Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Ancient Greek: Προμηθεύς, "forethought")^[1] is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of human-kind known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals.^[2] Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. His myth has been treated by a number of ancient sources, in which Prometheus is credited with – or blamed for – playing a pivotal role in the early history of humankind.

Hesiod

Prometheus having his liver eaten out by an eagle. Painting by Jacob Jordaens, c. 1640, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Germany.

The Prometheus myth first appeared in the late 8th-century BC Greek epic poet Hesiod's Theogony (lines 507-616). He was a son of the Titan, Iapetus by Themis or Clymene, one of the Oceanids. He was brother to Menoetius, Atlas, and Epimetheus. In the Theogony, Hesiod introduces Prometheus as a lowly challenger to Zeus' omniscience and omnipotence. At Sicyon, a sacrificial meal marking the "settling of accounts" between mortals and immortals, Prometheus played a trick against Zeus (545-557). He placed two sacrificial offerings before the Olympian: a selection of beef hidden inside an ox's stomach (nourishment hidden inside a displeasing exterior), and the bull's bones wrapped completely in "glistening fat" (something inedible hidden inside a pleasing exterior). Zeus chose the latter, setting a precedent for future sacrifices; henceforth, humans would keep the meat for themselves and burn the bones wrapped in fat as an offering to the gods. This angered Zeus, who hid fire from humans in retribution. Prometheus in turn stole fire in a giant fennel-stalk and gave it back to mankind. This further enraged Zeus, who sent Pandora, the first woman, to live with men.^[3] She was fashioned by Hephaestus out of clay and brought to life by the four winds, with all the goddesses of Olympus assembled to adorn her. "From her is the race of women and female kind," Hesiod writes; "of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth."

Prometheus, in eternal punishment, is chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where his liver is eaten out daily by an eagle^[4], only to be regenerated by night, which, by legend, is due to his immortality.^[5] Years later, the Greek hero Heracles (Hercules) would shoot the eagle and free Prometheus from his chains.^[6]

Hesiod revisits the story of Prometheus in the Works and Days (lines 42-105). Here, the poet expands upon Zeus' reaction to the theft of fire. Not only does Zeus withhold fire from men, but "the means of life," as well (42). Had Prometheus not provoked Zeus' wrath (44-47), "you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste." Hesiod also expands upon the Theogony's story of the first woman, now explicitly called Pandora ("all gifts"). After Prometheus' theft of fire, Zeus sent Pandora in retaliation. Despite Prometheus' warning, Epimetheus accepted this "gift" from the gods. Pandora carried a jar with her, from which were released (91-92) "evils, harsh pain and troublesome diseases which give men death"^[7]. Pandora shut the lid of the jar too late to contain all the evil plights that escaped, but hope remained in the jar.

Angelo Casanova^[8] finds in Prometheus a reflection of an ancient, pre-Hesiodic trickster-figure, who served to account for the mixture of good and bad in human life, and whose fashioning of men from clay was an Eastern motif familiar in Enuma Elish; as an opponent of Zeus he was an analogue of the Titans, and like them was punished. As an advocate for humanity he gains semi-divine status at Athens, where the episode in Theogony in which he is liberated^[9] is interpreted by Casanova as a post-Hesiodic interpolation.^[10]

Aeschylus

Perhaps the most famous treatment of the myth can be found in the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound – traditionally attributed to the 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus. At the center of the drama are the results of Prometheus' theft of fire and his current punishment by Zeus; the playwright's dependence on the Hesiodic source material is clear, though Prometheus Bound also includes a number of changes to the received tradition.^[11] Before his theft of fire, Prometheus played a decisive role in the Titanomachy, securing victory for Zeus and the other Olympians. Zeus's torture of Prometheus thus becomes a particularly harsh betrayal. The scope and character of Prometheus' transgressions against Zeus are also widened. In addition to giving humankind fire, Prometheus claims to have taught them the arts of civilization, such as writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. The Titan's greatest benefaction for humankind seems to have been saving them from complete destruction. In an apparent twist on the myth of the so-called Five Ages of Man found in Hesiod's Works and Days (wherein Cronus and, later, Zeus created and destroyed five successive races of mortal men), Prometheus asserts that Zeus had wanted to obliterate the human race, but that he somehow stopped him. Moreover, Aeschylus anachronistically and artificially injects Io, another victim of Zeus' violence and ancestor of Heracles, into Prometheus' story. Finally, just as Aeschylus gave Prometheus a key role in bringing Zeus to power, he also attributed to him secret knowledge that could lead to Zeus' downfall: Prometheus had been told by his mother Gaia of a potential marriage that would produce a son who would overthrow Zeus. Fragmentary evidence indicates that Heracles, as in Hesiod, frees the Titan in the trilogy's second play, Prometheus Unbound. It is apparently not until Prometheus reveals this secret of Zeus' potential downfall that the two reconcile in the final play, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer.

Prometheus Bound also includes two mythic innovations of omission. The first is the absence of Pandora's story in connection with Prometheus' own. Instead, Aeschylus includes this one oblique allusion to Pandora and her jar that contained Hope (252): "[Prometheus] caused blind hopes to live in the hearts of men." Second, Aeschylus makes no mention of the sacrifice-trick played against Zeus in the Theogony.^[12]

These innovations reflect the play's thematic reversal of the Hesiodic myth. In Hesiod, the story of Prometheus (and, by extension, of Pandora) serves to reinforce the theodicy of Zeus: he is a wise and just ruler of the universe, while Prometheus is to blame for humanity's unenviable existence. In Prometheus Bound, this dynamic is transposed: Prometheus becomes the benefactor of humanity, while every character in the drama (except for Hermes, a virtual stand-in for Zeus) decries the Olympian as a cruel, vicious tyrant.

Other authors

Some two dozen other Greek and Roman authors retold and further embellished the Prometheus myth into the 4th century AD. The most significant detail added to the myth found in, e.g., Sappho, Plato, Aesop and Ovid — was the central role of Prometheus in the creation of the human race. According to these sources, Prometheus fashioned humans out of clay. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato asserts that the gods created humans and all the other animals, but it was left to Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus to give defining attributes to each. As no physical traits were left when the pair came to humans, Prometheus decided to give them fire and other civilizing arts.^[13]

Although perhaps made explicit in the Prometheia, later authors such as Hyginus, Apollodorus, and Quintus of Smyrna would confirm that Prometheus warned Zeus not to marry the sea nymph Thetis. She is consequently married off to the mortal Peleus, and bears him a son greater than the father — Achilles, Greek hero of the Trojan War. Apollodorus moreover clarifies for us a cryptic statement (1026-29) made by Hermes in Prometheus Bound, identifying the centaur Chiron as the one who would take on Prometheus' suffering and die in his place.^[13]

Reflecting a myth attested in Greek vase paintings from the Classical period, Apollodorus places the Titan (armed with an axe) at the birth of Athena, thus explaining how the goddess sprang forth from the forehead of Zeus.^[13]

Other minor details attached to the myth include: the duration of Prometheus' torment^[14][15]; the origin of the eagle that ate the Titan's liver (found in Apollodorus and Hyginus); Pandora's marriage to Epimetheus (found in Apollodorus); myths surrounding the life of Prometheus' son, Deucalion (found in Ovid and Apollonius of Rhodes); and Prometheus' marginal role in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts (found in Apollonius of Rhodes and Valerius Flaccus).^[13]

Anecdotally, the Roman fabulist Phaedrus attributes to Aesop a simple etiology for homosexuality, in Prometheus' getting drunk while creating the first humans and misapplying the genitalia.^[16]

Comparative myths

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The two most prominent aspects of the Prometheus myth – the creation of man from clay and the theft of fire – have found their expression in numerous cultures throughout history and around the world:

The creation of man from clay

• In the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, the goddess Ninhursag created humans from clay.
• In Africa, the Yoruba culture holds that the god Obatala likewise created the human race.
• In Egyptian mythology, the ram-headed god Khnum made people from clay in the waters of the Nile.
• In Chinese myth, the goddess Nuwa created the first humans from mud and clay.
• According to Genesis 2:7 "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
• According to Qur'an^[23:12–15], Allah created man from clay.
• Mayan myth holds that Tepeu and Kukulkán (Quetzalcoatl) made the first humans from clay, but they were unsatisfactory.
• The Navajo attributed the creation of humans to Spider Grandmother.
• The Māori people believe that Tāne Mahuta, God of the forest, created the first woman out of clay and breathed life into her.

