That’s a question I’ve had for a very long time. In the episodes, “The Beginnings”, bending was only given to humans so that they could defend themselves against the spirits that have invaded their world. At the end of the episodes, Wan closes the spirit portals and sends the spirits back to their realm. So my question is: How did people bend after the era of the lion turtles? There were no spirits for humans to protect themselves against. Did the lion turtles still gave them bending as a kind gift or so that humans could defend themselves against other humans?
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When the lion turtles left, they didn’t take back the bending powers they gave to the humans. Humans who had bending kept it throughout their lives and eventually passed it down genetically to their descendants, creating the four nations as they exist in the present day.
Human, after leaving the protection of lion turtle, learn bending from observing the animals and the world around them. Fire benders learns
fire bending from observing dragons, earth benders learn earth bending from badgermole, air benders learn air bending from sky bison, and water benders learn water bending from observing the waves being influence by the moon.
Also human didn’t leave lion turtle a as blank slate, they left carrying certain cultural aspects and knowledge that they developed during their time living on lion turtles, and these cultural aspect support their effort in learning elemental bending and set the foundation for the 4 nations.
Anyone who left the lion turtle was granted an element, so before harmonic convergence, there were pockets of humans inspired by Wan to live in the wilds.
When the lion turtles ejected humanity, they reunited with their bending kin and started building the four nations.
They mastered the elements by learning from the original benders just like Wan did and taught each other in turn.
Bending is genetic. Children and descendants of the initial people given bending by the turtles were born with the ability to bend the elements.
> bending was only given to humans so that they could defend themselves against the spirits that have invaded their world
Not quite, it was given so that they could defend themselves from the wild. Even not counting spirits that ruled the Earth in the times of the turtles, Earth is a dangerous place filled with sea monsters, giant wasps, dragons and the rouge spirit here and there that still inhabited Earth (at least partially) after the times of the turtles. Because of this a portion of humanity did not have their bending taken away after the turtles, they still needed help to defend themselves.
On top of that, people can be born with bending even if their parents aren’t benders (and the opposite is true as well), there is a known case of identicall twins where one is a bender and the other isn’t so it’s clear that genes aren’t the whole picture. There is certainly at least a genetic factor in being born with bending but it’s also true that there is a big spiritual factor in this.
This probably means that over the following generations after the times of the turtles, bending moved to a sort of “spiritual-genetic equilibrium” where the population of benders of each element corresponded with the spiritual balance of the world. We even know this happened again after Korra’s Harmonic Convergence (the times of the turtles ended right after another Harmonic Convergence so the timing also tracks) when the world came to elemental balance again and thousands of people across the world gained air bending.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we know for a fact that the Lion Turtles didn’t disappear overnight. Even in the times of Aang there is still at least one Lion Turtle able to still give powers so it’s reasonable to think that over the millenia several other people (possibly not just Avatars) came in contact with Lion Turtles and got bending powers from them for different reasons and then passed down their bending to their children.
There is also a theory that Lion Turtles didn’t actually “gave” bending powers rather just unlocked the chakras to give them access to them in people that already had inherit powers. We know that chakra blocking was used by Amon to “remove” bending powers from people and it’s interesting to notice that in all cases where bending power is given/removed (Aang, Amon, Lion Turtles, Korra) they need to make contact with the forehead to remove/give the bending and it’s where the light chakra is located. We also know that chakras can be unlocked through meditation as Aang did with Guru Pathik and that the “blockage” is not a binary state where it’s either blocked or not but that chi can flow at least a little bit through a “blocked” chakra. Under this theory, it’s possible that a portion (or even all) of humans had some level of inherent access to bending but couldn’t use it due to a blocked chakra and that through unlocking that chakra gained access to it without a Lion Turtle’s help.
the lion turtles themselves were the only limiting factor, they tooka nd gave the ability out of mutual self preservations: by giving it to the humans they could survive and the lion turtle had a bunch of creatures it use in it’s defence when and if under attack. meanwhile it would also take the ability so the humans wouldn’t go ham on eachother while riding it’s back, potentially damaging the lion turtle, eventually killing it (death of a thousand cuts kinda thing). when yuan changed the deal, allowing humans to survive away from lion turtles, almost all of the turtles gave the ability to those who they thought would use it respensibily. setting it so that they’d keep it (which kinda happened before as well, the only way to lose it was having the turtle take it) and passing it along to some offspring. in my heacanon genetics playing a role means that only people with a certain disposition gained the ability to bend. essentialy making them: curious about the world, friendly towards those around them, generally healthy, intelligent, strong of will.