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# 2.1 A world of stories

In the next activity you will gather together as many different stories about how the world began as you can think of. Comparing and contrasting the story that Ovid tells in his poem will help you to understand the world that Ovid is imagining.

## Activity 2 The beginning of the world

This activity should take about 5 minutes

Set a timer for 5 minutes, and make a list of as many different ways of telling the story of the beginning of the world as you can. These could be religious stories, or myths, or scientific models for the beginning of the universe. They can be ancient or modern and can come from anywhere in the world – you do not have to personally believe them to be true!

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### Discussion

You might have thought of stories from major world religions, like Islam or Christianity (in which a god creates the world). Or you might have included scientific stories like the Big Bang. If you have a special interest in cosmology stories and the way they vary among different groups of people you may have thought of the stories about how Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva create the world, from the coils of the great snake Ananta and the cosmic dance of Shiva – a group of stories that are still told today in many Hindu texts. Other stories include stories that the ancient Egyptians used to tell about how Atum, the creator of the world, was born from a giant lotus flower, and stories told by the Taino people of the ancient Caribbean about how the world came from a vegetable called a gourd, and came into being on the back of a turtle named Caguama.

You’ll think now about one cosmology story that may (or may not!) have featured in the list you made in the previous activity. It is a story that was first told by the ancient people of what is now Tahiti and Aotearoa (New Zealand), about how the world came from a shell. In the next activity you will read, or listen to, the opening chapter from a book for young children that collects together some cosmology stories from around the ancient world. The creation story that you will hear (or read) is about how the world came from a shell. You do not need to write a formal response to it, but you may wish to take some notes so that you can compare it with Ovid’s creation story in the next activity.

## Activity 3 The world that came from a shell

This activity should take about 20 minutes

Read this story – or listen to the audio version. Remember that the story was written for young children, so it will not be as detailed as the ancient texts that you are dealing with elsewhere in this course. As you read or listen, write make notes on the outline of the story so that you can compare it with Ovid’s version of a creation myth in the next activity. Aim to make about 4–6 bullet points, noting down the elements of the story that you think will best help you to remember it.

## The World That Came From a Shell

> Each of the Pacific islands has its own story for how the world was made. In Tahiti they said that it all began with a shell. There was no Earth, no land, no sea, no time – just a single shell. And in that shell was a single god: Ta’aroa.

> Ta’aroa had been curled up all alone in his shell for all of eternity until one day he decided to stretch his arms and legs, and step outside. He slid out carefully and stood gazing at the enormous, empty expanse of the universe. He called out across the dark nothingness, but there was no reply. He was all alone. He got back into his shell, curled himself into a ball, and stayed there for another eternity.

> Eventually he came out again. He was still alone and, although he would not have admitted it even if there had been anyone to admit it to, he was lonely. Suddenly, he had an idea. What if he and his shell could create a whole world? That way, he would never be alone again. He broke off the curved side of his shell and held it up to make the sky. Then he cupped his hands together to make the Earth and everything in it.

> Across the ocean on the island of Aotearoa, the ancient people told a different story. Here, people said that the sky, named Ranginui, and the Earth, named Papatūānuku, were parents to many children, who lived squeezed inside the darkness between them. There was Tūmatauenga, the god of war, Tāwhirimātea, the god of weather, and Tāne, the god of the forests and birds. There was Rongo, the god of growing food, and Haumia, the god of gathering food. There was Tangaroa, too, their name for Ta’aroa. Tangaroa was the god who created scaly creatures, like fish and lizards. But none of the children could be the gods of any of these things yet, because nothing existed except the sky father and the Earth mother and their children, and the darkness.

> As the children got older, they grew tired of living in darkness. They dreamed of a different world, where there would be light and space to stretch out their limbs. In whispers, so that their parents would not hear, they planned their escape. Tūmatauenga spoke first. He was angry that his parents had kept them cooped up in the dark all this time. He wanted to kill them. But the other siblings refused to do it. Tāne had another idea – they could push their parents apart and free themselves.

> Rongo reached up and tried to push the sky father upwards, away from the Earth mother, but their grip on each other was too tight. Then Tangaroa tried. It was as if their parents each has as many arms as an octopus, and held tightly to one another with each limb. Eventually, Tāne tried, lying on his back and pushing with both of his legs against the sky until a tiny chink of light opened up between their parents. Stars rushed in, first one by one and then thousands all at once, and Tāne stacked them up into pillars so that their father was pushed further and further up into the sky away from their mother.

> The siblings blinked, wide-eyed, at a light they had never seen before. When Tāne was finished, he went up to the sky and sat with his father. As a way of making amends for having separated him from the Earth mother, he collected together all the lights that he could find and hung them in the night sky. These stars, he thought, would make a suitable outfit for his father to wear.

> The other siblings set about building the rest of the world. All of them, that is, except brother Tāwhirimātea, who was angry. He had not joined in the escape plan, and was upset that the only life he had ever known had changed forever. He joined his father in the sky and started to attack the trees to punish the forest god Tāne, sending harsh winds that blew away the leaves. Then he set on Tangaroa, who fled into the ocean and became the god of the sea. Every day the sea, Tangaroa, would flee away from his brother, Tāwhirimātea, and then return. This created the tides.

> Almost as soon as the sea and the land had been created, they filled up with humans – though no one could ever agree on exactly how the humans came to be. More and more humans filled up the islands, bringing love and life, and friendship and families. Very soon the humans had spread all across the world. The endless darkness did not return. And Ta’aroa would never know loneliness like the eternity he had spent all alone in his shell ever again.

(Ward, 2022, pp. 22–5)

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The World That Came From a Shell (audio version)
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### Discussion

Hopefully you enjoyed this ancient story and were able to come up with the 4–6 bullet points to help you remember it. Keep this summary close by as you continue on to the next activity, so that you can refer to it if you need to.

Figure 5 The embrace of the two gods Ranginui and Papatūānuku is still often depicted in Pacific Islander art to this day. This Māori carving is today at the Museum of Auckland.

Now that you have a sense of what a cosmology is, and how they can vary across different groups of people through time and around the world, let’s apply that knowledge to reading Ovid’s cosmology. The story that Ovid tells about how the world came to be is similar to the one told by many other ancient authors – like Hesiod, for example, who lived around 700 BCE and whose work the Theogony told a story about how the world began. You will find out, however, that Ovid’s version is quite different from the cosmology stories you have met in this course so far.

◄Contents►Next: 2.2 Ovid and his world

OpenLearn - Exploring Ovid’s big ideas
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