Main content
Big History Project
Unit 1: Lesson 3
1.2—Origin Stories- Activity: Intro to Origin Stories
- Origin Story: Modern Scientific
- Origin Story: Chinese
- Origin Story: Judeo-Christian
- Origin Story: Iroquois
- Origin Story: Maya
- Origin Story: Greek
- Origin Story: Zulu
- Origin Story: Efik
- Cosmology and Faith
- Quiz: Origin Stories
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Origin Story: Chinese
Chinese Origin Story: Pan Gu and the Egg of the World
Compiled by Cynthia Stokes Brown
First written down about
1,760 years ago, this
story of how the Universe
began was told orally long
before that.
This origin story comes from Chinese culture. It was first written down
about 1,760 years ago, roughly 220 — 265 CE, yet it must have been told orally
long before that.
In the beginning was a huge egg containing chaos, a mixture of yin and yang — female-male, aggressive-passive, cold-hot, dark-light, and wet-dry. Within this yin and yang was Pan Gu, who broke forth from the egg as the giant who separated chaos into the many opposites, including Earth and sky.
Pan Gu stood in the middle, his head touching the sky, his feet planted on Earth.
The heavens and the Earth began to grow at a rate of 10 feet a day, and Pan Gu grew along with them. After another 18,000 years the sky was higher and Earth was thicker. Pan Gu stood between them like a pillar 30,000 miles in height, so they would never again join.
When Pan Gu died, his skull became the top of the sky, his breath became the wind and clouds, his voice the rolling thunder. One eye became the Sun and the other the Moon. His body and limbs turned into five big mountains, and his blood formed the roaring water. His veins became roads and his muscles turned to fertile land. The innumerable stars in the sky came from his hair and beard, and flowers and trees from his skin. His marrow turned to jade and pearls. His sweat flowed like the good rain and the sweet dew that nurtures all things on Earth. Some people say that the fleas and the lice on his body became the ancestors of humanity.
Sources
David Leeming and Margaret Leeming, A Dictionary of Creation Myths
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 47 – 50.
Image Credits
An illustration of Pan Gu from the Sancai Tuhui, public domain
Cassia-Tree Moon
© Asian Art & Archaeology, Inc./CORBIS
Want to join the conversation?
- Where did the egg come from?(5 votes)
- I am assuming that with this story along with many others that there is no before and that the 'egg' in this instance is the basis for time itself.(0 votes)
- where did the egg come from?(3 votes)
- Wait people think that the the lice(if he had any) were out ancestors?(2 votes)
- so was Pang Gu male and female?(2 votes)
- So according to this origin story, the Earth is about 18000 years old?(1 vote)
- Roughly, although the actual age of the universe is around 14 billion years old.(1 vote)
- What was Pan Gu's ax form into?(1 vote)
- Nothing, I guess. The origin story only mentions how Pan Gu's body and breath transformed into all the things you see on the Earth today. Since the ax isn't in the story, we don't know what happened to it, if anything. You might think that a lot of these creation myths are vague and almost unfinished, and that's because especially for the more ancient ones, we either have very few sources or very conflicting sources on what the story actually was.(1 vote)
- I find it interesting that in this story humanity came forth from the "parasites" of a god, while in most the other cultures in this course we were created "intentionally" by the corresponding deity.
Has some expert ever tried to provide an explanation for this different conception?(1 vote) - What did the earth look like before he died?(1 vote)
- What did The axe 🪓 turn in to(0 votes)
- What time frame was the earth created?(0 votes)