Folklore has it that at first there was only endless water and Dievas, but Dievas struck two stones together and, through sparks, produced Velnias to aid him in creation. He sent Velnias down under the water to retrieve a handful of earth from the bottom of the sea. Once Velnias does this, Dievas makes the land gradually grow. He sits on the land and falls asleep. Velnias is jealous of Dievas, and tries to throw him into the sea, but the expanding land makes the coast retreat from him as fast as he can run. Velnias runs all night and must eventually set Dievas down, exhausted when his creator wakes up in the morning. Dievas creates smooth earth and most animals, but Velnias creates swamps and hills to marr the surface of the land, as well as snakes and other dangerous animals. Dievas encounters an animal he can't remember creating, called man, and asked it who made it. The human/s reply that they don't know. Then Dievas remembered that he had spit in the spot that the human was while he was working, and accidentally created man from his saliva.

The Lithuanian creation story is a classic earth-diver myth, which appears in a number of mythologies. Not only are there similar creation stories about "God" in neighboring Slavic countries such as Slovenia and Russia, but there are similar diver myths in Asia and the Americas.