It is crystal clear from the texts of mythologies around the world that the so-called ‘gods’ – extraterrestrials one and all IMHO – gave the required gifts necessary for civilization to us humans (who were apparently [genetically] created in their image). Fire is one such gift, yet it is the one gift the ‘gods’ shouldn't have had to give us. That’s one oddity. Another oddity is that someone, a lesser deity or cultural hero had to steal fire from higher authority first, and then present stolen property to humanity. And the anomalies just pile up. Something’s screwy somewhere!
To students of mythology, certain characters in the myths, legends and folk-tales of the various cultures are often known as the gods, sometimes as culture heroes, sometimes deities or higher spirits disguised in animal form. Mankind has learned exceedingly useful lessons and has usually ascribed that new knowledge to these beings; some noted person or animal, usually a deity in some form or other, in that society’s cultural mythology. These mythical benefactors who have brought these practical benefits to men are usually placed among the gods or at least at some level above the great unwashed. They have been the teachers and culture heroes to mankind.
In these cultural mythologies throughout the world it’s often the senior deities on high (sky gods) who bestowed gifts on mankind transforming human society from the nomadic hunter-gatherers to settlers and a more civilized culture. Gifts like agriculture, arts & crafts, the domestic sciences, trades, technology, etc. Then there’s fire.
In the historical record, all else being equal, probably the human discoverers of fire of the various cultures around the world would be among the best remembered of all those benefactors. This would naturally be the case, for no greater good has touched man's physical life than fire. The usefulness of fire (heat and light) would have been obvious to Blind Freddy and it should not have been difficult to figure out what was fuel (wood, leaves, dry grass, etc.) and what was not fuel (rocks, sand, etc.); the challenging bit would have been once coming across fire, or having fire come across you, to keep it under control and in constant supply – never letting it go out. The next step would have been figuring out how to artificially create fire.
But that’s not what the mythologies relate. Mythologies don’t tell us that humans themselves discovered fire; discovered its uses; how to tame fire and how to make fire without direct benefit of Mother Nature. No, mythologies tell us that fire was given to us directly, not by the senior gods, but by junior deities, in defiance of their seniors.
Mythologies often are suggestive that the senior gods did not for various reasons depending on the society/culture and the source (who’s telling the tale) wish to give humans the gift of fire. This brings up anomaly number one – fire is a natural part of our terrestrial environment so it can’t be kept from us! Oddity number two is what’s the big deal about fire anyway? It’s not like giving a five-year-old a loaded gun! Were the senior gods worried we were then going to attack them with flaming arrows like Indians attacking a covered wagon train?
However, lesser deities, middle management in the pantheon of gods, often trickster gods, sometimes cultural heroes, sometimes spirits disguised as animals often thought humans should have the gift and benefit of fire. And so you have many near universal tales of these beings stealing fire from their superiors and giving it to us mortals. Theft or trickery, the use of deceit of some kind, is almost inseparably connected with humans acquiring fire as related from cultures all over the world. Oddity number three is why these lesser deities were of the contrary opinion that humans should have fire (keeping in mind we would should have naturally had it anyway). Anomaly number four is even being of that opinion why middle management deities would act so defiantly against the directive of their betters. When you defy the top brass you know you’re not going to get off lightly. Some, like Prometheus suffered through repeated grievous bodily torture by authority of Zeus for giving us mortals fire, which makes his (and collectively their) mutiny all the odder. Prometheus’s theft of fire is remembered even today via the symbolism of the Olympic Flame or Torch.
However, the central oddity is still the first one. Consider the case of Zeus and Prometheus again. The Mediterranean region and Greece are no strangers to forest/bush fires and active volcanoes. The Greeks, way back before even Methuselah was in diapers, must have known about and employed the use of fire. Zeus had no say in the matter; Prometheus’s contrary opinion and actions were irrelevant.
If the story of the theft and gift of fire via Prometheus were the be-all-and-end-all of the ‘how mankind acquired fire’ tale, then it could probably be dismissed as pure fiction.
Prometheus isn’t the only case study of grabbing a hold of fire from senior management. Prometheus, the classical fire giver, is most widely known in literature. But while Prometheus is associated with the Mediterranean region, the deity Maui belonged to the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean.
Consider Hawaii and that trickster demigod Maui (common throughout all of Polynesia). Of all the helpful gods of Pacific mythology, Maui, the mischievous Polynesian, is beyond question the hero to the largest numbers of nations scattered over that wide expanse of territory, including Hawaii. Maui is of course associated with the theft and gift of fire.
But Hawaii is also a society that holds in awe the powerful and somewhat fickle goddess Pele. In Hawaiian mythology Pele controls Hawaii’s volcanoes and volcanic activity (as well as fire, lightning, and wind) and as we all know, Hawaii is a volcanic hot zone; the islands were formed by volcanic eruptions, eruptions that still happen in the here and now. Hawaiians cannot be ignorant of fire. Molten lava sets fire to things! Does that make Maui irrelevant?
It would naturally be supposed that the Hawaiians living in a volcanic country with ever-flowing fountains of lava would connect their fire myths with some volcano when relating the story of the origin of fire. But like the rest of the Polynesians, Hawaiians found fire via Maui rather than naturally in rivers of molten rock.
Polynesians must have brought their fire legends and fire customs with them when they came to the Hawaiian islands of active volcanoes.
Then there’s the Maori tale of fire’s origin, again starring Maui.
Mahuika is a Maori fire deity. It was from her that Maui obtained the secret of making fire. Maui, finding that fire has been lost on the earth, resolves to find Mahuika the Fire-goddess and learn the secret art of obtaining fire. He visits her, and being a trickster deity, tricks Mahuika into giving out with the technical details. His tricks of course make her furious and, although he obtains the secret of fire, he barely escapes with his life.
