No, the Discworld's cosmology borrows from a lot of ancient myths. I don't think it originated the "flat world on four elephants on a giant turtle" idea, just made more Westerners aware of it. Calling this particular image "Discworld" is just Rule of Funny...well, for me, anyway.
Moonspeaker said: No, the Discworld's cosmology borrows from a lot of ancient myths. I don't think it originated the "flat world on four elephants on a giant turtle" idea, just made more Westerners aware of it. Calling this particular image "Discworld" is just Rule of Funny...well, for me, anyway.
Four elephants is a pretty Discworld-specific thing. An elephant on the back of a tortoise is Indian, yeah, but not four. The number's the important bit here.
Four elephants is a pretty Discworld-specific thing. An elephant on the back of a tortoise is Indian, yeah, but not four. The number's the important bit here.
From the Wikipedia article (yes, Wikipedia, but it does have outside source citations):
The popular rendition of the World Turtle supporting one or several World Elephants is recorded in 1599 in a letter by Emanual de Veiga.
[...]
The elephants are supposed to be guarding (and supporting) the earth at the compass points of the cardinal directions, and they cause earthquakes when shaking their bodies. Thus there are four, eight, or sixteen of them.
To be sure, the single-elephant myth seems quite prominent, but multiple elephants are apparently not unique to Discworld.
