¡°In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.¡±
That¡¯s one version. Here¡¯s another: ¡°Everything probably began with a Big Bang,¡± writes Nigel Calder in ¡°Einstein¡¯s Universe: The Layperson¡¯s Guide.¡± ¡°Enormous numbers of particles and anti-particles formed and disappeared in a frenzy of creation and annihilation. As the universe cooled and the energy of the prevailing radiation grew less, annihilation supervened, until only a billionth part of all that matter remained.¡± That billionth part is us, here, now, this.
Cultures are spawned by primal tales. Or are primal tales spawned by cultures? The Indian ¡°Rig Veda¡± (translated by A.L. Basham) imagines a ¡°primal man,¡± Prajapati by name, ¡°sacrificed¡±: ¡°The moon arose from (Prajapati¡¯s) mind, from his eye was born the sun ... from his breath the wind ... from his navel the air, from his head there came the sky,¡± and so on. The earth came from his feet.
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