of the god Vishnu. The yoga pose Kurmasana is named for the avatar. World Turtles are found in Native American cultures including the Algonquian, Iroquois, and Lenape. They tell many versions of the creation story of Turtle Island. One version has Muskrat pile up earth on Turtle's back, creating the continent of North America. An Iroquois version has the pregnant Sky Woman fall through a hole in the sky between a tree's roots, where she is caught by birds who land her safely on Turtle's back; the Earth grows around her. The turtle here is altruistic, but the world is a heavy burden, and the turtle sometimes shakes itself to relieve the load, causing earthquakes. A turtle was the symbol of the Ancient Mesopotamian god Enki from the 3rd millennium BCE onward. An ancient Greek origin myth told that only the tortoise refused the invitation of the gods Zeus and Hera to their wedding, as it preferred to stay at home. Zeus then ordered it to carry its house with it, ever after. Another of their gods, Hermes, invented a seven-stringed lyre made with the shell of a tortoise. In the Shang dynasty Chinese practice of plastromancy, dating back to 1200 BCE, oracles were obtained by inscribing questions on turtle plastrons using the oldest known form of Chinese characters, burning the plastron, and interpreting the resulting cracks. Later, the turtle was one of the four sacred animals in Confucianism, while in the Han period, steles were mounted on top of stone turtles, later linked with Bixi, the turtle-shelled son of the Dragon King. Marine turtles feature significantly in Australian Aboriginal art. The army of Ancient Rome used the ("tortoise") formation where soldiers would form a shield wall for protection. In Aesop's Fables, "The Tortoise and the Hare" tells how an unequal race may be won by the slower partner. Lewis Carroll's 1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland features a Mock Turtle, named for a soup meant to imitate the expensive soup made from real turtle meat. In 1896, the French playwright Léon Gandillot wrote a comedy in three acts named that was "a Parisian sensation" in its run in France, and came to the Manhattan Theatre, Broadway, New York, in 1898 as The Turtle. A "cosmic turtle" and the island motif reappear in Gary Snyder's 1974 novel Turtle Island, and again in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series as Great A'Tuin, starting with