No Stain Yet on the Moon Was Seen

The Legend of Two Suns

It may surprise some to learn that indigenous tribes on two sides of our planet preserve a legend that the Earth once had two suns, but that one of them was transformed into what we now call the Moon. Tolkien even preserved this idea in his fictional lore of Middle Earth in the song of Durin, the first dwarf who awoke, like Adam, and explored the world.

The world was young, the mountains green
No stain yet on the Moon was seen

In this post, we will look at these legends and look for the kernel of truth on which they were probably based.

The Taiwanese Legend

The following legend comes from the Atayal tribe of Taiwan.

Once there were two suns in the sky: when one fell, the other arose. They took turns shining upon the world, and the world knew nothing of night. People never had a chance to rest. With the strong heat, all the plants were withered, and all the animals were miserable.

People started to plan for an expedition to shoot down one of the suns. Five young strong men were therefore chosen for this task. The five hurriedly strode towards the sun. Yet the journey was far, and there seemed to be no way to reach the destination ever after decades of searching for the sun.

While one of the five died of illness, two of the remaining four returned to their tribe, with the last two kept on their way to the sun. The returning shared their story on the journey, and expressed the urgency to dispatch a supporting team for this mission.

Several younger men were chosen. They each carried tangerines and grains such as millets, as well as a toddler on their back. On their way to catching up with the former crew, they spread the seeds along the way. They kept on. They never stopped. One day, they caught up and found two old men.

These two old men were from the first five. They now wore white hair and could hardly walk further. Yet with the encouragement of the supporting team, they led on. While they finally reached the end, this crew, mixed with old men, young men, and toddlers, had only three survivors. These three were the grown toddlers who were carried out of the tribe.

Seeing the sun right in front of them, the three readied their arrows on their bows and shot. No one shot down the sun, not even close. And then the sun fell and disappeared in the west. Not long after, they saw the other sun rising from the east, so they tried a second time. One of the arrows reached this sun. Suddenly, clots of blood plummeted down. A clot struck one of them on the head, making a goring mess. However, the injured sun was pale rather than glaring, and has been so ever since.

What we now call “the moon” is actually the sun our ancestors shot, and what we now call “stars” are the blood drips from it.

So goes the Taiwanese legend of two suns.

American Versions of the Two Suns Myth

In addition to the Taiwanese story, there are at least three versions of the two suns myth from the Americas. Of most interest is the one from the Lacandon Tribe of Guatemala.

There used to be two Suns shining on the Earth. One of them was older and bigger, and the other one was younger and smaller. The older Sun was bad and did not let people rest. It was shining constantly, during days and during nights, everything was burnt, and people died from the heat. The younger Sun shone during the day and rested at night.

One day, the young Sun found a tree which had a hollow full of honey, and called its elder brother: “Brother, look, we can get sweet bee honey here.” “Be the first one to climb up,” called the smaller Sun his elder brother. The big Sun climbed up the tree and tasted the honey. “It is very sweet, come up, too, my little brother.”

“I’m coming,” said the small Sun, “but you should go higher, there’s more honey.” “I’m high,” cried the big Sun. “Higher, higher,” cried the youngest brother.

When the big Sun was on top, the young Sun took an axe and started to cut the tree. He was cutting very fast, and the tree fell soon. The big Sun fell down to the Earth. As he was falling, a big bang could be heard, and everything was set on fire.

After a while, animals started to jump out from the fire: parrots, deer, coatis, peccaries, monkeys, and all animals living on the earth today. This is how animals were created, and people could hunt them. Only the small Sun stayed shining on the Earth, having lost its strong brightness and letting people sleep at night. It is the same Sun that shines on our Earth even today.

The Kernel of Truth in the Legends of Two Suns

In addition to the Lacandon Tribal myth of the two suns, there is a Maya myth in which there were two pairs of suns and moons in the skies that caused great harm. These myths are probably based on historical memories of two real historical events.

The first is that the Moon, when first created, was probably smooth like a mirror, which reflected the light of the sun with much greater brightness than it does today.

Noah’s Flood was not merely a catastrophe for planet Earth. It was a solar-system level catastrophe, which is recorded in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, and several other myths about the battle of the stars.

While it is difficult to reconstruct from this distance, the Flood may have been triggered by the approach of a planet or star from outside the Solar System. While it did not collide with the Earth, it approached closely enough for the tidal forces of its gravitational field to crack open the Earth’s crust, allowing the floodwaters to escape from the depths. The debris from that catastrophe now orbits between the Earth and Jupiter in the Taurid Meteor Stream.

If the “waters below the Earth” came from near the bottom of the Mantle, they would have been expelled from the fissures of the “fountains of the deep” at well above escape velocity. The spinning earth was thus jetting her water-blood into space, along with rock eroded from the sides of the fissure. That debris stream impacted the moon and transferred about 5% of the moon’s present mass from the Earth to the moon. In the process, the smooth reflective surface of the Moon was cratered and wrecked. Thus, the moon was “stained” by bombardment of debris from Earth’s travail.

This was remembered by the ancient tribes through storytelling the myth of the two suns.