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Background

Areop-Enap, Two Snails, and the Worm is a creation myth associated with the Nauru people of Micronesia. The myth tells the story of how the world began when there was just water and no human presence. This deity fashioned the sun and the moon from two Snails: one large and one small. According to David Leeming, a Worm separated the mussel shell that Areop-Enap lived in; as a result, the sky and earth were separated.

"The people on Naura Island have an
Earth-Heaven, primal entity division
myth in which we are told of the beginning
as a time when there was only the
sea, in which the god Areop-Enap lived
in a mussel shell. It was dark in there,
but the god found a big snail and a little
snail living with him, so he made the big
one into the sun and the little one into
the moon. He got a worm to separate the
parts of the shells to become the sky and
the earth. The worm's sweat made the
sea as we know it." ^[1]

Other people in the Gilbert Islands also have slightly different creation myths.