Caves have always held a fascination and a terrifying mystery for many cultures, especially when their early explorers found the bones of dead people or animals in them. Sometimes these were mysterious mountain caves, while others appear to be based on the drained conduits from volcanoes called lava tubes.
Some of these legends were apparently inspired by the mystery of large caves that could not be fully explored, or descended into darkness beyond the spelunking ability of the curious. In some cases the underworld was a place where people went after death, while in other cultures the ancestors of living people emerged from the underworld. MANY ANCIENT CULTURES BELIEVED THAT THERE WAS an underworld of some sort beneath us, whether it was the Hell of the Christian tradition (Sheol to the Hebrews), the underworld caverns of the god Hades of the ancient Greeks, Cruachan of the Celts of Ireland, Patala of the Hindu tradition, Svartalfaheimr of the Nordic mythology, or Shamballa in the Tibetan Buddhist legend.
0 kommentar(er)
