The creation myth, or cosmogony (a compound of the Greek words kosmos and genesis – order and birth), is the most important story humans have to tell. This is because it serves as a model for everything we do. Creation myths, like all myths, are universal expressions that aim to explain a culture's place and role in the world, and they always have anthropological relevance to the cognitive processes, logic and thought of modern culture. This article reviews creation myths documented in North America, particularly those that highlight soil and Earth as central themes to help explain the origin of humans and their world. In today's post-Freudian era, few would consider dreams to be simply false stories, unworthy of study. Rather, to the extent that unconsciousness is considered real, dreams function as metaphorical or symbolic constructions containing basic truths about the dreamer and his or her beliefs. In the same way, myths provide valuable information about the inner psyche and worldview of a particular culture. Because no one was there to witness and document our origins, humans have a universal need to construct oral histories to explain the purpose of life and our place in this world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Classic Alpha: The Myths of Creation, Charles Long identified five basic types of creation myths: (1) creation from nothing (ex nihilo, usually but not exclusively in monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), (2) emergence from a hole in the earth, (3) parental myths of the world (involving union, separation, division, sacrifice or dismemberment), (4) creation from chaos - pre-existing and undifferentiated primordial elements, and (5) myths of land divers, which involve diving deep into the primordial waters to collect earth for creation. There are of course many variations and combinations of these five types. Creation myths ex nihilo are found all over the world and are probably the most common of all types. Myths about Earth's emergence and divers most directly include the soil of many Native American creation stories. These stories often involve using clay, dust, or mud to create humans. Even the creator ex nihilo uses clay in the final stages of the creation process and myths of chaos are often based on clay as a raw material to model. Clay or some earthen material, however, is essential in all land diver myths. The Hopi goddess Spider-Woman, for example, thought of human beings while singing and then fashioned them from clay. That the earth is omnipresent in so many ancient creation myths is not surprising given that it was so familiar in everyday life experiences; for example, its use as a basic raw material for making buildings, paintings, figurines, pottery, etc., and as the foundation of the Earth's surface, where humans walk, plant crops, and live their lives . Creation Myths of Land Divers They are found in many parts of the world, but they are very important in North American Native American cultures and are especially common among Algonquian, Siouan, Iroquoian, and many Californian groups. .Land diver myths emphasize the creation of Earth rather than the larger cosmos, with animals often playing an important role in primeval waters, usually with a dualistic tension between the forces of good and evil. These myths generally begin with primitive waters and one or, more rarely, two creators who set out to create the Earth. Various animals often assist these missions by diving deep to bring up terrestrial materials. North American myths about land divers emphasize a cultural hero or heroine, sometimes a trickster who is mischievous or even amoral. Sometimes there is a bad brother who fights for dominance with a good brother. Algonquian myths about land divers tend to be post-flood stories, essentially a second creation. The Anishinabe (Ojibwa) have a post-flood story in which the cultural hero Nanabozho and a few animals survive to create a new world. Nanabhozo dove into the waters to search for mud for a new land, but the waters were too deep. Several animals also tried but also failed until the humble muskrat finally took his turn. After a long time, it rose to the surface dead but carrying pieces of earth in its closed paw to create the world. Siouan tribes tell myths about earth divers in which the creative agent is more of a trickster than the creator. The coyote is a common trickster in many Native American myths of the Southwest, Great Basin, and Plains. One example is the Navajo, who view the Coyote as an unpredictable and ambivalent being who tests the limits of acceptable behavior. Among the Ravens, Coyote sends a duck deep into the primeval sea to find the ground to begin creating the world. The coyotes breathed on the mud and it became the Earth, then plants, animals and humans. The Kukulik Inuit of St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea off Alaska say that Raven acted like a land diver to find sand with which to make Earth and separated the pebbles from the sand to train humans. Diving is dangerous and many divers lose their lives because plants, animals and humans are created by Mother Earth. Whether or not diving is considered a metaphor for descending into an unconscious world in search of consciousness, Mother Earth is clearly the source of all life. Dundes sees the myths of land divers as a case of pregnancy craving on the part of men. Versions of the earth diver myth with the twin motif serve to mediate the duality inherent in life experiences and existence itself. In Iroquoian myths, for example, the evil twin creates powerful and dangerous hunting animals, while the good twin, favored by his mother, creates good domestic animals and edible plants. Conflicts between two opposing forces can thus be the expression of the conflict between the choice of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and that of an agricultural lifestyle. Myths help humans mediate between binary oppositions (homogeneous oppositions like summer and winter, earth and water, earth and sky, up and down, left and right). right, the nobles and the commoners, the strong and the weak, the elders and the youngest, etc.; those such as stability and change, state and process, being and becoming, synchronic and diachronic, simple and ambiguous, unequivocal and equivocal. 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