The cultural hero Bue of the Gilbert Islands is another in the long list of fiery pickpockets. Ditto that of Botoque of the central Brazilian tribe the Kayapo.
It is worth noting that in many myths not only was fire stolen, but birds marked by red or black spots among their feathers were associated with the theft. In Brittany the golden or fire-crested wren steals fire and is red-marked while so doing.
The indigenous natives of North America have near identical tales.
The animals of the North American Indians are represented as stealing fire. Some swiftly-flying bird or fleet-footed coyote would carry the stolen fire to the home of the tribe. We have Cherokee mythology state the Spider stole fire; tribes of the Pacific Northwest and First Nations peoples relate that fire was nicked by the Coyote, Beaver and/or Dog and given to humans; according to some Yukon First Nations people, Crow stole fire from a volcano; according to the Creek Indians, Rabbit stole fire; ditto that in Algonquin mythology – fire was stolen by Rabbit; them rabbits or hares also stole fire and gave it to the Ojibwas according to their myths.
In Africa, the Mason-wasp was the go-between obtaining fire for the Ila people from their version of God. Tore of the Mbuti in Zaire is the local version of Prometheus. The various Bushmen of Africa like the Pygmies of the Congo stole fire from their God. The Dogons of the Mali have Nummo spirits (heavenly blacksmiths) and one of their first ancestors nicked a piece of the sun from their smithy.
And on and on and on it goes.
Oddity number five is that the individual authors of these mythological ‘theft and gift of fire’ tales – if myths they really be – would have realized, must have realized, that fire was a natural part of the human environment and therefore the ‘gift of fire’ was an unnecessary gift and therefore the theft by the lesser deities was equally unnecessary as was the restriction by the senior sky gods in the first place. If a modern day author wrote such illogical claptrap they just wouldn't get published.
Anomaly number six is why in mythologies from diverse parts of the world have the seniors deciding to withhold fire from mankind; their juniors or other lesser beings even humanised animals defying them and stealing fire from them and giving it to us terrestrials. It’s an unlikely enough story that, okay, may appear once as in Zeus and Prometheus, but not independently over and over again. So, either we have an outstanding anomalous set of unlikely coincidences, or else the story is really real and thus not mythology at all.
Now perhaps the ‘gift of fire’ refers not so much to actual fire as to instead the gift of making fire, as in how to (i.e. – rubbing two sticks together or striking together two rocks to make sparks). While that concept is more philosophically akin to the senior gods giving those other gifts of civilization to mankind, that’s not what the mythologies describe. What’s described is fire in its pure form that’s given out, post theft by lesser gods, not how to make fire.
Analysis: The upshot of all of this is that the theft-of-fire mythology is not myth but really real. But, the restrictions of the seniors and the defiance of the juniors suggest that fire wasn't the real concern here. Somehow fire has been substituted for something else. That’s a something that’s not a natural part of the human environment and that’s a something which if given to humans might be akin to that five-year-old holding a really real loaded pistol – or worse.
So if fire in the hands of us primitives isn't really a big deal, and since the ‘gods’ couldn't prevent us from discovering and using fire under any set of circumstances, what might the real concern be? It has to be something along the nature of fire – bright and hot and hard to control; something that in the hands of humans might prove a threat to the gods. Nuclear power and weapons seem to be just a tad too improbable. We need something between a nice camp-fire and Hiroshima/Nagasaki. What about ordinary explosives or thermal weapons as the real ‘fire’ that was stolen and given to humanity?
Explosives per say were probably not what was meant by fire. Explosives, gunpowder, etc. was a Chinese invention somewhere between the ninth and eleventh centuries AD, and from there spread to the Middle East and hence Europe. That’s a bit too late in historical terms for explosives to have been a gift from Prometheus and all those others.
However, the use of heat as a weapon, thermal weapons, can be dated back to at least the eighth and ninth century BC. That’s historically more like the era we want. And how do you quickly and easily generate heat? - With fire of course. The real bit here is that it’s not just pure fire that is used as in flaming arrows or burning down a wooden fort, or burning crops and fields (scorched earth policy), but fire or heat somehow augmented by chemicals and then transferred to where it’s needed.
For example, a whole variety of heated chemicals, from water to sand to various petroleum-based compounds (oil, pitch, bitumen etc.) could be dumped on enemy personnel or hurled onto various structures, fortifications, even ships at sea in order to destroy or at least serious damage them.
When it comes to ancient naval warfare, finding and utilizing a chemical substance that burns while floating on the water, well this would be heaven-sent as it were. Such substances forms what today is commonly referred to as ‘Greek fire’ though Greek fire proper, however, wasn't invented until roughly 672 AD, again a bit too late for Prometheus.
In addition, various sulphur-based compounds and quicklime are useful as toxic/blinding agents. There are always smoke bombs that can be employed as well.
In short, it wasn't fire so much that the senior gods wanted to keep out of our grubby little paws, but the use of thermal weapons via the application of chemicals and various chemical properties useful in warfare, incendiary mixtures, the basic ingredient being heat first and foremost, heat usually supplied by fire.
The unanswerable question is why the reluctance on the part of the senior gods to give humanity fire, or way more likely something akin to fire but far more dangerous like thermal weaponry technology, and the counterpart unanswerable question why therefore the seemingly intense opposition to that policy from other so-called lesser deities and cultural heroes? The only thing that makes sense is that the seniors were opposed because it was akin to giving a child a loaded pistol. The opposition on the other hand figured it was probably inevitable we would figure it all out for ourselves anyway, and giving the technology to us sooner rather than later after stealing it in the first place from higher authority gave the powers-that-be some kind of control – the kid with the loaded pistol was at least supervised.