Most of us have heard of Adam and Eve, the first couple in the bible, part of the Abrahamic
creation myth, and in Indo-European traditions there are couples too, they can be found in
the Old Norse Askr and Embla, the Vedic Yama and Yam?, and the Iranian Mašya and Mašy?nag.
These couples are made from trees or rocks, bones or dragon teeth, or similar items that
were lying around when the god or gods decided to make them. But the human origin myth in
Roman, Germanic, and Indo-Iranian sources suggests a much more complex story behind
these couples, in effect suggesting their origins maybe as twins. So welcome to the
story of the twins of creation, and welcome to Crecganford. So within creation myths we
have this pairing of people at the beginning, and the pairing of influence of elements,
for example the Iranian and Icelandic myths contain fire and ice at the beginning, and
in the old Norse we have the realms of Niflheim and Muspellsheim colliding, the realms of
ice and fire. And the Yama Xša?ta’s vara talks of men sheltering from the cosmic winter.
But if we skip to the end of the world, this pairing disappears. The Icelandic Ragnar?k,
and Iranian Fraškart, along with the biblical Apocalypse end in fire, gods versus demons,
or giants and monsters. There is no need for ice as part of the destruction myth, and do
you ever wonder why? The fire and ice coming together is key to the Norse myth, it enables
the creation of Ymir, a cosmic primordial being, an androgyny, and a name that means
twin. The fate of Ymir was to be carved up by Odin and his two brothers, Villi and Ve,
and his body parts used to create the world. A myth that has obvious connections to the
Proto-Indo European creation myth and so also relates to the creation myths of the near
East. But if we look further back in time, at Germania via the writings of Tacitus in
the first century CE, we see a similar mythology but formed from a different being, an earth
born being, or as Tacitus writes a “terra editus” of man’s proto-ancestor, called
Tuisto, and Tuisto had a son called Mannus, and Mannus had three “broods”, the Ingaevones,
the Herminones, and the Istaevones. And the names are important, as Tuisto means twin,
and Mannus means man, and the three groups of children of Mannus represent the social
divisions in ancient Germania of the tribes. But this all raises a question, if Tuisto,
or Ymir means twin, then whose twin was Tuisto or Ymir? It could be argued that as an androgyny
these beings were there own twin. But looking eastwards, and the region of the Proto-Indo
European source myth and beyond, and I discuss these creation myths in more detail in this
video, we can see in the Rig Veda 10:90, that Púru?a was cut apart to make the world of
men, and specifically that of the brahmins, k?atriyas, vai?yas, and ??dras. And yet behind
Púru?a is the Vedic Yamá, a name that is again cognate with twin like Ymir, and his
brother Mánu, cognate with Mannus and also meaning man, and Mánu introduced sacrifice
and religious law to the Vedic world. Now in the Vedic myth, Yamá had a twin wife Man?v?
who he said to have sacrificed, but if we strip away this part of the myth we are left
with Yama and Manu the primordial twins, with Manu sacrificing Yama for the act of creation.
In effect Man sacrificed his twin. And so between the Old Norse, Germania and India,
we have two myths that look as though they have branched out from the same source. And
I’ll put up a graphic representation of this now. So here we have the three myths
from the Old Norse, Germania and India, and I’ll highlight the primordial being, the
androgyny or twin now. All these myths then show one man sacrificing the primordial being,
and I’ll highlight that person now. And that person then goes onto create people.
And I hope this makes the it clearer that these must have come from a single source,
which is the proto-indo European creation myth. With this knowledge of myth from old
Norse and Germania, and from Iran and India, we can apply this to the founding of Rome,
a story I told a few weeks back in this video, and the myth of the twins Romulus and Remus.
Now this is an interesting comparison because the Roman culture is a main source of comparative
mythology, and so to apply this model of creation, from the other cultures, to Rome, highlights
a couple of problems with the use of this myth. And I can show the problem in this diagram,
where it looks as though part of the twin kills itself and so it looks as though perhaps
this story isn’t part of the Indo-European creation myths. Now the first problem we have
is that any classic story for the founding of a city requires just one name, and with
Romulus and Remus we have the Roman’s leveraging this twin myth and applying it to Rome. But
why? Could it be just leveraging a twin motif from Greek mythology, where plenty of such
motifs existed, or is there more going on here? Well, the Greek scholars wrote about
Romulus and Remus as Rhômos and Rhômúlos, with the former being the name for Rome and
the later meaning Roman. So what does this tell us about Remus? It suggests that Remus,
which isn’t derived from Rome or Romá, and who is the twin who is killed in the foundation
of Rome, it suggests that Remus is a name that must have come from somewhere less obvious,
and as such is the more archaic name due to coming from an older, more obscure source.
