The turtle appears throughout man's mythology. In several apparently unconnected cultures such as North American Indian and disparate Asian cultures, it was thought that the Earth was held up on the back of a turtle, and that underneath this turtle was another, and so on.

While a turtle may fall, there was no reason for despair, because another turtle underneath will climb into its place.

In China, the turtle was a representation for the vastness of the universe, and a River God of theirs - Pi-Hsi, resembled a turtle. American Indians called their continent, 'Turtle Island.' In Nigeria, the turtle represents the vulva, and is symbolic of that all important attribute, lubricity.

Sea turtles have been an important food source for mankind until modern times. In our oldest coastal archeological sites, at the very cradles of civilization, we can find the bountiful evidence of sea turtle bones. Throughout the Tigris and Euphrates waterways leading up from the Persian gulf into the heart of Iraq, there is evidence of a complicated network of sea turtle traders feeding the biblical world.

Of all the sea turtles, the Green turtles held always the most pleasant meat to man. A green turtle, not very green, is actually named for its meat. The lime-green meat is most beloved by us, and so it is little surprise to find that most archaeological sites have mostly green turtle bones.

These bones are found even as far north as Israel, which means the animal was lavished in the biblical world during the age when the Torah was being written. The dietary laws of Leviticus seem to dance around condemning the sea turtle as unclean, which means that perhaps even the Jews of Jesus' days consumed sea turtle. Land tortoises were specifically forbidden. But in the sea, animals that had fins or scales and did not crawl along the bottom of the sea were fair game. The sea turtle, thought in most of history to be a fish, did have 'scales' as well as giant 'fins'.

Sea turtles continued to climb in our mythology. To the seafaring Babylonians, the turtle represented wisdom, and in Greece, coins featured them and King's throned their seats in the ivory of the shell.

Turtles were similarly lavished in India and the far-east. To the seafaring Polynesians, sea turtles symbolized their own lives - navigators, once bound by land, cast upon the lonely sea world.

People from the West Indies and the Isthmus of the New World, however, likely enjoyed turtle more than the rest. Enamored by the sea turtles' ability to lay enormous quantities of delicious eggs, the people of ancient Latin America saw the turtle as the eternal provider of free food. But this strong reliance on turtles as a main source of food quickly degenerated. In many cases, one society would find its main meat supply dwindle, dwindle, and then one day, just disappear.