the future too. So from here, next is a short hop to Rome, and here the myth has changed to become a myth of creation of a city. And the story shows that many primitive variables of the creation myth have been forgotten by the time this story is written. But the concept of a blood sacrifice remains, with Remus being killed when he jumps the city walls seeking Romulus. But we also see versions of the story change, specifically when it comes to Romulus, who in older versions of the story was killed and quartered by the Senate, very much an analogy of Yemo being cut up and allowing the world to be built. And it is only later the story evolves and Remus survives, before coming a god, a change that was made to make it a far more appropriate end for the founder of Rome. If we then move east to the 5th century BCE, we find a book called the Zendevesta, or the Younger Avesta, and within it Jast 19. Here the story talks about the flight of Yema's kingly glory, a power known as Zalena. Here Yema is a cognate of Proto-Indo-European, meaning twin. But here we also see an important point of difference, and that is around the idea kingship between the Iranians and Indo-Europeans. For the Indo-Europeans the king is the complete man who contains within his body the essence of all three social classes, so priests, warriors, and commoners. But in Iran these essences were eventually combined into this Zalena, rather than the physical king himself. However this is not the only change, as in the Ferryman videos we also see a more spiritual afterlife, and a natural death is the end approach to the dead. And so there are some real belief shifts in the migrations that happened after the first migrations from the Russian steppe, and this again reinforces the fact that we have to be careful who we label as Proto-Indo-European, as these Iranians may have still spoken the same language as those who were migrating to Germania and Scandinavia, but now have a quite different set of beliefs. And the younger Vesta also has reference to cattle raiding myths as well, with the mention of a three-headed serpent called Azi, again cognate with Ingi. And so in this one text we have the combination of the king, the twin primordial figure, and the cattle raiding myth into one story, and one that migrated in the opposite direction to those people going to Europe. And this reinforces the belief that the Old Norse myth is the oldest, as it too maintains these ideas. Now we then look at the Persian Greater Bundahism, a book written around 1300 years after the Zender Vesta. It also has influence from the Indian Bundahism, and we can see that it developed on the ideas of those books, and within the stories there are remnants of the original myths, despite Zarathustra objecting to the original creation myth and the beliefs around it. But he couldn't ignore this, there was too much investment of people into these myths, and so this is fortunate for us, as these remnants hold evidence, and act as evidence pointing back to the earlier Indo-European mythology. Within this text we have Geomart, a name that evolved from the evolution of the words Gea, meaning life, and Martian, meaning mortal, in effect suggesting he was the first mortal man. And Gea is cognate with Yemo, and so links to the twin, and so Geomart is that, an evolution of Yemo. What is also worth noting about this text is that it also states that an ox, his sacrifice helped create the world, to gain linking motifs back to the early Indo-Europeans. Next we can go to Vedic culture in India, and we can find the Purusa hymn of the Rig Veda. Now Purusa may not sound like Manus, or Yemo, or a cognate of either, but the name literally means man, and it seems to come from philosophical and theological speculation, and such speculation changed the figure's name gaining in the Brahman as Purusa, Man, becoming Prajapati, Lord of Creatures, but the underlying story is still the same, and it is Man who is sacrificed in this creation myth. But the morphological and structural features convince us that this is the same twin figure encountered in the Iranian myth. From here we can cross to China, where we find the Chinese Taoist legends of Peng-Ku and Hun-Tun in a creation myth, with Peng-Ku being formed in an egg that also contains the chaos of the cosmos, called Hun-Tun. Now this version of the myth is now somewhat removed from the Proto-Indo-European version, but it is thought the Purusa hymn influenced it, and within the myth there are these two figures at the start of the cosmos from which all things were created. Now we then have the Satapatha Ramana, which is another text from India, and within it there is an ancient myth of Manu's wife, Manavi, and probably her sister too, who are sacrificed. And so behind these two women lie the relics of the primordial twin. But also with this myth the victims are also joined by a bow line, much like the Old Norse myth, and it was this discovery of the bow line that really added weight to the fact that the Old Norse myth was the oldest, and that added much weight to the argument that these myths spread from the Proto-Indo-Europeans. And we also have from this region the Indian Greater Bundahisn, an early version of the Bundahisn text that went to Persia. And so from here we can move to Mesopotamia and the Near East, and we start seeing some changes to the myth. The Babylonian creation myth, which we know evolved from the Sumerian creation myth, was written on a set of clay tablets we know collectively as the Enuma Elish, and starts with two water serpents called Apsu and Tiamat. Now whilst the names aren't cognate with twin or Manus, as they relate to water, given an indication of the importance of water in the region, we do know that Tiamat, the female of this pair, is almost always depicted as some kind of serpent form. However, a tablet of the Enuma Elish, which was documented in 1961 in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, infers that Tiamat is actually a cow. And therefore