Natural disasters as an impulse towards transformation of the universe (based on etiological stories)

The paper considers a set of etiological stories based on the archetype of world creation/re-creation aligned with the local landscape. According to folk beliefs, competition and confrontation of mythical creatures both among themselves and with people was the original cause of natural disasters. Those disasters (water-related in our case) cause chaos with the following rearrangement of the universe. Transformation of the landscape is the result, both spontaneous and intentional, of the activities of mythical powers.