creation stories
How everything began
Creation stories are traditional narratives explaining the origin of the world, humanity, or a particular people.
Nearly every culture has them—from Genesis to Indigenous accounts of emergence from the earth.
The term often appears in discussions contrasting religious or mythological explanations with scientific ones: The museum exhibit explored creation stories from around the world.
- cosmogonyStudy of universal origins
- in the beginningAt the start
- indigenous cosmologyTraditional beliefs about universe origins
- world eggUniverse-birthing primordial sphere
- oral traditionCulture passed by speech
storytelling · oral history · genesis · seven days · folklore · tree of life · Enuma Elish · great flood · epic narrative · primordial · cosmic ocean · ex nihilo · sacred text · chaos · animism · breath · divine intervention · earth
- Aboriginal CultureDreamtime, songlines, corroboree, dreaming, totems
- Indigenous Loreorigin myths, tribal legends, tribal lore, tribal histories, elder wisdom
- Karukregalia, ceremonial dances
- storytellingstorytelling, tale, narrative, narrator, storyteller
- American folklorePaul Bunyan, tall tales, folk heroes, John Henry, folk narratives
- folklorefairy tales, fairytales, folktales, folk tales, folk tale
creation storiesscientific theories
Tested explanatory models
astrophysics · evolutionary theory · evolutionary biology · cosmology · natural history
creation storiesunmaking
Destroying what was built
flood myths · void · nothingness · oblivion · primordial chaos