Cities And Memory

"Fiat Lux". From the living breath of Genesis to the Kikuyu’s sacred seed, from the Greek cosmic egg to the Sulawesi tale of the earth-shaking boar scratching its itch — across countless traditions, humankind has always sought to explain the origins of the cosmos. Perhaps fewer people are aware that humanity has also tried to explain the origins of technological life, with ‘technology’ here meaning the discovery of activities that enabled progress: agriculture, the construction of more complex structures, brewing, and the domestication of animals. The myths, or stories, that describe how humankind, often with the help of divine or supernatural beings, came to acquire such knowledge are known as "civilisation myths".Western scholars (ethnographers, anthropologists, linguists, and archaeologists alike) were often fascinated by the collection of such stories from remote or so-called ‘exotic’ places. These narratives were variously published in richly illustrated children’s books or in dense and rather austere a