The theft of fire

• In Georgian mythology Amirani challenged the chief god and for that was chained on Caucasian mountains where birds would eat his organs.
• According to the Rig Veda (3:9.5), the hero Mātariśvan recovered fire, which had been hidden from mankind.
• In Cherokee myth, after Possum and Buzzard had failed to steal fire, Grandmother Spider used her web to sneak into the land of light. She stole fire, hiding it in a clay pot.^[17]
• Among various Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest, fire was stolen and given to humans by Coyote, Beaver or Dog.^[18]
• According to the Creek Indians, Rabbit stole fire from the Weasels.^[19]
• In Algonquin myth, Rabbit stole fire from an old man and his two daughters.^[20]
• In Ojibwa myth, Nanabozho the hare stole fire and gave it to humans.
• In Polynesian myth, Māui stole fire from the Mudhens.^[21]
• In the Book of Enoch, the fallen angels and Azazel teach early mankind to use tools and fire.

Prometheus in other arts

• The mythic Prometheus is the lyrical I of the poem "Prometheus" by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in which the character addresses God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance.
• The Norwegian Symphonic Black Metal band Emperor released, in 2001, an album entitled "Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise".
• Beethoven wrote a ballet called "The Creatures of Prometheus."
• "Prometheus Unbound" is a four-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1820.
• Prometheus: Poem of Fire, Opus 60 (1910) by Alexander Scriabin.
• Prometheus, Symphonic Poem No. 5 (S.99) by Franz Liszt.
• Prometheus, opera using Aeschylus's original Greek by Carl Orff, 1968.
• Prometheus On His Crag, a 1973 poetry collection by Ted Hughes.
• Prometheus' torment by the eagle and his rescue by Heracles were popular subjects in vase paintings of the 6th-4th c. BC. He also sometimes appears in depictions of Athena's birth from Zeus' forehead.
• There was a relief sculpture of Prometheus with Pandora on the base of Athena's cult statue in the Athenian Parthenon of the 5th century BC.
• Franz Kafka wrote a short piece on Prometheus (translated by Willa and Edwin Muir):

There are four legends concerning Prometheus:

According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.

According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.

According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

There remains the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable ^[22]

Cults of Prometheus

• Prometheus had a small shrine in the Kerameikos, or potter's quarter, of Athens, not far from the Academy. The Academy had its own altar dedicated to Prometheus. According to the 2nd-century AD Greek traveler Pausanias, this site was central to a torch race dedicated to Prometheus.
• Pausanias also wrote that the Greek cities of Argos and Opous both claimed to be Prometheus' final resting place, each erecting a tomb in his honor.
• Finally, Pausanias attested that in the Greek city of Panopeus there was a cult statue claimed by some to depict Prometheus, for having created the

Prometheus and liver regeneration

The mythological story that Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountain and his liver was eaten every day by an eagle only to "regenerate" in the night has been used by scientists studying liver regeneration as an indication that ancient Greeks knew that liver can regenerate if surgically removed or injured. Because of the association of Prometheus with liver regeneration, his name has also been associated with biomedical companies involved in regenerative medicine.^[23]

Promethean myth in modern culture

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Sculpture of Prometheus in front of the GE Building at the Rockefeller Center (New York City, New York, United States).

