Motifs In Creation Myths

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Have you ever noticed how similar some people's religions are? Well, the similarities are called motifs and they show up all the time in creation myths. It can range from natural disasters that wiped out the human race, or how religions told of the youth taking over their parent's place, to how humans were made and what they were made of. It’s important to notice these similarities or motifs because it can show us that there might have been communication with other cultures back then or it could just simply be a coincidence. One of the more important motifs that I have noticed is that the myths tell of how the gods had children, but later on the children help out by taking their parent’s place or by forcing themselves and killing their parents. Now the main reason we see this so much in the creation myth is mostly because people can relate with this in real life. From people growing old and their kids having to take care of them and also from kings being overthrown by their children. Mostly this day we see it as the first example and less radical, but back in the monarchy era or before …show more content…
So many myths have this motif because there were a lot more floods back then. The people that experienced these floods back then didn’t have any science or any idea of why there were so many floods so they made sense of it through their gods and what they believed. This motif shows up in the Maori Creation where the god Tawhirimatea was angry and sent out all of these natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, and cyclones. The most common one by far is the flood in the Bible which would have wiped out all of the races but Noah saved them all. In the Mayan Creation, it talks about how their good created a flood to kill off the first human race he made because the people were heartless and dumb and the ones that survived turned into monkeys that we know of