In the Hindoo story of the coming of the demon Ravana, the comet, we read that he carried off Sita, the wife of Rama, the sun; and that her name indicates that she represented "the furrowed earth," to wit, a condition of development in which man plowed the fields and raised crops of food.
When we turn to the Scandinavian legends, we see
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that those who transmitted them from the early ages believed that pre-glacial man was civilized. The Asas, the godlike, superior race, dwelt, we are told, "in stone houses."
In describing, in the Elder Edda, the corrupt condition of mankind before the great catastrophe occurred, the world, we are told, was given over to all manner of sin and wickedness. We read:
"Brothers will fight together,
And become each other's bane
Sisters' children
Their sib shall spoil.
Hard is the world;
Sensual sins grow huge.
There are axe-ages, sword-ages
Shields are cleft in twain,
There are wind-ages,
murder-ages,
Ere the world falls dead."[1]
When the great day of wrath comes, Heimdal blows in the Gjallar-horn, Odin rides to Mimer's well, Odin puts on his golden helmet, the Asas hold counsel before their stone doors.
All these things indicate a people who had passed far beyond barbarism. Here we have axes, swords, helmets, shields, musical instruments, domesticated horses, the use of gold, and stone buildings. And after the great storm was over, and the remnant of mankind crept out of the caves, and came back to reoccupy the houses of the slain millions, we read of the delight with which they found in the grass "the golden tablets" of the Asas--additional proof that they worked in the metals, and possessed some kind of a written language; they also had "the runes," or runic letters of Odin.
[1. "The Vala's Prophecy," 48, 49.]
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