Stories contain knowledge

In class, my dialogue leader told a story about the origins of fire. I will not re-tell it here except in the barest outline, because it is not my story to tell. But it did make me reflect on some Western stories. He said Aboriginal stories take varied forms depending on the teller, and depending on what the teller is trying to get across to the particular listeners at a particular telling of the story. This flexibility is lost when stories are written down; they then are told out of context, and lose a great deal of their meaning and intention. It makes me wonder about some ancient Western stories, and what they mean out of context.

In the Aboriginal story, fire was first kept away from people by the only group that had it, and then given to an outsider by a child in return for a gift. The outsider carried the fire inside a hollow part of a particular plant, and it was shared among all people. Those who had not shared it were punished. In Australia, the story dates back at least 50,000 years. The Greek/Roman story is a bit different, but there are a few correspondences. It makes me wonder whether there is a very ancient human story that got modified in Greek/Roman mythology to incorporate elements of the military and hierarchical system that their society adopted.

In Greek mythology, there was a group of beings who had fire and would not share it, the Olympian gods in this case. Before the Olympian gods had ruled, the Earth was ruled by the Titans, who included Uranus, the sky father, and Gaia, the earth mother, and their children, associated with other elemental forces of nature. In a war, the Olympians (led by Zeus, the child of Titans) overthrew the Titans and imprisoned all but a few of them in the Underworld.¹ One of the Titans who was not imprisoned was Prometheus. He saw that humans were miserable without fire, and went to Zeus and asked him to give fire to humans. Zeus refused, saying that if humans had fire, they would become strong and wise like the gods, and would overthrow them. The message of hierarchy and militarism is reinforced with this.

However, this message of hierarchy is then undermined. Prometheus was determined to give fire to humans anyway. He found a plant with a hollow stalk filled with a substance that would burn slowly for a long time. (Some versions say this was a fennel stalk, others say some kind of reed. I wonder about the ecological significance of the particular plant. What knowledge of this plant’s ecological relationships is hidden in the story, or has been lost? A hollow plant was used in the Aboriginal story too, a very different one, but it has ecological significance.) He went to the rising sun, and lit the plant with the sun's flames. Then he carried the smoldering fire back and gave it to humans. He taught humans other things as well, how to build houses, how to domesticate animals, how to work metal.

Zeus was angry when he found out what Prometheus had done. He let humans keep their knowledge and fire, but he punished them by creating a beautiful woman, Pandora, and giving her to Prometheus’ brother to be his wife. Zeus gave Pandora a golden box and told her it contained treasure. Athena, goddess of wisdom, warned her never to open it. She was curious and greedy, and finally decided to ignore Athena, and opened the box. Diseases and troubles flew out of the box, to trouble all humans. So were humans punished by Zeus for the knowledge they had been given. There is an interesting ecological truth contained in this story: herd animals are the source of many lethal diseases, such as smallpox, that were unknown in cultures that did not domesticate animals. (One exception is llamas in the Andes, which don’t seem to carry these diseases.)² Wealth and power accrued to those in herding cultures who had large herds, and herding cultures (e.g. Greek, Roman, Middle Eastern, Celtic cultures) have been thought to be most warlike, because people raid each other’s herds. Disease, war, and associated troubles would, in fact, have followed from greed and knowledge of herding. Funny how the story of Prometheus is always told as the story of fire, when it contains other truths as well.

Back to the origins of fire: Prometheus was punished by Zeus for giving knowledge to humans, but in the long run, Zeus’ authority is undermined and the punishment broken. Zeus ordered him to be chained to a high mountain, where he was exposed to cold winds, while eagles tore at his flesh, eating his liver every day, while it re-grew every night. His friends, the sun and the sea nymphs, would comfort him with warmth and songs. One day, a white cow named Io wandered past Prometheus. She had been a human woman who was Zeus’ lover, and was turned into a cow because of Hera’s jealousy. Prometheus recognized her, and told her she could find safety to the south, on the Nile, where she would become a human woman again. She followed his advice, and one of her descendants was the hero Hercules, who freed Prometheus.³

So what is the ultimate message here about authority and hierarchy? I think there is a hidden message about tyrannical authorities being hostile to the sharing of knowledge, but the story does not seem to endorse such authorities. The ultimate message seems to be that knowledge is to be shared.


¹ Info on Titans and Olympians is from Wikipedia entries on Titans.
² See Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, and Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
³ This version of the Prometheus myth is compiled from James Baldwin, "Old Greek Stories," from NS Gill, "Guide to Ancient Classical History", and from Mythweb, "Prometheus".