This is how I figured human representations of nations came to exist in the Hetalia world. If this idea has been done before, please excuse me. I actually put some research into it though, from ancient creatures to names of gods and goddesses, so please leave a like/review to let me know what you think.
Its life had started millions of years ago, when It fell from the sky and into our ocean.
It had no consciousness then, and It took another few hundred million years before It realized that It had evolved, before It realized that It could realize. It took longer still, until fish came into existence, for It to know that others of its kind were supposed to die. It felt them. It felt their pain, It felt the water's currents carry them off to distant places where they evolved further, It felt them mate, and It felt their advancements in evolution over the course of several millennia before a millennia existed as a course of time. It was eaten by predators and spat out, and so It evolved to be a predator itself. It mated with others, and had offspring that died like the rest.
It had ideas, and eventually It realized that It was different than the rest of the others in the sea.
It had no real conscious thoughts before the first plants came onto land, and then It too came onto land, still in the form of a sea creature. It was the first ever to walk on land. It was the first time in history that It had directly influenced Its population, as others It represented too began to move onto land.
It only felt instincts, even after living for longer than any other of Its kind, and It began to form Its own language only when the land creatures formed their languages. It found no others of its kind, but perhaps It was really just unique. It had evolved from a single-celled organism into a fungus, from a coral into a sea creature, into a land creature, and then into a creature capable of realizing it was able to understand and survive. It had changed forms many times over, evolved as life evolved, and It understood that It was different. It understood that no others felt each other the way It felt them, and so It realized that they influenced Its evolution as much as It did theirs.
And still, It knew no other of Its kind. It hoped it would be that way forever. It did not yet have emotion, It was not evolved enough yet, but It did not want to share Its experience, knowing everything alive and functioning was It's alone.
But memory was a fickle thing back then, and while it was capable of realizations and evolutionary processes, It had no brain to maintain these thoughts forever. It forgot many things, such as how long It had been alive, or how different It was from the rest of the living organisms that existed, because those living organisms weren't important to a seemingly immortal It.
It felt other creatures like one feels a tingling limb after it had been asleep for too long—it was more annoying than anything. It felt no attachment to the creatures It represented, in part because they did not care about It either, but also because It was hundreds of millions of years old and one tends to stop caring about many things by that point with or without memory.
It was not until the sharks had evolved did It move onto land permanently as the first known bug species to escape those fierce predators. Plants had moved onto land by this point, and many others stayed in the ocean. That move was the first time It had seen another of Its kind, and it was the last time as well.
It felt itself split in half, and It no longer felt the ocean's currents, nor the prey or predators. It had turned into Land, and Land looked behind itself to see Ocean, still in the form of a cephalopod looking up at Land with wide eyes.
That was the first time in history a population had been split. It had split into Land (Rodinia, the first supercontinent, had split by this point. Did that make It Pannotia?) and Ocean, and Land thought that somewhere, in every time period since that split, Ocean still represented all the species in the sea in the deepest ocean crevice it could find, in the form of whatever helped it survive the longest (most likely the predators who survived over the millions of years of evolution). That was the day Land said goodbye to Ocean, and had not gone back since. Land turned into many forms of creatures who survived, from large birds to small insects, and finally into mammals.
Mammals were Land's favorite forms yet. It knew that this was as important as fish forming legs, and the Juramaia became its favorite form . . . But then viruses came along too (Land felt every living thing on land), and killed off many creatures. Too many, because even Land got sick. It wondered if viruses were sent like It had been all those hundreds of millions years ago, sent here to finally kill Land and Ocean, but no. Viruses were just there now, killing wherever and whenever it pleased. Viruses existed just like every other living thing, the masters of evolution just like Land was.
Temperature changes made Land move around, and it realized that it could get sick as easily as the other mammals could. The creatures it represented began to get so diverse, so different, Land felt itself split over and over again until Land had created many others like it. It had split into creatures that represented the different mammals, bugs, reptiles, you name it, on this planet. And they were all like It.
Finally, more of Its kind. Land felt that it once again become an It, because Land did not represent Its creatures like It once did. There were others of Its kind now, but these others died off with the extinctions of their creatures. It came to realize, then, that It could in fact die like them. But It didn't. It was the first of their kind, and It would not be the last.
When the sky fell for the first time, It wished It could die like the others. The first mass extinction event wiped out nearly every living thing on Land, save for the smaller creatures It had come to love.
It got sick.
It watched as others of Its kind, Its children, died.
It marked the end of the Mesozoic Era and watched as the Cenozoic Era rose.
It was reminded of when Viruses made themselves known only to It, who could feel their simple-celled life like It had once existed as, but was no longer.
It once again took the shape of the leading creatures that survived, because that was what It existed to do. Survive, and evolve. It wondered what happened to Ocean, and realized that the sky had only fallen on Land.
Ocean and her creatures had survived, for the most part.