• In Disney's The Jungle Book, King Louie is an orangutan who kidnaps Mowgli to gain the secret of "man's red fire".
• Industrial band Prometheus Burning, an act from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is named as a clear reference to Greek mythology.
• The Prometheus Society is a High IQ society six hundred times more selective than Mensa. Its magazine is called 'Gift of Fire' and its website[1] notes that fire has from antiquity been associated with mental gifts.
• On the American metal band Trivium's new album, Shogun, a song entitled " Of Prometheus and the Crucifix" describes the events of Prometheus giving fire to mankind.
• The cloned horse Prometea, and Prometheus, a moon of Saturn, are named after this Titan, as is the asteroid 1809 Prometheus. The story of Prometheus has inspired many authors through the ages, and the Romantics saw Prometheus as a prototype of the natural daemon or genius.
• The name of the sixty-first element, promethium, is derived from Prometheus.
• Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus". This is a reference to the novel's themes of the over-reaching of modern man into dangerous areas of knowledge.
• In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Prometheus is used in a metaphor describing Captain Ahab's intense obsession with Moby-Dick: "God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates."
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound rewrites the lost play of Aeschylus so that Prometheus does not submit to Zeus (Shelley's Jupiter), but supplants him instead in a triumph of the human heart and intellect over tyrannical religion. Lord Byron's poem "Prometheus" also portrays the titan as unrepentant. For the Romantics, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomized by Zeus — church, monarch, and patriarch. They drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, Milton's Satan, and the divinely inspired poet or artist.
• Prometheus is the main protagonist in 1973 novel A Prométheusz-rejtély (An enigma of Prometheus) by Hungarian writer Lajos Mesterházi which plot intertwines Classical Greece of Aeschylus with reality of Hungary in sixties.
• In the game Timesplitters: Future Perfect, One of the robot drones you fight is named Prometheus SK-8.
• Prometheus is a minor character in the novel The Big Over Easy, where he is a lodger in the home of the protagonist, Jack Spratt. Prometheus later marries Spratt's daughter Pandora, despite the 4,000 year difference in their ages.
• Prometheus and other gods feature in the novel Ye God! by Tom Holt. It is set in the 20th Century but Prometheus is still chained to the rock, even though he and the eagle are now friends and it keeps him up-to-date with events.
• In the game Age of Mythology: The Titans, Prometheus is a near Indestructible Titan, whom the Heroes will have to face and kill to save humanity from destruction. In the game, he is seen in two different levels.
• In Diana Wynne Jones's fantasy novel, The Homeward Bounders, Prometheus, as a character, plays a significant role.
• Prometheus Books, a publishing company for scientific, educational, and popular books, especially those relating to secular humanism or scientific skepticism, takes its name from the myth.
• In Ayn Rand's work, Anthem, the protagonist renames himself Prometheus at the end of the novella.
• Bristol England's The Pop Group included studio and live versions of a song called "Thief of Fire," on two of their albums.
• "Prometheus the Fallen One" is the seventh track of Virgin Steele's album "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II".
• In the television series Robotech, the sea carrier docked to the spaceship SDF-1 that forms the left arm after modular transformation was called Prometheus.
• In the television series Stargate SG-1, the first battle cruiser built with technology taken from aliens was called Prometheus.
• In the television series Smallville, Lex Luthor has a project called Prometheus which is the creation of his battle suit, and in Superman Returns, he references the story as part of his motivations and plans.
• In the television series Star Trek: Voyager, a Federation starship called Prometheus is stolen by Romulans.
• In the television series Xena, Prometheus is bound by the Greek gods, causing mankind to lose his gifts of fire and the ability to heal ourselves.
• In rap group Jedi Mind Tricks's song "I Against I" rapper Jus Allah rhymes "Beast deceiving us ways devious possessing my peeps to walk the streets with stolen heat like Prometheus."
• Swedish symphonic metal band Therion has a song called "Feuer Overtüre/Prometheus Entfesselt" ("Fire Overture/Prometheus Unleashed") on their 2004 album Lemuria.
• In the video game God of War 2, the player encounters Prometheus. He is bound in chains as a huge bird eviscerates his torso. Prometheus begs the player to kill him (and thus end his eternal torment) by throwing him into the Fires of Olympus. The protagonist Kratos later shoots the bird and drops Prometheus into the Fires of Olympus and releases him from his torment and receives the Rage of The Titans power.
• In the video game Bioshock, the penultimate level of the game is called Point Prometheus
• In the MegaMan ZX series, Prometheus is one of the antagonists along with his partner, Pandora.
• In the video game Chrono Trigger, Prometheus is the true name of one of the main characters, a robot from the year 2300 AD known otherwise as Robo. In the sequel, Chrono Cross, he is part of the "Prometheus Circuit", a program which guards the "Frozen Flame" independently of a godlike supercomputer program, FATE. Robo (Prometheus) ultimately grants the game's protagonists access to the Frozen Flame in the hopes that they will use it to save humanity, but is executed by FATE as punishment for doing so.
• On Nickelodeon, there is a series of short animated episodes called Prometheus and Bob, wherein Bob is a primitive caveman and Prometheus is a skinny purple alien who tries to teach Bob about technology.
• The Prometheus Award is given by the Libertarian Futurist Society for Libertarian science fiction."
• The Doug Anthony All Stars; an Australian musical comedy trio, make reference to Prometheus in their song "Bless me Father" stating 'Like Prometheus in the morning, I'm bound to come around' used to allude to regret.
• The band Of Montreal references Prometheus in Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse, in which the Promethean curse pertains to "the burdens of consciousness and creativity" inflicted upon mankind when, against the demands of Zeus, Prometheus brought fire to earth.
• Prometheus is the mascot of the Technische Universiteit Delft in Holland, where his statue stands in front of the main building; the fire of Prometheus can be seen on the T on the logo of the University. The Minho University in Portugal also features a prominent statue of Prometheus in the main entrance.
• Prometheus is the main character in the comic strip The Miserable Life of Prometheus by Mark Weinstein. The strip appears in "Athens Plus" and online at prometheuscomic.wordpress.com/
• Michel Faber's book 'The Fire Gospel' is loosely inspired by the Prometheus myth. It tells of a scholar named Theo who steals an ancient manuscript from a bombed Iraqi museum; the manuscript is an eye-witness account of the death of Jesus. Theo is made to suffer (including being shot in the liver) for threatening the foundations of Christianity.
• In the series The Fire Thief, by Terry Deary, Prometheus escapes the eagle one day. Zeus makes a bet with him. If he can find a human hero, he can go free. Prometheus travels to the future (our past), to settle his bet.
• In Gradius IV, one of the game's soundtracks is titles Prometheus; possibly a reference to the self-regenerating entity and antagonist Bacterion.
• In the 90s Cartoon, Spiderman, Eddie Brock and Cletus Cassidy's other forms, Venom and Carnage, were made from a substance, called Prometheus X.
• The myth of Prometheus is referenced in the novel, 'The Last Hero' by British author Terry Pratchett, which is part of his famous Discworld series. In it, the last traditional hero, Cohen the Barbarian aims to 'return what the first hero stole' 'with interest' (by which he means to blow up the mountain where the gods live as an act of revenge at how the gods treat mortals). Near the end of the book, Cohen and his allies free the Discorworld equivalent of Prometheus from the rock where he is bound and give him a sword, leaving him to await the daily coming of the eagle that has tortured him for thousands of years.
• The metal band The Showdown wrote the song Prometheus-the fires of deleverance
• In Lorraine Hansberry's novel "A Raisin in the Sun", Walter Lee Younger is once referred as Prometheus.
• In the video game The Conduit bye High Voltage Software Prometheus is an exiled alien who helps the main character. Also, in the ending credits a voice of another alien says that "The Betrayer has brought fire to the humans", which refers to an in-game device called the ASE which was in Prometheus's possession at the beginning of the game and is important to the plot.

