Prometheus and Epimetheus — distributing the features
Agent: Epimetheus, who assigned the faculties; Prometheus, who corrected the shortfall
Source / date: Plato, Protagoras 320d–321c, c. 380 BCE
Reference: Protagoras (dialogue)
The one ancient text that describes creation as allocating specific features to specific species, on a budget, with balance as the design constraint. It is the closest thing in antiquity to a spec sheet for the animal kingdom.
Class: Myth, epic or temple theology names a craftsman of living forms. Recorded, not tested.
The allocation
Plato has Protagoras tell it. The gods form the mortal kinds and hand Epimetheus the job of distributing the powers. He works through them one at a time: strength to some, speed to others; some get claws, others hides, hooves, thick fur, wings, underground refuge. He gives some large size, some small. He arranges diets so that predators breed sparsely and prey abundantly, so that no kind is wiped out.
Then he runs out. Humanity is left naked, unshod, unarmed, and Prometheus steals craft-skill and fire from Hephaestus and Athena to make up the deficit.
Why it is worth reading closely
Every element of a design process is present and explicit: a feature list, a per-species assignment, a conservation constraint across the whole system, a resource limit, and a patch when the allocation fails. It is the ancient world’s most complete statement of the idea that species have the traits they have because someone decided which ones got what.
It is filed as tradition, and one thing should be said plainly: Plato is telling a story inside a dialogue, put in the mouth of a sophist, to make a point about whether virtue can be taught. It is a philosophical fable, not a claim its author asks anyone to believe as history. That does not make it less interesting here — it makes it a very old articulation of the idea, which is a different thing from a very old report.