The world tree is also represented in the mythologies and folklore of North Asia and Siberia. In the mythology of the Samoyeds, the world tree connects different realities (underworld, this world, upper world) together.
In the Buryat poems, near the root of the tree a snake named Abyrga dwells. He also reported a "Central Asian" narrative about the fight between the snake Abyrga and a bird named Garide - which he identified as a version of Indian Garuda. The world tree is visible in the designs of the Crown of Silla, Silla being one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.
Some scholars suggest that the world tree is programmed into the human mind by evolutionary biology. Theory suggests that human beings are primates, and lived in trees for around 60 million years.
For many Indigenous American peoples located in more temperate regions for example, it is the spruce rather than the ceiba that is the world tree; however the idea of cosmic directions combined with a concept of a tree uniting the directional planes is similar.
The world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the terrestrial world, and, through its roots, the underworld.
The central world tree has also been interpreted as a representation of the band of the Milky Way.
Scholarship points out the presence of the motif in Central Asian and North Eurasian epic tradition: a world tree named Bai-Terek in Altai and Kyrgyz epics; a "sacred tree with nine branches" in the Buryat epic.
The Ashvattha tree ('keeper of horses') is described as a sacred fig and corresponds to "the most typical representation of the world tree in India", upon whose branches the celestial bodies rest. Likewise, the Kalpavriksha is also equated with a fig tree and said to possess wish-granting abilities.
Roman mythology. In Roman mythology the world tree was the olive tree, that was associated with Pax. The Greek equivalent of Pax is Eirene, one of the Horae. The Sacred tree of the Roman Sky father Jupiter was the oak, the laurel was the Sacred tree of Apollo.
Some species of birds ( eagle, raven, crane, loon, and lark) are revered as mediators between worlds and also connected to the imagery of the world tree.
In the epic quest for the Golden Fleece of Argonautica, the object of the quest is found in the realm of Colchis, hanging on a tree guarded by a never-sleeping dragon (the Colchian dragon ).