Which Culture Had The Craziest Mythology?

"The Return of Neptune" by John Copley

Myths present a mirror for humanity’s deepest hopes and fears. Mythology tells stories to explain the great mysteries of life and, often, to teach a lesson. Sometimes fantastically told, usually quizzical and abstract, humanity tries to carve sense from the senseless. Our species has used mythology and ritual to establish a sense of community, identity, and an understanding of their place in the universe. Ultimately, lying at the roots of much of all our literature, art and religion -- myths represent the heritage of Earth’s imagination.

So many antequated beliefs have, with time, gone the way of the buffalo -- vanished within the spirals of time and leaving nothing behind but the comfort we'd so fastidiously cultivated to oust the nothing in its place.

Many cultures inevitably recycled many themes, motifs -- and actual storylines -- from other cultures. Purposely or accidentally, several common stories have been shared by many different traditions. Almost always, there are beliefs that we enlightened moderns sometimes think silly, or ridiculous -- or perhaps just downright stupid. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it doesn't seem like such a leap to suggest that no, perhaps the skies are not full of flying reptiles that can breathe fire and eat humans (only those who do bad things, mind you)...or that no, there probably is not -- to quote something Carlin once said -- an invisible man, living in the sky...who has a list of 10 things he DOES NOT WANT YOU TO DO. And that if you do any of those 10 things, you'll burn for an eternity in unbearable hellfire.....but that he loves you! Hindsight is not 20/20, no, but it seems to go without saying that what you're suggesting as dogmatic truth is probably just another belief in a long line of fantastically-told stories aimed at carving sense from the senseless.

So when it comes to the fictitious and downright absurd -- which culture truly had the craziest belief system? Let's designate 10 as the least encroaching, most naturalist, realist, scientific and fact-based ideology...with 1 as the seemingly random and insane conjurings of a society that idolized warfare, rape stories and only the cruellist of drama. And yes, I realize the cultural bias at work here -- but I'm quite sure there will also be common ground to agree upon. So without further adieu:

10. Native American


"Turtle Island" by Derrick Higgins

In many Native American cultures, tribal stories were told about how the world rose from the primal waters with the magical help of diving animals - a duck, a grebe, a beetle or a crayfish, among others, plunged into the murky depths to bring up grains of sand or mud, which then grew vast and became the terrestrial world.

So OK -- I'll admit that many native myths are straight-up crazy. And I mean that. Crazy. But the ones that aren't crazy, are so in-tune with the natural world as to render the entire mythological belief-system less insane in its ramifications for the future of their kind.

Here's an example of the former: more common than those stories which describe the creation of major celestial bodies are those Native American myths focusing on the minutiae of the universe. One Lillooet story explains the moon's irregular surface in terms of the presence of three squatting frog sisters. And they meant it literally -- frog sisters.

An example of the latter: Native myths often evolved around the predominant life-giving sustenances of the area and paying homage for their regeneration. The Natives living long ago knew they were utterly dependent on many things naturally-occurring within nature for survival. They felt that the staples of life, which were not always in high abundance, were gracious offerings from spirits to which they should pay homage. If a hunter did manage to find, hunt, and kill something -- there were many rituals required to ceremoniously (and as painlessly as possible) kill the animal, before blessing the Gods of hunting (and the animal Gods) for producing their meat.

Ultimately, the "Mother Earth, Father Sky" mythology that typifies Native American belief is proposed for the sake of living in tune with nature. Not for its domination, not simply to comfort themselves -- but for the progenitor's of life-sustaining resources. So why number "10", you might ask? Because nowhere in the history of the planet has a group of people been so systematically in-tune with nature and, for the sake of longevity, not simply ruining their surroundings or killing people on such a large scale in defense of beliefs. Is that so crazy? Wake up and smell the cosmopolitan -- no!

