Deukalion and Pyrrha

It is said that Prometheus took the ash of the Titans and of Zagreus and created the first human being. This myth explains the fact that the humans have good and bad habits: the bad ones come from the Titans and the good ones from Zagreus.

However, the human race of Prometheus was not the first human race that existed. The first humans created by the gods were the golden generation. They lived during the time of Kronus and didn’t know any pain, worries or poverty. They lived in harmony with their nature till one day they slept in and became small gods.

After, the gods formed the silver generation. It was totally different from the first one, not just from their figure, but also from their behavior. They grew 100 years and as soon that they got adult they left their homes and died soon. Stupidity and unbridled desire were their undoing.

Zeus, who took on the ruler ship, created a third human generation out of ore. This time the descendants were really cruel and thought only about war and fights. They ended up killing each other quite fast and didn’t survive that long.

So Zeus formed a fourth one. It was noble and fair and it was called the Heroes generation. This were the heroes of the prehistory that were seen later as half gods, like Heracles and Achilles. But also them didn’t survived that long: they died either in the battle in front of the seven doors of Thebes, in the battle of Troy or in other adventures. The last human generation is called the iron one. These people were worked hard but had a lot of troubles and at the end they got just illnesses and death.

As Zeus listened this he went down to the earth in a human body. Then he saw that the people were living and acting even worse as what he thought, and decided to put an end to it. With the help of his brother Poseidon, Zeus started an unbelievable rain. Poseidon destroyed then all dikes with his trident, letting the rivers go their way freely. The humans tried to escape this catastrophe but just two persons managed to survive in a small boat: Deukalion, the son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha, his wife. They both drifted alone in a small boat on a flood that buried the earth. Here we can see once more the different similarities between many fairy tales and religious myhts. The myth of Deukalion and Pyrra is the Greek version of Noah’s Ark.

As Zeus saw these two innocent creatures drifting on the sea, he showed understanding and stopped the flood. At that point they saw themselves helpless and unable to continue, alone as they were in the whole world. So they asked the goddess Themis what should they do.

Themis advised them that they should cover their heads and throw the bones of their mother behind them… an advice after all, but they didn’t understand at all what she wanted to say with that. After a while of hard thinking they understood the meaning and followed the advice: they took some stones -which are the bones of their mother earth- and threw them over their shoulders. Then something incredible happened, and the stones lost their hardness and transformed into humans. Out of the stones Deukalion threw behind him appeared men, and women out of Pyrrha’s stones.