Regenbogenschlange
Though the concept of the Rainbow Serpent has existed for a very long time in Aboriginal Australian cultures, it was introduced to the wider world through the work of anthropologists. In fact, the name "Rainbow Serpent" or "Rainbow Snake" appears to have been coined in English by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, an anthropologist who noticed the same concept going under different names among various Aboriginal Australian cultures, and called it "the rainbow-serpent myth of Australia." It has been suggested that this name implies that there is only one Rainbow Serpent, when the concept actually varies quite a bit from one Aboriginal culture to another, and should be properly called the Rainbow Serpent myth"s" of Australia. Similarly, it has been suggested that the Serpent's position as the most prominent creator god in the Australian tradition has largely been the creation of non-Aboriginal anthropologists. Another error of the same kind is the way in which Western-educated people, with a cultural stereotype of Greco-Roman or Norse myths, tell the Aboriginal stories in the past tense. For the indigenous people of Australia, the stories are "everywhen"past, present and future.