It continued to evolve, It continued to move on to different areas of the Earth, and It continued to split into different representations of the newer creatures (and eventually, land masses). It watched as the tiniest bugs thrived when bigger species fell, and It understood that all things live and die when before It paid no real mind to how the creatures lived.
It recalled those single-celled organisms from which it evolved from, and It realized that perhaps It was Life itself. It was the reason Land and Ocean creatures existed. It had fallen from the sky feeling the mass waves of other single-celled organisms, and even though It forgot often what it was, It still knew that its life was very different than everything else's (It should know, because It felt and was influenced by everything It represented).
It was still the oldest known being alive (known only to Itself). It felt that It had the right to call itself Life, or at least the way that everything changed. Evolved. It was either a god, something to be worshipped by what It represented, or It was a biological mistake from all those millions of years ago. Perhaps it had been the very first bacterium in existence, or at least the first to evolve in this forming galaxy, and through binary fission It felt everything that existed as the Parent of them all.
The Parent of Life. It did not know English for obvious reasons during the time of dinosaurs, but It would have liked that title.
It evolved not only in body over time, but in mind too. It grew, It developed, and It watched as the first Homo Antecessor came to exist. It had split into so many different plants, mammals, bugs, and other species that were the next step in survival, that It took their form and decided to represent them.
They were the most advanced creatures yet. They evolved eventually into Neanderthals, and It formed new languages with them. It became a He. It's primal yet ancient brain thought the females to be weak, and so whenever He split apart into a separate tribe that moved into what is now known as Asia, He created another He.
And so Pangea never saw Asia again (although He heard that Asia had split into China after another few hundred thousand years). As more tribes split apart and traveled to different continents, he too was split into different sanctions of the lands until he realized that the continents were continents, and no longer stuck together from the ice.
He had created multiple beings like himself who represented their own separate populations. He had done so before. But these beings were wise, and they were partially wise because He had evolved and developed Himself over hundreds of millions of years into the ultimate body of survival and evolution: Man.
He was beyond ancient. He forgot many things. He learned many things. He survived many things. Humans warred, and He warred with them. Humans mated, and so He mate too—and this time, He created another representation through the mother. These children were different than the ones formed before, when He was still an It, or Land. They did not share His same DNA, not exactly, but they were like Him.
He walked among them, no longer a direct representation of just one population. He had created them all—the earliest Settlements, the earliest Colonies, the earliest Kingdoms, and He was worshipped as a god by the humans and Kingdoms who could realize how old He was. Human history came and went, and He saw them all. He remembered them all, because now he could remember. He evolved with them, and He became part of their everyday life without their realizations (and finally, he realized, He was not the only one who could realize anymore as Greek philosophers came into existence and gave Him ideas).
And eventually, when He realized that it was the mothers giving birth to creations like Him, He became a She. She gave herself many names over, in many different languages, but now She resided in Europe. She forgot the other children she gave birth to, who were Kingdoms and Colonies and Tribes across the globe. She gave birth to twins, but they never knew She existed.
They became Remus and Romulus, and Romulus became the greatest kingdom she had given birth to yet.
Egypt became Her favorite daughter.
Britannia was a wild child, ignored by the rest until she caught the attention of the Vikings and Romans.
Native America created many, many of her own children, but only two of which were going to be very special.
China had forgotten who his mother and father were, but he too survived and created children with his own populations.
She had once been a He, who had once been Land, who had once been It, who had once been a being so primal and ancient it could not think or process information. She evolved because she was the oldest, the Parent of Life, and She was the reason life existed on Earth. She called herself many names (Amun, Allat, Juitian, Damara, Denka, Adam, Eve, and on the list went) and she was worshipped as a goddess and god in many cultures without their realizing. She never settled in one place, and always traveled to see her people.
The Parent of Life enjoyed the form of a woman (Mother Nature was a term she felt was both right and wrong, because while she felt every aspect of life on land, Mother Nature was not a human), but she sometimes changed herself into that of a man when so desired. Even with her children representing other populations, she still felt every life that existed on land. She had vague recollections of larger events in history (she had a strange relationship with Viruses and was convinced one of them was like her, always evolving and trying to kill off her people), she remembered when the sky fell on multiple occasions and killed off her populations and ancient children, and she always remembered Ocean and wondered what form It was in now (She still thought Ocean had taken an ancient predatory form and existed in the deepest cracks mankind could never get to, because the Ocean was just a finicky, violent, deep, mystery of a thing). But she kept evolving and surviving.
Now, eventually the humans stopped worshipping her and her ancient human populations soon became modern. Britannia's children became strong thanks to Rome, China somehow still existed even with his populations growing up, Scandinavia broke off into his children, and Rome's grandchildren thrived into beautiful weaklings that she did not care for but thought them to be important anyway. And even with her own children dying off, they knew what they represented. Roman, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Spaniards, Britons, they all knew what countries they were (countries became a curious word, but did not suit her at all). The Parent of Life had thought herself to be a goddess of the land and fertility, but now realized that she was something even better.
