u/MythCartographer

Before the pharaohs raised their monuments, before the first king wore a crown, before a single city rose from the mud of Mesopotamia, something else already ruled. Not the mild, forgiving deities that came later. These were older, harsher, absolute. They weighed the fate of every soul, tore the sky away from the earth with their own hands, and shaped humanity out of need rather than tenderness. Their rule stretched across millennia before anyone had conceived of a human throne.

I put together the full lineage, starting from creation's first spark and following it through every god whose name still surfaces in later myth, the primal forces at the root, the seven who governed destiny itself, the god who rose to rule Babylon, and the countless figures who guided ordinary life for three thousand years.

The whole thing is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLnVGPz0qf4

Curious how this holds up against what people here already know about the Mesopotamian pantheon, especially anyone who's dug into the Enuma Elish or the Atrahasis directly.

Hinduism is the oldest living religion on earth, not a single story told by a single author but a vast body of sacred knowledge built across more than six thousand years, the Vedas, the Puranas, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana. Each text preserves its own version of the divine family. Names shift across centuries. A creator in one tradition becomes a destroyer in another. There is no single family tree everyone agrees on.

So instead of picking one version, I tried to cross-reference the oldest and most authoritative sources to build the most consistent structure I could, starting from Hiranyagarbha, the golden cosmic egg that Hindu scripture describes emerging from total darkness before creation itself, through the full lineage that follows, over fifty deities, eight layers of divine hierarchy.

I put the whole thing together here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxCqpcEGwK8

Curious what people more familiar with specific traditions (Shaiva, Vaishnava, regional versions) think I might have gotten wrong or oversimplified, this is genuinely the hardest family tree I've tried to build so far.

It starts with the Sumerian King List, a tablet that casually mentions kings ruling for tens of thousands of years before a great flood, and states outright that kingship "descended from heaven." From there it goes through Zecharia Sitchin's ancient astronaut theory, why professional Assyriologists reject his translations point by point, and then into stuff Sitchin never had access to: Göbekli Tepe, the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, and some genuinely strange recent genetic findings about "ghost populations" in the human genome.

I tried not to land on one answer. Mythology, lost civilization, or something else, the film lays out the case for each and lets the evidence speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imCWDx05c-4

Next up I'm putting together the full Anunnaki family tree, from creation myth to the end, so if this one lands well I'll probably post that too.

Curious what people here make of it, especially anyone who's read Sitchin's critics directly.

Genesis 6 gives you one line: "sons of God" saw human women, had children, giants resulted. Enoch spends chapters on it. Two hundred Watchers descend on Mount Hermon, swear a binding oath together, and don't just intermarry they teach humanity metallurgy, weapons, cosmetics, and sorcery. The Nephilim that result consume everything until they turn on humans and each other. Azazel gets named directly as the one who corrupted the earth.

I put together a full narration of the text, about three hours, covering the Watchers' descent, the Nephilim war, and Enoch's journey through the heavens;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Nt4VNMC38

Curious what this community makes of the Azazel scapegoat parallel I've seen it read a few different ways.

I map mythological family trees as a hobby (did the Japanese and Chinese pantheons recently), and Egypt was the hardest one yet the genealogy refuses to stay still. Ra is Atum, except when he isn't. Horus is Osiris's son and also his brother depending on the century. Every major cult center rewrote the tree to put its own god at the top.

The full documentary (about 80 minutes, every deity timestamped): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ay2J8WN6vc

Things that surprised me: how the Ennead is basically Heliopolis's political org chart. How Set's reputation collapsed over two thousand years from Ra's defender to state enemy. And how Ammit, the most feared creature in the mythology, has no family tree at all she exists outside creation, which might be the point.

If you spot an error, tell me I'd rather fix it than defend it.

I map mythological family trees as a hobby (did the Chinese pantheon recently), and Shinto turned out to be a completely different challenge the line between kami, ancestors and emperors never fully separates. The chain from Izanagi and Izanami through Amaterasu down to Jimmu is genealogy, theology and politics all at once.

The full documentary (about an hour): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNhLzeeZyPw

Things that surprised me: how much of the Kojiki is really a political document legitimizing one clan's descent. How Susanoo is both villain and culture hero depending on the region. And how Ame-no-Uzume's dance might be the single most consequential comedy act in mythology.

If you spot an error, tell me I'd rather fix it than defend it.

Some of you might have seen me around here in the emperor streak threads. My actual obsession is mapping mythological family trees, and the Chinese pantheon turned out to be the most imperial of them all the Jade Emperor literally runs heaven as a bureaucracy, with ministries, ranks and promotions. Gods get appointed the way officials did.

I ended up producing the whole thing as a documentary: https://youtu.be/Slh8Fa3RY1A?si=iRjWqyX9aKhbCPaU

A few things that surprised me: the Jade Emperor is a surprisingly late addition to the pantheon. Nüwa appears in more conflicting roles than any deity I've mapped. And the Sanxingdui bronzes still have no agreed explanation.

If you spot an error, genuinely tell me. I'd rather fix it than defend it.