Prometheus by Gustave Moreau, (1868).	Prométhée enchaîné (Prometheus Bound) by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, (1762). Prometheus chained to a rock having his liver torn out by the eagle.	Prometheus Bound, by Scott Eaton, (2006).	Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan, by Dirck van Baburen, (1623).
Chained Prometheus, by Peter Paul Rubens, (1611-1612).

See also

Other figures in Greek mythology punished by the gods include:

• Heracles
• Medusa
• Sisyphus
• Tantalus

Notes

References

• Alexander, Hartley Burr. The Mythology of All Races. Vol 10: North American. Boston, 1916.
• Beall, E.F., Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1991), pp. 355–371
• Dougherty, Carol. Prometheus. Taylor & Francis, 2006. ISBN 0415324068, 9780415324069
• Erdoes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz, edds. American Indian Myths and Legends. New York, 1984.
• Fortson, Benjamin. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
• Judson, Katharine B. Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest. Chicago, 1912.
• Lamberton, Robert. Hesiod, Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0300040687
• Swanton, John. "Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians." Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88: 1929.
• Verdenius, Willem Jacob, "A Commentary on Hesiod: Works and Days, Vv. 1-382", Brill, 1985, ISBN 9004074651
• West, M.L., "Hesiod, Theogony, ed. with prolegomena and commentary", Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966
• West, M.L., "Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. with prolegomena and commentary", Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978
• Westervelt, W.D. Legends of Maui – a Demigod of Polynesia, and of His Mother Hina. Honolulu, 1910.
• Williamson, George S. The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago, 2004).

Further reading

• Fernandes, Ângela, "Human values and spiritual values: Traces of Prometheus in Portuguese literature and criticism", in journal Neohelicon, Akadémiai Kiadó, co-published with Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Volume 34, Number 1 / June, 2007, pp. 41–49
• Kerényi, Carl, (Translated by Ralph Manheim) "Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence", Princeton University Press, 1997. ISBN 069101907X

External links

Look up prometheus in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Prometheus

• Theoi Text, Theogony
• Theoi Text, Works and Days
• Theoi Text, Prometheus Bound
• Theoi Mythology, Prometheus
• Theoi Mythology, Pronoea
• GML, Prometheus
• Encyclopedia Mythica, Prometheus
• Messagenet, Prometheus
• Prometheus, a poem by Noevel (French)
• Prometheus, a poem by Byron
• Book "Prometheus Bound" (for free download - two volumes about 600 pages)
• O fogo e as chamas dos mitos (text in Portuguese) by Betty Mindlin (Essay about the origin of fire, the stealing of fire, the keeping of fire in different South-American indigenous cultures).