In ancient times, due to a lack of real knowledge about the world around people, it became necessary to replace and explain many things with myths. For example, the origin of the universe was replaced by legends about the creation of the world.
The cosmogonic myths of many nations are dedicated to the creation of the world. Almost every developed mythology has a similar plot. However, in the earliest layers of beliefs, there is no mention of the exact date of the beginning of the existence of the world. Neither ancient Egyptian, nor Sumerian, nor ancient Greek mythology provide an answer to how long the world has existed. Perhaps this is due to the specifics of the perception of history by ancient people not as a linear development, but as repeating cycles associated primarily with agricultural activities.
One of the first dates of the creation of the world is determined by the teaching of Zoroastrianism, which arose in the middle of the first millennium BC. According to the mythology of this religion, the world was created 12 thousand years before the birth of the prophet Zarathushtra and the appearance of the doctrine itself, that is, approximately 12, 5 thousand years BC. The world was created by a deity named Ahura-Mazda, but not arbitrarily - he used some existing ideas of things. This theory makes Zoroastrianism related to the idealistic philosophy of Plato.
Judaism and Christianity adhere to the cosmogonic myth described in the Bible. Since the exact date of creation is not indicated there, there were several theories about how old the world is according to the main book of Christians.
In Byzantium, Bulgaria, as well as in Russia before Peter I, September 1, 5509 BC, was considered the date of the creation of the world. From this time the chronology was carried out. Calculations of this date were made based on the dates of the life of the patriarchs and kings, indicated in the Septuagint - the Greek translation of the Bible.
In Catholicism, another translation of the Bible from Hebrew was used - the Vulgate. Due to differences in dates in the text, Catholic theologians attributed the creation of the world to an earlier time.
There is no consensus among Christians today about when the world was created. Modern advances in astronomy, biology and paleontology are in many ways contrary to the biblical data. Some religious leaders and parishioners in modern conditions interpret the biblical chronology as approximate, recognizing the age of the universe in more than one billion years. Other believers, especially representatives of some fundamentalist Protestant churches, are almost on the path of denying the achievements of science. The so-called scientific creationism arose - a teaching that seeks to prove that the age of the planet Earth does not exceed 10,000 years, and evolution as such does not exist.
