“The Sun was a strange little child”: Celestial Bodies in African Cultural Cognition

This study examines the role of celestial bodies in a selected corpus of Sub-Saharan African creation myths and etiological narratives within the framework of cultural and cognitive linguistics. It argues that these narratives reflect underlying patterns of collective cultural cognition grounded in Ubuntu philosophy. Through the analysis of schemas, conceptual metaphors, and blending processes, the paper identifies six recurring patterns that structure the representation of the Sun and the Moon as agents of creation and transformation. The findings demonstrate that anthropocentrism, interconnectedness, and universal causation function as key organizing principles across the corpus. Furthermore, the study shows that conceptual operations such as anthropomorphism and metamorphosis serve to make abstract cosmological processes experientially accessible. The results support the hypothesis that folktales both reflect and reinforce a culturally specific eco-philosophical worldview. Overall, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of how narrative structures encode and sustain collective cultural knowledge.

Keywords: African creation myths, Ubuntu, cultural cognition, conceptual metaphor, anthropomorphism