Avatar: who taught bending first

[List]

I really love avatar's world and lore but this part of the avatar lore is really confusing me.

First of all, in the last air bender it's always mentioned that bending was taught originally by different animals. badgermoles for earth, sky bisons for air, dragons for fire, and the moon/koi for water. They spicifically Oma and Shu being the first earth benders.

Then in Korra, specifically Wan's flashback, it's the different lionturtles that give/teach people the different bending.

Can someone clarify this. Am I misunderstanding something here?

 

[SajuukKhar]

IIRC, the accepted theory is that the turtles gave humans bending powers, but it was the animals/moon who taught them how to actually master the bending instead of just flailing their arms about like idiots to shoot fire or w/e.

They were GIVEN bending by the turtles, but they were TAUGHT how to bend by the animals/moon.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I really love avatar's world and lore but this part of the avatar lore is really confusing me.

First of all, in the last air bender it's always mentioned that bending was taught originally by different animals. badgermoles for earth, sky bisons for air, dragons for fire, and the moon/koi for water. They spicifically Oma and Shu being the first earth benders.

Then in Korra, specifically Wu's flashback, it's the different lionturtles that give/teach people the different bending.

Can someone clarify this. Am I misunderstanding something here?

There's a difference between giving people the ability to bend, and teaching people the optimal ways to use it.

The lion turtles gave people the innate ability to manipulate the elements, but the various animals were the ones who taught people the various bending techniques (or rather the bending techniques were developed by people after watching the ways that animals used those abilities).

Like with Toph, she had the ability to earthbend since birth, but the extent of it was minor (basically just pushing around rocks a little), but the badger moles taught her how to use her earthbending to see using vibrations in the earth, which is what made her such a powerful bender, and then she used that ability to figure out that there were impurities in metal which she could use to bend it, something no one had ever thought of before because they couldn't see the composition of metals the way that Toph could.

Neither of these things contradict each other.