The role of the
sea in human culture has been important for centuries, as people experience the
sea in contradictory ways: as powerful but serene, beautiful but dangerous. Human responses to the sea can be found in artforms including
literature,
art,
poetry,
film,
theatre, and
classical music. The earliest art representing boats is 40,000 years old. Since then, artists in different countries and cultures have depicted the sea. Symbolically, the sea has been perceived as a hostile environment populated by fantastic creatures: the
Leviathan of the
Bible,
Isonade in
Japanese mythology, and the
kraken of late
Norse mythology. In the works of the psychiatrist
Carl Jung, the sea symbolises the personal and the
collective unconscious in
dream interpretation.