For almost all tribes—except for those in the arid Southwest—in the beginning the world was covered with primordial waters before land was created. So yes, again with the flooding-waters-before-dry-land creation story. However in the case of the North American Natives, myths abound of diving animals and birds that brought up mud from the bottom of the waters to form the Earth. Many of the most famous accounts involve a diving turtle bringing us mud for dry land, or simply that we lived on the shell of a giant turtle. Beliefs were very often turtle-related in at least some manner.

Regardless, Native mythology centers on instructions about the appropriate ways to approach, take the life of, and thank game animals. But while survival necessities like game, other food and water had to be taken ceremoniously, other things like inclement weather, sickness and warfare needed to be constantly kept at bay via religious practice. And with every story about honouring the givers of life and those forces that keep chaos at bay, there almost always follows a story of an unsung hero in that regard. Every native American mythology has heroes (who bring the essentials of life), heroines associated with conception/birth and skills (pottery, weaving) -- and, of course, tricksters.

Native American Archetypes
(a) Spiritualized nature. Earth as "Mother"

Like so many other cultures, ancient Mesopotamia had a creation myth of order coming from chaos. Almost all cultures have a primary creation story including a time of chaos preceding that of order, in which we now reside. The world was almost always full of random disarray -- often turbulent fire or water -- and required a hero to start putting it all together. That hero is often the culture's main god.

In the case of Mesopotamia, the time preceding order was that of tumultuous waters, thrashing in all directions and leaving no room for dry land. This is not so insane -- given that the Mesopotamians knew nothing of Earthly geography and had to assume that since waters surrounded their landmass in every direction possible, that truly, chaotic waters were an all-pervading and chaotic force, threatening to snuff the life from dry land.

The Mesopotamians believed that a society of Gods brought forth land and produced order -- and that their society was not so different from human society. Anything given a mythological backstory served some purpose in Mesopotamia, so it's easy to think that myths gave a divine justification for institutions crucial to the organization of Mesopotamian culture.

You might know Mesopotamian myth-system from the stories of Marduk fighting Tiamat to produce dry land for us lowly humans, or the Epic of Gilgamesh (which yes, contains the story of the Great Flood and is only predated by the Egyptian flood account). Mesopotamian mythology can actually sometimes be a mish-mash of Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Hittite and Canaanite stories.

So why would Mesopotamia by near the top, in terms of not having an incedulous backstory? You're probably saying wait -- they have stories of an unearthly warrior fighting a female dragon God for supremacy over matter itself, and stories of a society of Gods that want to sway course of (and directly influence) the World. However, these guys were truly the beginning at the dawn of civilization and deserve to be given a little slack. For one, they really had no scientific basis for anything (let alone their mythological belief-system) and myths often served to justify the way society functioned. Sure, it wasn't much of a utopia...but we're not putting the civilization itself on trial here, just their mythology. Myths served as fantastical stories that children could believe in that would help transcend generational differences to keep social institutions running.

Mesopotamian Archetypes
(a) The Great Flood
This idea was originally Egyptian, but the Mesopotamians gave it real significance. They were the first to give it truly religious significance and, from there, many regions around Mesopotamia fed off the "flood" mythology of saving people from chaotic waters. Details from this account remain very much the same across cultures....humanity is first warned to create a large boat and save multiples of each animal, rain covers the land for an incredible amount of time -- and later, birds are usually sent out in search of dry land.

(b) Chaos Outside of Order
The heavens and the earth are seen as a kind of dome, beyond which lies free-water and chaos.

(c) The Ultimate Warrior (Gilgamesh)
The epic tale of Gilgamesh was, of such stories, the first ever written (that we have a record of). For that reason, we can credit Mesopotamian mythology as beginning the mythos of the undefeatable hero underappreciatedly saving mankind time and again from Gods and monsters.

(d) Dreams of the Future
Mesopotamia took dreams very seriously and believed that they were a window to the future. Some later cultures would place equal significance on dreams, but the Mesopotamians were quite dogmatic in reporting and interpreting dreams. The epic of Gilgamesh itself has many dream motifs, where nightly premonitions come to characters.