E.J. Michael Witzel > Quotes

“There was neither “being” [sat] nor “non-being” [asat]15 then, nor intermediate space, nor heaven beyond it. What turned around? Where? In whose protection? Was there water?—Only a deep abyss.16 … Darkness was hidden by darkness, in the beginning. A featureless salty ocean was all this (universe). A germ, covered by emptiness, was born through the power of heat as the One. (Ṛgveda 10.129, India, c. 1000 BCE)17 Before”
― E.J. Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World's Mythologies

“Thus, the all-powerful mother figure is not (or not yet again) important in Protestant Europe and much of largely Protestant North America, while the father figure is absent or much less important in the few truly matriarchal societies, such as those of the Minangkabau in Sumatra or the Khasi in the Assam hills of northeastern India. Laurasian mythology usually has a rather patriarchal bent (which opens the question as to whether we have, as, for example, in most of Australian myth, just the male version).”
― E.J. Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World's Mythologies