Metamorphoses Book 1: The Creation
Before land, sea, and sky existed, "in the whole world the countenance / Of nature was the same, all one, well named / Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, / Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds / Of ill-joined elements compressed together." Book 1 -- The Creation, line 7-11 All of the elements of the universe were at odds with one another until a god resolved the conflict. He created Earth and the sky. Then man was made perhaps by the great Creator, or perhaps the earth so recently separated from the heavens maintained some of that ethereal essence and Prometheus used that earth to mold man. Thus earth and mankind were created.