Blame the Gods!

1. How does Greek mythology explain natural events? By: Sophie Steppe Blame the Gods!

2. Project Goals • Learning target- I can explain how culture defines ancient Greeks and how they show a unique perspective. • The Greeks created stories to explain natural events. For example, they created the Gaia story to explain how the Earth got here and how the gods were created. They created Poseidon to explain how the sea does things and how mountains were created. They did this because they didn’t have scientific explanations.

3. Gods That Create Natural Events • Demeter- The god of the harvest and the mother of Persephone. • Poseidon- the god of the sea. • Gaia- mother earth. • Zeus- the king of all Gods.

4. Other Gods • You need to know about these gods to understand the stories. • Hades- the God of the underworld. • Hermes- messenger of the Gods. • Persephone- Demeter's only child.

5. Demeter (part one) • Hades captured Persephone for a whole year, so Demeter was really depressed and she made the Earth suffer with her. • Nobody could grow any crops the whole time Persephone was gone. • Zeus made a compromise with Demeter. It stated that Persephone could come home if she hadn't eaten any of the food of the dead.

6. Demeter (part two) • Zeus sent Hermes to get Persephone • Hades tricked Persephone into eating four seeds. • Zeus made a compromise with Hades. It said that she would have to return to the underworld for four months each year. • While Persephone was in the under world Demeter made the Earth suffer. • The time Persephone is in the underworld came to be known as winter.

7. Poseidon • When Poseidon gets angry he shakes his trident or slams it on the ground. When he does this, mountains are created, and floods and earth quakes occur. • When he wasn’t angry, rivers dried and islands formed.

8. Gaia • First all there was, was chaos and out of chaos came Gaia. • She created almost everything, including the Earth itself. • Her children were the old gods, the Titans and the new Gods, the Gods we know today. • Eventually the new gods created everything that Gaia hadn’t.

9. Zeus • He moves around the sun. • He created the consolations. • When he gets mad at someone he strikes them with his lightning bolt. • He also controls the weather.

10. Zeus • He made a flood to get rid of the men in the Bronze Age. • Some lucky people survived. • Zeus did this because he thought they were all very bad people. • Deucalion and Pyrrha survived and made a sacrifice to Zeus. • They threw stones on their heads and every time a stone hit their heads they created another person of their gender.

11. Citation • Isaak, Mark. Flood Stories from Around the World. http://www.talkorigins.org. The Talk Orgins Archive, September 2, 2002. 2- 28-12.