Geoscience Reference
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as a flood caused by torrential rain. In some accounts, humanity continues thanks to a few
survivors, but many other Mesoamerican flood myths, particularly those recorded by the
Aztec peoples, tell of no flood survivors so that creation had to start again from the begin-
ning.
A creation myth from Norse mythology tells how the world emerged at the meeting place
of fire and ice, a great void into which eleven rivers flowed. An evil frost giant named
Ymir sprang from this place and gave birth to the first man and woman from under his left
armpit. Eventually, Ymir was killed by gods who created the world out of his body. His
skull became the sky; his spilled blood became the Norse flood that drowned all of the frost
giants with the exception of one man and his wife, who escaped in a vessel made of a hol-
lowed tree trunk.
Floods also feature in myths and stories told by numerous Aboriginal groups in Australia,
their prominence explicable at least in part by the often dramatic nature of flooding in
desert landscapes. One story told by the Wiranggu of South Australia tells of a rain-maker
named Djunban who was not fully concentrating on his rain-making ceremony one day and
brought unusually heavy rain as a result. Djunban tried to warn his people, but a great flood
came and washed them away with all their possessions, forming a hill of silt. This is the
origin of gold and bones found in the hill.
The possibility that floods described in myths from all over the world are based on real
events has on occasion engendered great debates. Deconstruction of the Biblical flood
story, for example, played a central role in the rise of scientific geology in the 19th cen-
tury. The British geologist Charles Lyell, in his influential topic
The Principles of Geology
(published in three volumes, 1830-3), dismissed the prevailing belief in Noah's flood due
to a lack of evidence in the geological record. Lyell's topic was one of the key works in a
struggle between science and faith as the predominant basis for explaining the origins of
the world around us. It led to a widespread understanding that our planet is very much older
than creationists believed.
Sacred rivers
Many belief systems have invested elements of the natural world with sacred characterist-
ics, and specific rivers feature prominently among them. Rivers were sacred to the Celts
of northwestern Europe, for instance, and many were personified as goddesses. Some of
the river names used today in this part of the world can be traced back to the Celtic deities
