From Ama Lur to the Anthropocene and Back: The Earth in Basque Mythology

Abstract

What I propose is that, by delving into the world of mythologies, there we might find some indications, helpful for understanding what is happening with the environment today. To do so, I will revisit a particular mythology from the South of Europe, an archaic (probably, a pre-Indo-European one), namely Basque mythology. Here, earth (lurra) appears as a maternal character (Ama-lur) and becomes, in a sense, divine in the figure of the goddess Mari, who occupied a central and predominant position in this cosmovision.

Keywords

• mythology
• goddess
• earth
• environment