Turtle

Turtles have a very long history. Fossils show that relatives of turtles were already living in the Middle Triassic, among them Pappochelys, which had broad ribs but no shell. By the Late Triassic, about 210 million years ago, Proganochelys carried a complete upper and lower shell. Few animals have kept the same basic body plan for so long, and many cultures have made the turtle a figure of the world itself.

The World Turtle

In comparative mythology the World Turtle is a giant turtle or tortoise that holds up or contains the world. The idea appears in Hinduism, in Chinese myth and in the stories of some Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

In Hinduism the turtle that bears the Earth is called Akupara, and sometimes Chukwa. Kurma, the tortoise who is the second avatar of Vishnu, is linked with Akupara. In the Puranas, Kurma is best known from the churning of the Ocean of Milk. Popular retellings add a further layer, with the world resting on elephants that stand on the turtle’s back. The British philosopher John Locke used that image in 1689 to mock explanations that point to something unknown. See also the world elephant.

Turtles in Chinese myth

Chinese myth tells of Ao, a huge sea turtle. When the goddess Nüwa mended the sky after the god Gonggong broke its support, she cut off Ao’s four legs and used them as pillars. Another story keeps Ao alive in the Bohai Sea, carrying on its back three islands where immortals live, among them Penglai.

The Black Turtle-Snake, Xuanwu, is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It guards the north and is usually shown as a turtle wound about by a snake. Because both animals sleep through the cold months, the pair also came to stand for winter.

Turtle Island

For some Indigenous peoples, Turtle Island is a name for North America, taken from stories of a turtle that holds the world on its back. The earliest written record of the Lenape account of the “Great Turtle” dates from 16 October 1679, when the Labadist missionary Jasper Danckaerts noted it down from a Hackensack elder named Tantaqué in Lower Manhattan. Other peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands share the story, most notably the Haudenosaunee, whose Sky Woman is often said to have begun the land on a turtle’s back.

The honu of Hawaii

In Hawaiian the green sea turtle is called honu, and it is seen locally as a sign of good luck and long life. Petroglyphs of the honu appear in the Puʻu Loa lava fields on the island of Hawaiʻi, and the turtle stands for a navigator who always finds the way home. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes that some families in Hawaiʻi regard the honu as an ʻaumakua, a spirit guardian of the family.

Kumukahi is sometimes named as a turtle that led the first Polynesians to Hawaii, but Hawaiian sources describe it differently. It is the easternmost cape of Hawaiʻi, named for a hero who came from Kahiki and is represented there by a red stone.

Capacity for love

The channeler Lyssa Royal Holt writes of turtles as loving, balanced beings.

Turtles hold deep affection and an even mix of masculine and feminine.

She links that inner evenness to the way many native peoples chose the animal as an emblem for the planet itself.