<p>I'm very curious right now, and I wonder if somebody can straighten out some confusion I'm having regarding the backstory/lore of the Avatar universe.
</p><p>In Korra's book two, there was a set of episodes that covered the origin of the Avatar and its first incarnation, Wan. Those episodes also revealed the origin of element bending as a gift granted by lion turtles to their inhabitants when those inhabitants needed to venture beyond their cities, in order to protect them. The lion turtles did their magical energybending and bestowed element bending on the humans.
</p><p>However, throughout the entirety of Aang's story, there are several instances where it is either implied or explicitly stated that humans <i>learned</i> elemental bending by observing creatures or entities in nature that innately possessed the skill. First, we learned at the end of book 1 that waterbending was learned by humans from studying the moon and ocean. Later, it was revealed that the very first earthbenders developed their skill by studying the blind badger-moles, which is also how Toph became an earthbender, despite neither of her parents evidently posessing the skill. We learned that the first firebenders, the Sun Warriors, learned their skill from dragons, and both Aang and Zuko learned (or re-learned) firebending directly from the last two in existence. Finally, at some point Aang mentions that the very first Air Nomands became airbenders by observing the flying bison.
</p><p>I may be missing something here, but it seems to me that this is a pretty serious backstory/lore conflict. Does anybody know what's really going on here?
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