In most Semitic languages, ‘Eve’ means ‘snake’ or even ‘female snake’. The name of our ancestral biblical mother hides an archaic animist myth, according to which snakes are not our enemies, but our ancestors.9 Many animist cultures believe that humans descended from animals, including from snakes and other reptiles. Most Australian Aborigines believed that the Rainbow Serpent created the world. The Aranda and Dieri people maintain that their particular tribes originated from primordial lizards or snakes, which were transformed into humans.10 In fact, modern Westerners too think that they have
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