I first read about the Epic of Gilgamesh at the start of a history textbook, where it was told as the ultimate origin myth of our civilization, raging against t

I first read about the Epic of Gilgamesh at the start of a history textbook, where it was told as the ultimate origin myth of our civilization, raging against the beast of nature itself to conquer it. Though, that seems less accurate from reading this account and the one on wikipedia. But, Daniel Quinn’s reading of the Fall of Man in Genesis[1] is an antithetical account of the same story. Man did not seek to overcome nature, rather Man was banished from the garden (nature) by his own temptation to seek the knowledge to take care of himself—thus becoming captured and tortured by this original sin, accumulating into agrarian-fueled violence and expansion. All now rationalized[2] by our proclaimed knowledge of Good and Evil. My favorite part of this interpretation is that this story was not told by our ancestors, because if it was, they would’ve sanctified this knowledge-seeking as the Ascent of Man, not the Fall. So it’s hypothesized that the story was told by the herders and hunter-gatherers trying to formulate a story to explain the violent and toilsome lifestyle of the agrarians. Neat that there is also a mythic tree that Gilgamesh finds in the cave after hours of darkness. That he had returned to the garden somehow, and that he either wanted nothing to do with it or could find no answers there for him anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)#Reinterpretation_of_Biblical_myths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)#Reinterpretati... [2] “The Creator? My mines run dry, my city withers, it must be fed. And what has he done? He cursed us to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive. Damned if I don’t do everything it takes to do just that. Damned if I don’t take what I want.” —Tubal-Cain in Aronofsky’s Noah (2014)