Talk:Creation of life from clay

Clay or something else

The majority of the list does involve man being created from a clay, but there are also a few examples where it mentions something else like dirt or earth. Perhaps there could be two sections: one for the clay sources, and another for related sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.2.67.94 (talk) 19:33, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I am working on an active project to update this page with more accurate material, and we (myself and my teammates) believe it should be distinguished further due to the varied myths and stories depicted. For example, there is a whole host of different materials that are not clay, but most fall under the soil index/umbrella. Due to this, we think it may be ideal to change the title of this page to "Creation of life from soil" as soil encompasses the silt, clay, and sand components. This way, the organization can be for the different regions or the religious roots that these myths/stories come from. The only part that would not be encompassed in that title is "dust". Is there a reason why "clay" may be the best describer, or does it make more sense to change the title in this way? Ssbbtt (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Ssbbtt, This talkpage is probably not watched by many people. This is often the case on WP, there are millions of articles but tens of thousands of active editors. Consider WP:APPNOTEing in a few places, like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mythology and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion.

Per WP-philosophy, the best sources to use are academic works on the subject, while the WP:PRIMARY stories themselves are not of much use, see also WP:RSPSCRIPTURE. On article title, what is the WP:COMMONNAME of this subject in WP:RS? I have no idea. Is "Creation of life from the earth" an option? We can always make WP:REDIRECTs. I hope you can turn this article into something more like Creation myth or Flood myth. Creation of life from clay is an interesting subject, but a fairly crappy article. We'll see what happens when you're WP:BOLD. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:03, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Ping @Jenhawk777 if you feel like having an opinion. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:13, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, if you intend to make serious edits to any WP-article, you need to know how to add references correctly, this is essential and I can't stress it enough. WP:TUTORIAL has an intro on that. Basically, WP is not interested in what you know, we want you to summarize the excellent sources you cite. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:25, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Ssbbtt and Gråbergs Gråa Sång Hello! What an interesting idea for an article. Yes, I agree a title change is a good idea. I like the soil suggestion better than the earth suggestion below because earth is ambiguous - could mean planet instead of dirt.

Also, GGS is right on all points about sourcing. Wikipedia editors write research papers. You must do the research and cite your sources. Otherwise this will just end up another deleted article. Don't let that happen! It could be genuinely good.

Teammates? As part of a school project? Jenhawk777 (talk) 16:18, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

But... but... it's lower case! Don't soil my idea (you see what I did there)! Changing the boundaries somewhat, what do you think of "Creation of mankind from earth/soil"? Seems to me that mankind is sort of the point here. Soil is fine by me, they're synonyms. Either can cover clay, soil, dust, mud. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Why make it more ungainly? One word should be sufficient to represent the basic elements of dirt. Of course we could add them all: "Creation of mankind from the basic elements of dirt/dust/soil/earth/clay mostly on planet earth in religion, mythology and comics". Now that would be a title!

But no - let's not! Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:37, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I didn't mean both earth/soil, just one of them. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:39, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

You know I count on your sense of humor to not get offended when I go too far. Jenhawk777 (talk) 08:41, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all so much! Yes, we will definitely take into account the sourcing for the page, and this is for a University course project :-). I'm on a team with three others and we've taken a handful of classes to learn how to edit Wikipedia pages, so now is our time to do so! We actually have Flood Myth and Creation Myth as our main sources of inspiration for editing this page, so we hope to help with some of the organization and cleaning up! I am, in particular, finishing up a clean up to the science section with some new references towards abiogenesis on clay surfaces. Thanks so much again--I will be sure to defer to the sources you've listed :-) Ssbbtt (talk) 16:43, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

You may want to check WP:LEAD as well. No WP:OR, please. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:41, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Duly noted! Our teammate has revised our previous revision of the lede section to match the standards. I'll make sure we stick to no WP:OR in the future. Thanks! Ssbbtt (talk) 19:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I saw that, even clicked them a "thanks" ;-) That said, if you want to include a section after the lead something like The_Bible_and_humor#Scholarly_assessment (mostly written by the brilliant Jenhawk777), that could be a good idea. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:27, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

And if the team feels like a challenge, WP:GA. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:09, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Let's talk Wonder Woman

ScarecroeBeland and other interested, hello!

This is not a very good article, but the topic is interesting, and hopefully in time it will become more like Flood myth and similar articles.

One easy way to improve articles like this is to remove unsourced pop-cult/fiction per WP:PROPORTION, so I did that [1]. Existing is not enough, a decent WP:RS, preferably writing about the topic of the article, should have noticed it (Creation of life from clay in Wonder Woman) and bothered to write something about it.

Scarecroe, after some back-and-forthing you added this:

In American pop culture, Wonder Woman was sculpted from clay by her mother Hippolyta and given life by the Greek gods.

When you are citing books, please add page numbers when possible (I use RefToolbar myself), your readers should not have to guess.