And what is Romulus and Remus myth, is it just a quarrel between two brothers, like
the story of Cain and Abel? Or is it a breach of the city walls as it refers to in the often-quoted
myth version by Levy, which aggravates one brother into killing another? Well, again,
there is another possibility, and that is that the killing of Remus could be seen as
a blood sacrifice in the establishment of a new city. In this way it would explain why
a creation myth came to be the myth about the founding of a city, in effect making it
part of the history of the city, in a culture that may have lost its connections with the
original ritual for the creation myth. We can show for example that Roman myth took
a lot from Greek myth, which took a lot from Persian myth, and both the Greek and Persian
myths took some myth from indo-european sources. And so the Roman myths have a more complex
arrangement in its ancestry than some if the other cultures. There is also evidence to
suggest that Remus was the primary partner of this “twin” set of figures, and this
will affect how we understand this twin relationship. You see, in older Roman texts, the story is
not known as Romulus and Remus, but de Remo et Romulo, meaning of Remus and Romulus. It
changed only when the great scholars Cicero and Varro declared rigidity in the myth, their
works dictating the twins as Romulus and Remus, and this was documented and copied many times,
establishing the myth with the names reversed. But before this, Romans were often known as
“Remi nepotes” meaning descendants of Rome. And the implication of this is that
the senior of Romulus and Remus, Remus as his name associates with Remi, Remus died
at the hands of the younger or less senior twin, to allow for the creation of Rome. In
effect the name Romulus, a far younger name than Remus, was literally created to mean
Rome. And so, if you compare this with the Germanic Tuisto and Mannus, or Vedic Yama
and Manu, then Remus is the twin, and Romulus is the man. Tuisto, Yama and Remus are the
more senior of the relationship with their counterparts, and so this affords them to
become part of the origin and history of the cosmos of the myths they are part of, much
like the Old Norse Ymir and Vedic Púru?a too. This makes them what we call “dema”
figures, characters that when they die end a sacred time in a cosmological myth and as
such, are considered very significant figures. But whilst the Romulus and Remus story is
a crude form of the creation myth, there are other versions of it written, including one
where Romulus is killed by Senators, and his body is chopped up and carried away. A fate
again similar to Ymir and Púru?a, amongst the other primordial beings, but this fate,
of being chopped up, falls against Romulus rather than Remus. So why is this? Well a
man can only be killed once, and with Remus killed by Romulus, he can’t be killed again
within the myth, that would break the story, and so this is his twin has ot be killed,
as that is just logical storytelling. But the story may still not be quite as simple
as that, and that is because if we look at the names of Twin and Man in proto-Roman we
get the names Yemos and Wiros, or with the argumentative suffix, Yemonos and Wironos.
Now Yemonos survives in Old Irish today Emain and Latin Geminus, both meaning twin. And
this shows that the Yem prefix in Latin disappeared, being replaced by Gem, and probably through
alliterative association with Romulus, Remus was born from Gemos, which came from Yemos,
thus allowing the twin name to link with Romulus. In effect Romulus and Gemos didn’t sound
poetic enough, and so became Romulus and Remus. On the other side of Yemos and Wiros, Wiros
became Vir in Latin, and so Wironus becomes Virinus, and eventually Vir?nus. And this
is important because the name of the deified Romulus, is Quir?nus, which is simply a compound
of Co-vir?nus. It was thought that the deified Romulus and Quirinus were brought together
at a later date, but here we see that the Romulus came from Quirinis much earlier on,
through Wironus, developing into the hero myth of Romulus, a hero that needed an end,
and a quartering of the body by the senate was hardly a story suitable for Rome, and
the Greek influence of linking a god into a hero, called apotheosis, making a hero a
god, was borrowed, and thus Romulus became a god as opposed to allowed to die by being
chopped up. And so we can show that in conclusion the recreation of the Proto-Indo European
creation myth thus rests on the foundation built not only through Yama and Manu in India,
and Tuisto and Mannus in Germania, but also Yemonos and Wironos in Rome. And behind these
pairings we have the primordial Púru?a, Gay?mart, and Ymir, and now Romulus, proving that proto-indo
European link, and re-enforcing the twin myth of creation. A myth perhaps still alive in
more modern times, as Romulus, the man who was cutup in the senate, offers the same scene
as the time when, in Shakespere’s Brutus, Julias Ceasar says “Let’s carve him a
dish fit for the gods”. You see even in more modern times there perhaps lay remnants
of the proto-indo European creation myth and the primordial sacrifice of the cosmic twin.
And so I hope you enjoyed that journey through the creation myth and the proto indo European
twin, and establishing it exists in Old Norse, Germania, Roman and Vedic myth, and learnt
something new. For those that are interested in this story I’ll put some references in
the description below specifically Jaan Puhvel’s Comparative Mythology’s Twin Chapter is
a significant resource for this. So I hope you found that interesting, and until the
next video, please stay safe, stay well, and this was Crecganford.