Trail blazers, Tricksters, & Talking Animals

When, where, and how humankind acquired control of fire are all still unknowns.

- Ellen Seiden

Yet, fantastic stories, filled with supernatural beings, heroes, creators, and monsters, as well as “talking and thinking” birds, beasts, and insects, were common to ancient tribes and civilizations worldwide as they tried to explain the phenomenon. These tales arose everywhere, as if by a type of spontaneous combustion, and spread through Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. To explain fire’s origin, people looked to forces of nature, such as lightning, thunder, and volcanoes, and celestial bodies such as the sun, the moon, and the stars. Whether it was gifted to humanity by individual trailblazers, tricksters and thieves, gods and goddesses, or discovered by accident or observation, the story of fire being brought to humans by Prometheus (see pages 2–3) was only one among thousands of different tales told.

“Quest for fire” myths occur in three stages that sometimes overlap. In the beginning, humans knew nothing of fire. They huddled in darkness, shivered with cold, and ate food that was barely heated by the sun or warmed in their armpits. The desire for a source of light and heat sparked tales of discovery that attributed their origins to nature, royalty, and heroes. Even though the ancients were believed to have known about fire, they did not have it. When they saw smoke on a mountaintop or on the horizon, they wanted its secret. (Note that, in very ancient times, the horizon seemed, to many peoples, to mark the end of the world.) This quest opened the door for tales of a crafty trickster who plotted to steal fire to benefit all humans. The widely held belief that humans had let fire die led cultures to develop myths about the search for ways to rekindle it and keep it burning forever.

TWO TALES