• The first is the comic itself (or its' WP-article), that's irrelevant here.
• The second [2] has no gbook preview, so can you tell me what it says about our topic on what page?
• The third [3] mentions clay in passing on page 87, that's something but not very good per WP:PROPORTION.
• The fourth [4] has a limited preview on gbooks, could only find volume 1 on archive.org, so can't say if it has anything useful, but you can tell me (and on what page).

From what I can see, IMO this is at best "meh" for this article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:34, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

References

Wiki Education assignment: HUM 202 - Introduction to Mythology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 August 2022 and 9 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NVasion (article contribs). Peer reviewers: This user name is jdawg.

— Assignment last updated by Rockethound (talk) 20:43, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Title/subject

I'm thinking something like "Creation of mankind from earth" may be what we want, thoughts? IMO it covers clay, soil, dust, mud and what have you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

For my team, and in reference to the conversation above, we would argue for "dirt" just because we believe that "earth" is too encompassing for unrelated topics. But there may be other suggestions for better teminology. Ssbbtt (talk) 19:19, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Dirt is acceptable. So is soil and earth IMO. It's not that important, but I think the article should include stories with those words, and dust, mud etc. I hope editors in general will agree. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed! And a note my team wanted to make on 'mankind' is that because some non-human stories are included (re: the Golem, certain gods, and animals), we think that 'life' is still rather accurate. Ssbbtt (talk) 20:29, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough! Mythos has a nice version of the Prometheus story. I'm not recommending it as a source, I'm just recommending it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Future Directions

As our group project comes to a conclusion for the page, we'd like to give some insight on what we think could be done moving forward with this page! 1) As aforementioned, a title change may be ideal. We are unsure how to do so, but also believe that more discussion should be had about changing the title. It may be a discussion for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mythology or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion. 2) There are a few sections we noted with only internal referencing that would be strengthened by external referencing as well. 3) We think it may be ideal to add a novel graphic to the science section of the article depicting synthesis from clay. This was originally in our project scope but had to be nixed due to complications. 4) Finally, we think that the story structure for each included myth could be made a bit more uniform once each section is shaped up--just so that the tone and information of each myth or story matches with the others. Ssbbtt (talk) 20:06, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

(I am a teammate.) To add onto this, here are some potential guidelines that could be helpful:

• Establish a particular order within each story
  • Name culture
  • Mention region
  • Mention time periods?
  • Summarize myth
  • Mention extra information
• Include “(see [internal hyperlink])” for full legends when available
• Organize stories differently - perhaps by time within the continents?

173.178.163.173 (talk) 02:04, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

^Sorry - I wasn't logged in earlier KoolKontentKreatorKid (talk) 02:05, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

On a title-change, that is quite doable (WP:MOVE), but what is your current suggestion, is it "Creation of life from dirt"?

On a pic for the science section, is there any on Wikimedia Commons you like? Failing that, any pic you suggest must fit the Well-known licenses licenses (or, you know, be really old). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

New stories

Here are some potential stories to add:

- Norse creation of Askr and Embla from sand within tree trunks. Originally on this page but removed because we couldn't find the source.

- According to the Obatala page, during his creation of humans he was drinking a large amount of palm wine, and these creations were not cooked equally as a result. Some became Europeans, while those he left in the fire for too long became Africans, and the ones he forgot to burn yielded albino individuals. His drunkenness also caused him to create deformed figures. When he became sober and realized what he had done, he vowed to never drink again and to protect the people with disabilities. This is an excellent story but again we could not find the sources - if someone else can I'd love for it to be included!

- There's a Finnic mythological story about the creations of humans from clay, but again I didn't find the right source to cite.

And there must be plenty of others too; this section is for progress on that front. KoolKontentKreatorKid (talk) 02:12, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The version of Ask och Embla I heard was that they came from wood, and afaict that is the common version. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:23, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Heya! Don't know much of anything about Wikipedia protocol, so really sorry if I screw something up! I research Norse myths fairly obsessively, and in the Prose Edda, namely the part in Skaldskaparmal where Thor duels Hrungnir, there is a being made of clay named Mokkerkalf, or something similar. He is described as a very large man of clay with the heart of a mare. He is similar to the Jewish golem, which has a place here, so I felt it would be helpful to pass along this info to improve the article. Hope it helps! Cubecat4444 (talk) 02:22, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@Cubecat4444, welcome to Wikipedia! Ah yes, Mökkurkalfe. I may know of him from this version of the story, but hey, that still counts. Come to think of it, I think there may have been a Marvel-film that alluded to him too. Per WP-philosophy, we should try to source a mention of him to some reasonably scholarly reliable source on norse mythology, Big book of giants in the Prose Edda by Professor Professorson (madeup example) or similar. Do you know of a good one? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I found an ok-looking source, so I added him:[5]. If you know of a better one, let us know. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Possible Marvel-version:[6]. Interpretations may differ:[7] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:40, 28 January 2024 (UTC)