you know what myth still sticks with me, twelve years after my Ancient Civilizations class (which really meant Egypt and Mesopotamia)? it's from a Hebrew text, the Pirkei Avot, and it asks a very singular question, still relevant today:

who made the first tongs?

tongs are made of metal. to make something out of metal, you must have a pair of tongs.

you have no tongs, and you must smith. what do you do?

the script, of course, states that God made the first tongs. The Abrahamic lineage of faith loves to root all axioms in God.

the purpose of God, after all, is to be the ultimate origin, that which is without predecessor. made of itself and by itself, from which all else is made.

the actual answer, of course, is that stone tools evolved to be tong-like, which were then used to start metalwork. but that's not the point. it's a morality tale, not an archæological treatise.

the point of the myth is to talk about what happens when memory of origin fades

and the point of this thread is to say that on the eighth day, god made clang. we live in a world that has a c++ compiler, and we will never again be in a world without one.

we don't need to make stone tongs anymore.