Most countries in the world have archetypes in their creation myths, even countries as far apart as Japan and Greece. The Japanese religion, Shinto, tells stories of sibling marriages and the expulsion of deformed children. Greek myths have similar plots in their stories. There are reasons why these two completely different cultures have similar histories. The next three paragraphs explain why there are archetypes and differences in the creation myths of Japan and Greece. Both Shinto and Greek myths have brothers who intermarry. For example, in a Shinto myth, Izanagi-no-mikoto and Izanami-no-mikoto were "united as husband and wife", and in a Greek myth "Cronos married his sister" Rhea. Furthermore, couples in both myths fathered many children: Izanagi and Izanami gave birth to "the Great Land of Eight Islands, with mountains, rivers, herbs, and trees" and many gods and goddesses. Cronus and Rhea gave birth to five gods and goddesses. From these two myths it is clear that Japan and Greece did not consider marriage between brothers as something wrong. When these myths were created thousands of years ago, the people of these two countries did not know that there was a possibility of a child having problems if he was born to sibling parents. Furthermore, in both countries one might think that siblings will give birth to a virtuous child, because siblings love each other from the beginning and therefore have a high probability of becoming successful parents. However, even though ancient Japan and Greece thought that siblings and parents could be caring, both cultures have histories of abandoning children. In Shinto myth, sibling parents gave birth to a “leech child,” then “abandoned it to the wind.” The Greek myth h...... middle of paper ......en is that for the Japanese, family pride and dignity may have been too strong for parents to keep their deformed child. For the Greeks, the gods were thought to have the form of human beings; therefore children who did not have a human form were not real human beings. One difference between the myths of these two cultures is that the land was perceived in different ways. Japanese myths depicted the earth as different from the gods, while the Greeks thought of the earth as a god, showing that the cultures of these countries influence how they think about their world. These archetypes and the differences in myths are evidence that humans, whether from different parts of the globe or different time periods, have archetypal ideas. Humans around the world share some ideas, but these ideas will differ slightly, as the cultures from which the ideas come are distinct.