we can start linking the twin figures of Apsu and Tiamat with a cow, showing this distinct connection to the original Indo-European creation myth. And to add weight to this, Tiamat's body is used to create the world, by Marduk. Now I get many challenges to this from people saying there is no source that says this, and so I'll link to the papers in the description which show this source, and it is based on a translation of the tablet, so it isn't an outdated theory, it is something that is supported by Lincoln, and therefore Anthony, in their academic studies. But what I acknowledge is that we don't have any imagery or iconography that infers this to show Tiamat as a cow, although we have found Zoroastrianism influenced imagery in Jewish synagogues, so I feel there is undoubtedly influence from the Indo-Europeans in this part of the world, seen through the influence of myths, even if there isn't significant DNA evidence right now to support this. The Sumerians are basically still a bit of a mystery when it comes to us in terms of DNA archaeology. Now from here, our next place we can go is the Ablahamic religion, where they were born, and these too were influenced by the Indo-European creation myths. The first few verses of Genesis infer the Babylonian creation myth is known by the reader, what is also called the Yirn Rulish, and so infer the idea to twins of Tiamat and Apsu, and so shows influence from the earlier Indo-European creation myth. But there are also other texts that support this influence, such as the book of Job, which talks further about using Tiamat's body to build a world, and again inferring the story of Enuma Rulish is hidden behind the surface of some of the Old Testament writings. Now there is another Ablahamic book worth examining, and that is the second book of Enoch, a book which is meant to have been written by Noah, and in there we find a reflex of the creation of the world, and the creation of Adam being made from parts of the world, in effect an inversion of the creation myth, and perhaps a conscious decision to move away from the old myth, much like Genesis did in removing the mythology to reduce the chance that questions would be asked about that mythology. Now whilst I'll acknowledge that the book of Enoch is not in most versions of the canonical bible, it was known by Jews, and it has been used in Ethiopian versions of the bible. Now we can go to Russia as well, and there is the poem of the Dove King, sometimes called the Dove Book, and here it talks about how parts of the world are made from parts of God, and so this motif of body parts forming the world persists. And again here academics believe that this is from influence of the Indo-European creation myths from Persia. And finally if we go over to Greece, here there are a number of texts that all show links to the Indo-European creation myth. So we have from the theory of Devimon of the Corpus Hippocrantum, to traces found in the Orphic Hymn of Zeus, specifically fragment 168, as well as Plato's Timaeus, which talks about the Now as I mentioned earlier, in my next video I'll read the passages from most if not all of these texts, and will go into more detail about the connection and analogues where appropriate. And I hope you'll find that interesting, as some of the passages are difficult to find English translations of, so I'll be using some of my own work to help you understand this. So to summarise, we can look at a table of the things I've talked about today, the characters in these creation myths, and we can see similarities. And what we can see is that the commonality of the world being built from the sacrificial being, that most myths, where we know details, still have a bovine with them, and that man and his twin persist throughout them, with names that are often cognate. Now I have a larger table comparing many more cultures and aspects of their myths and pantheons, and I'd love to go over this, but I'm not sure how best to do this, because it wouldn't fit on the screen, and it would be really boring to go through bits. So if anyone has any ideas of how I can best do that, please let me know in the comments below. But for us now, the key commonalities between these myths are noted. I hope it's now easier to see these connections and how they align with language migration, which in itself aligns with cultural migration, allowing us to feel confident these myths migrated from a single source, which would have been from the Russian steppe and the Proto-Indo-European population that we believe lived there. I also hope I've answered some of the major questions I get asked around this subject, but if you have any specific questions let me know below and I'll answer as many as I can. And what I will say, whilst you are here at the end of the video, I'm hoping you've enjoyed it, and you want to know some more. But I do have a question for you. This YouTube channel has exceeded my expectations, I did this because of lockdown and the university shutdown, and I'm keen to create a community for the viewers on this channel. You ask some brilliant questions, and you're influencing what I talk about. And I'm looking for the best way to provide a platform to better manage this, to better talk to you, to allow us to discuss things. So if you have any ideas and preferences about how I could do that, then please let me know in the comments below. I mean Facebook doesn't seem to engage enough, and so I've been looking at Discord, or perhaps Patreon, or even membership on YouTube. But I'm not doing this for money, I've turned down a number of sponsorship opportunities, and so don't let that influence your thoughts, I do this because I love to teach. And so if you have any thoughts, please put them in the comments to say, and I'll read them all and see if we can find a way to talk. And from that, I say thank you for watching, and liking the video, or at least I hope you did. And until the next one, please stay safe and stay well. And this was Crecganford.