The Bruce
The First and Best
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Look what I found - I didn't know this? I always figured JMS just pulled stuff outta his hat!
Anansi the Spider-man
"In African continent, also found are the spiders being main characters of creation mythologies and folk stories.
The characters of wisdom holder or "thread" between God's world and human world, which are common to American Continent, might have been fundamental human prototype conception of spider, considering there were not yet communication between two continents. In my personal opinion, so-called arachnophobia in human must have been developed much later culture.
Anansi (or Ananse), a spider or spider-man appear in many West African stories. He plays a certain role in "creation" and "saving" life, by having brought human the wisdom, fire, or even water and food from heaven during the drought. Anansi is, in cultural anthropology, defined as "trick star", being cunning, trick user, joker. There seems two patterns of exercising those "tricks", one for tricking even gods (like stories getting water back), and the other for fooling resulting waisted efforts for wrong purpose (usually failure stories). There are stories, seemingly more recent ones, known as "stupid Anansi" stories, lovely character to be laughed at by children. However, all the stories are supposed to begin with the narrative that those stories were originally given by the god to Anansi and his wife Aso. In any case, Anansi seems to be one of most popular character loved among West African children".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi
Anansi the Spider-man
"In African continent, also found are the spiders being main characters of creation mythologies and folk stories.
Anansi (or Ananse), a spider or spider-man appear in many West African stories. He plays a certain role in "creation" and "saving" life, by having brought human the wisdom, fire, or even water and food from heaven during the drought. Anansi is, in cultural anthropology, defined as "trick star", being cunning, trick user, joker. There seems two patterns of exercising those "tricks", one for tricking even gods (like stories getting water back), and the other for fooling resulting waisted efforts for wrong purpose (usually failure stories). There are stories, seemingly more recent ones, known as "stupid Anansi" stories, lovely character to be laughed at by children. However, all the stories are supposed to begin with the narrative that those stories were originally given by the god to Anansi and his wife Aso. In any case, Anansi seems to be one of most popular character loved among West African children".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi
