Last week, David Bercovici came and discussed The Origins of Everything. This, unsurprisingly, led to further questions about how historians, both scientific and social, can handle or even attempt to discuss the history of everything we know: starting from the Big Bang and ending today. 

The class, at one point, was asked what they thought would encompass the “big history” of the universe before the scientific enlightenment, or around the 1550s or earlier. While not much was offered for answers, one seemingly constant presence during the discussion was the Bible. It makes sense for us students, most of whom where raised in the United States surrounded by Western media biblical influences, to revert to this book as a source of answers when the scientific method is not available and access to historical documentation for worldwide events wasn’t so easily accessible. However, this biblical perspective only lends itself to a fraction of the world’s population. What are some “big histories” from other regions? Regions that aren’t solely influenced by white, Christian men? I have always been skeptical of this story and its influence on Western truths and lives, so I did a little research to find another “big history” story that had a similar depth of audience.

The story I found to share is that of Pan Gu, a story from classical Chinese mythology.

The version of the story I read can be found here

This story begins with the Universe existing as an egg shaped cloud. Within the egg, there is swirling matter and chaos, and from that chaos, the giant Pan Gu is born. Pan Gu then develops and grows for 18,000 years, until he stretches and stands, separating the top and bottom half of the egg– the Yin and the Yang, or the good and the bad, the pure and the impure. He holds these two apart as he grows, pushing them further and further away until he finds that they are balanced, which takes another 18,000 years. He then dies, and his body is used to create the natural phenomenon found on Earth, such as the rivers and the rain.

After this part I found multiple renditions of how the Earth became populated with humans. I liked the one I linked above the best, for it combined a connection with nature and a simplistic answer for the imbalance of the human experience.

This story explains that Pan Gu left behind a goddess named Nü Wa, who roamed the Earth and molded humans in her image by hand because she was lonely. She eventually figured out she could create the same humans with droplets of mud instead of molding them all by hand. Those sculpted by her hand became the aristocrats and the droplets became the common people.

The goddess then died, and her body became different pieces of the Earth.

I think it is important to keep in mind that stories with very different bases can inhabit the same spaces of inherent truth or ideas in different cultures, as seen in this example.