It appears that the author of Genesis knew what he was doing when he wrote that the first human—i.e., the first human born of a woman, Adam and Eve’s first-born child—was a murderer.
Not a singer, or a painter, or a dancer, or a cook.
A murderer.
Ancient interpreters concluded that Cain’s descendants all died in the Flood, but that is obviously untrue.
Even a casual reader of news headlines knows that we are all the children of Cain.
The Romans had fratricide in their founding myth, too: Romulus kills Remus and takes over. (“Remans” doesn’t sound as nice as “Romans,” does it?) The Greeks had Ixion, as enthusiastic a killer as one could desire. On the other hand, Hou Ji, founder of China’s Zhou dynasty, was “famous for his luxuriant crops of beans, rice, hemp, gourds, and several kinds of millet and was credited with the introduction of the spring ritual sacrifice of fermented millet beer, roasted sheep, and the herb southernwood.” Nothing violent (if you overlook the sheep) or homicidal there. Nice. Chinese history is filled, nevertheless, with homicidal villains. Sigh. The tragic view moves us more than the comic. “We are arrant knaves, all,” says Hamlet; “believe none of us.” Yes, that sounds right. Sadly.