outcome, is obvious. For a full account of these systems we must await
further information; but at present there is no ground for holding that
the similarity is due to borrowing.

+832+. In various early cosmogonies the representation is found of an
earlier race or an early world that had been destroyed, sometimes by a
flood (Babylonia, India, Greece, Polynesia, North America, South
America), sometimes in other ways.[1426] Flood stories probably arise
from local inundations, and may therefore have been constructed
independently in various regions. In some cases the general conditions
favor the supposition of distribution from one point: it seems probable,
for example, that the Babylonian flood story was adopted by the
Canaanites and from them by the Hebrews (the supposition of common
descent from an original Semitic myth is made improbable by the
closeness of resemblance between the Babylonian and Hebrew forms); it
may have passed to India, but the Hindu story may be accounted for from
local conditions. But we know of no such intercourse between the
Americas, Polynesia, and Western Asia, as would suggest a migration of
the myth from the latter to the two former, though this is conceivable.

+833+. The origin of man is included in that of the world. He is made
from clay or wooden figures or stones, or, as in Australia, out of a
shapeless mass. The conception found in various parts of the world, that
the present race of men was preceded by another, appears to be due
sometimes to a real, though often confused, tradition of an earlier
population, sometimes to a vague conception of the conflict and
incompleteness in the world. Traditions of predecessors are found in
various parts of the world. In North America--as, for example, among the
Navahos--a part of the early history is the conflict with certain mighty
and evil beings who made good life impossible--a semidualistic
scheme.[1427] This view comes from the general disposition to conceive
of the past as the time of mightier agencies, good and bad, than now
exist.

+834+. A not uncommon representation is that man was originally not
mortal, or that it was a question whether or not he should be mortal
(death being generally regarded by early man as an abnormal event,
produced by supernatural agency). In such cases mortality is brought
about by an accident or an error: among the Maoris by a mistake of the
hero Maui;[1428] among the Hebrews by the disobedience of the first m