In Graeco-Roman scholarship, the terms etiological myth and aition (from the Ancient Greek αἴτιον, "cause") are sometimes used for a myth that explains an origin, particularly how an object or custom came into existence.
Nature of origin myths
Every origin myth is a tale of creation: origin myths describe how some new reality came into existence. In many cases, origin myths also justify the established order by explaining that it was established by sacred forces
(see section on "Social function" below). The distinction between
cosmogonic myths and origin myths is not clear-cut. A myth about the
origin of some part of the world necessarily presupposes the existence
of the world—which, for many cultures, presupposes a cosmogonic myth. In
this sense, one can think of origin myths as building upon and
extending their cultures' cosmogonic myths.
In fact, in traditional cultures, the recitation of an origin myth is
often prefaced with the recitation of the cosmogonic myth.
In some academic circles, the term "myth" properly refers only to origin and cosmogonic myths. For example, many folklorists
reserve the label "myth" for stories about creation. Traditional
stories that do not focus on origins fall into the categories of "legend" and "folk tale", which folklorists distinguish from myth.
According to historian Mircea Eliade,
for many traditional cultures, nearly every sacred story qualifies as
an origin myth. Traditional humans tend to model their behavior after
sacred events, seeing their life as an "eternal return"
to the mythical age. Because of this conception, nearly every sacred
story describes events that established a new paradigm for human
behavior, and thus nearly every sacred story is a story about a
creation.
Social function
An origin myth often functions to justify the current state of
affairs. In traditional cultures, the entities and forces described in
origin myths are often considered sacred. Thus, by attributing the state
of the universe to the actions of these entities and forces, origin
myths give the current order an aura of sacredness: "Myths reveal that
the World, man, and life have a supernatural origin and history, and
that this history is significant, precious, and exemplary." Many cultures instil the expectation that people take mythical gods and heroes as their role models, imitating their deeds and upholding the customs they established:
When the missionary and ethnologist C. Strehlow asked the Australian Arunta why they performed certain ceremonies, the answer was always: "Because the ancestors so commanded it." The Kai of New Guinea refused to change their way of living and working, and they explained: "It was thus that the Nemu (the Mythical Ancestors) did, and we do likewise." Asked the reason for a particular detail in a ceremony, a Navaho chanter answered: "Because the Holy People did it that way in the first place." We find exactly the same justification in the prayer that accompanies a primitive Tibetan ritual: "As it has been handed down from the beginning of the earth’s creation, so must we sacrifice. … As our ancestors in ancient times did—so do we now."
Founding myths unite people and tend to include mystical events along
the way to make "founders" seem more desirable and heroic. Ruling
monarchs or aristocracies may allege descent from mythical
founders/gods/heroes in order to legitimate their control. For example: Julius Caesar and his relatives claimed Aeneas (and through Aeneas, the goddess Venus) as an ancestor.
Founding myth
The Dispute of Minerva and Neptune (c. 1689 or 1706) by René-Antoine Houasse, depicting the founding myth of Athens
A "founding myth" or etiological myth (Greek aition) explains either:
- The origins of a ritual or of the founding of a city
- The ethnogenesis of a group presented as a genealogy with a founding father and thus of a nation (natio, "birth")
- The spiritual origins of a belief, philosophy, discipline, or idea - presented as a narrative
A founding myth may serve as the primary exemplum, as the myth of Ixion was the original Greek example of a murderer rendered unclean by his crime, who needed cleansing (catharsis) of his impurity.
Founding myths feature prominently in Greek mythology. "Ancient Greek rituals were bound to prominent local groups and hence to specific localities", Walter Burkert has observed.
"i.e. the sanctuaries and altars that had been set up for all time".
Thus Greek and Hebrew founding myths established the special
relationship between a deity and local people, who traced their origins
from a hero
and authenticated their ancestral rights through the founding myth.
Greek founding myths often embody a justification for the ancient
overturning of an older, archaic order, reformulating a historical event
anchored in the social and natural world to valorize current community
practices, creating symbolic narratives of "collective importance"
enriched with metaphor in order to account for traditional
chronologies, and constructing an etiology considered to be plausible
among those with a cultural investment.
In the Greek view, the mythic past had deep roots in historic time, its legends treated as facts, as Carlo Brillante has noted,
its heroic protagonists seen as links between the "age of origins" and
the mortal, everyday world that succeeded it. A modern translator of Apollonius' Argonautica has noted, of the many aitia
embedded as digressions in that Hellenistic epic, that "crucial to
social stability had to be the function of myths in providing
explanations, authorization or empowerment for the present in terms of
origins: this could apply, not only to foundations or charter myths and genealogical trees (thus supporting family or territorial claims) but also to personal moral choices." In the period after Alexander the Great expanded the Hellenistic world, Greek poetry—Callimachus wrote a whole work simply titled Aitia—is replete with founding myths. Simon Goldhill employs the metaphor of sedimentation
in describing Apollonius' laying down of layers "where each object,
cult, ritual, name, may be opened... into a narrative of origination,
and where each narrative, each event, may lead to a cult, ritual, name,
monument."
A notable example is the myth of the foundation of Rome—the tale of Romulus and Remus, which Virgil in turn broadens in his Aeneid with the odyssey of Aeneas and his razing of Lavinium, and his son Iulus's later relocation and rule of the famous twins' birthplace Alba Longa,
and their descent from his royal line, thus fitting perfectly into the
already established canon of events. Similarly, the Old Testament's
story of the Exodus serves as the founding myth for the community of Israel, telling how God delivered the Israelites from slavery and how they therefore belonged to him through the Covenant of Mount Sinai.
During the Middle Ages, founding myths of the medieval communes
of northern Italy manifested the increasing self-confidence of the
urban population and the will to find a Roman origin, however tenuous
and legendary. In 13th-century Padua,
when each commune looked for a Roman founder - and if one was not
available, invented one—a legend had been current in the city,
attributing its foundation to the Trojan Antenor.
Larger-than-life heroes continue to bolster the origin-myths of
many newer nations and societies. In modern-era colonial contexts, waves
of individuals and groups come to the fore in popular history as
shaping and exemplifying the ideals of a group: explorers followed by
conquerors followed by developers/exploiters. Note for example the conquistadors of the Iberian empires, the bandeirantes in Brazil, the coureurs des bois in Canada, the Cossacks and the promyshlenniki in Siberia and in Alaska, the bands of pioneers in the central and western United States, and the voortrekkers in Southern Africa.
Foundation stories
Foundational stories are accounts of the development of cities and nations.
A foundational story represents the view that the creation of the city
is a human achievement. Human control and the removal of wild, uncontrolled nature is underlined. There are two versions of foundational stories: civilization story and degradation story.
Civilization stories take a view of nature
as dangerous and wild. The development of the city is seen as a
successful distancing of humans from nature. Nature is locked out, and
humans take pride in doing so successfully. In 1984 the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan suggested ranking cities according to their distance to natural rhythms and cycles.
Degradation stories (also called pollution stories)
take a different stance. The city is seen as spoiling the landscape of
the ecological relations that existed before the city was established.
There is a sense of guilt for degrading the intact system of nature. In
degradation stories true nature only exists outside the city.