She was just their Mother. When bacterium was discovered, when humans were able to see how they grew and split and traced their evolutions back to the first bacterium in Earth's ocean, she realized that something about her was simply biologically different. She did not know whether she was the first bacterium to exist in this galaxy or not, but she knew that she was the Mother of Earth's life. The genes that she used for fission, for mating, for anything and everything, created other human representations of populations because she was linked biologically to every one of them as the ultimate, the first, mother. So her children were like her, able to create populations, but they were limited because of their populations. She had every population, every race to be the human embodiment of, and she was connected to them all. Her body could change on a whim, from pale skin with blonde hair to dark skin with black, and she eventually realized most of her kind had blonde hair and pale skin.
To be fair to them all, she continued to change her looks and body based off of what population she surrounded herself with.
Society eventually became so complicated she needed to create a real identity for herself, however. A being millions of years old tended to stop caring about many things, but she did want to see what her children had created. She was one of their kind after all, the first being of their kind who had survived and will continue to survive, and she wanted to see how they existed among humans who lived for such short periods of time.
She made herself known to China first, because she had been his father once upon a time and he was the oldest second only to her. One look into her ancient, primal eyes gave him a slight idea as to her age, and he could sense she was a population of something akin to himself. She introduced herself as all of her many names (it took five minutes of listing off these names before China told her he got the idea), and told him what she had come to know herself to be. She had more money than he could imagine, set up in numerous different banks across the globe, because of how long she had lived and worked with mankind.
He helped her form an identity to the world and warned her to use only one form from now on, because there were more serious repercussions for what she was doing with her money nowadays and it could be thought of as identity theft (among many other things). She adopted the name Eve for her feminine form, and Adam for her masculine form (humans would be surprised where their religions really came from). She adjusted her body to be at the prime age of strength for humans, which was around twenty. Her hair and eye colors continued to change, but eventually she liked the hair dye colors (purple, blue, green) and settled on multiple colors at once, when it became more popular.
In return for setting up her identity to the rest of the world, China asked for knowledge in return. The ancient being known as Eve could only tell him that memory was a fickle thing, and humans had already discovered much of what history she had been a part of. It was their decision, and their human representation's decision, to learn from their past because all the knowledge they needed was right there. She did not tell him of where he had come from exactly, but she told him that she was the reason for his and many others' existences.
Memory was a fickle thing, but memory was not what she had learned. She had evolved to have memory, she had evolved to survive, she had evolved to continue her legacy as an evolving being. China joked that she was the human representation of evolution and mistakes, and she could only smile wryly in return.
"Nothing that evolves is ever a mistake."
"You sound like you have not lived like the rest of us."
"I have not."
"But you claim you are the oldest."
"I am."
"How can you not wish to die?" He leaned forward in his seat.
"Because I feel their deaths every day. I have existed too long for the purpose of survival to wish death upon myself."
Research went into their existence, and it was theorized among the nations that the first bacterial fission had in fact "gone wrong." Human representations of countries were the result of her true DNA being passed down through mating, but the first bacterial fission millions of years ago must have produced a mutated gene that was passed down through the ages and created regular creatures, animals, humans, etc. Only those with Eve's special genes could be attached to their populations through a process they were still researching, but it was apparent that either Eve, the Parent of Life, had a mutated gene that allowed her to feel the populations of every living thing on land, or regular creatures were the result of mutated genes that they call normal.
Research also went into the ocean when Eve recalled her story of splitting into Land and Ocean, because while memory was a fickle thing she remembered many ancient memories still. She helped them learn about evolution, and while humans did not accept it at first, Eve was the only one in the end who knew the truth about their existence.
She met other nations, her family, and smiled when some called her Mother. She liked the strongest nations the best, because the strongest were typically the ones who survived—but she always had a soft spot for the smaller nations (micronations especially), because it was often the smaller species who survived disasters that killed off entire populations. Eve bought houses in each country and passed her time by working menial jobs every human worked, and went to college often to continue learning and evolving herself. She liked to work with researchers on Viruses, because they were still little bastards she could not stand have competing with her for the ultimate evolutionary form, and they still managed to kill off many humans each year.
She became a part of human lives once more.
Eventually she met America, when she dyed her hair blue and green in the twenty-first century, and he began to make "memes" based off of her and called her "Earth-chan." In the millions upon millions of years she had been alive, she thought that was the most hilarious concept in the world. At least humans were beginning to worship her again, in an odd sense of the word, as the Parent of Life felt she deserved to be worshipped.
She saw her children grow and evolve, and she knew that eventually they would die, as they all did, while she would continue to evolve and survive, as she always did, until the last living species on Land (not Earth, they did not understand that she was only Land while Ocean was still underwater) would die.
Only when there was nothing left would she either finally die too, or start from the beginning until the perfect evolutionary creature existed. Eve hoped that she would continue to survive, because she had existed for too long not to anymore.
