an ancient CREATION STORY

Mayan Creation Story

"God made some men of mud, but they were very soft and limp and couldn't see. They could speak, but what they said didn't make sense. When they got wet the couldn't even stand up. God saw that they were of no use so he broke them up and said "I will try again".
Then he made men out of wood. The wooden men were better; they could walk and talk. They built houses and had children, and there were very many of them. But they were dry and yellow, and their faces had no expression, because they had no minds nor souls or hearts. They beat their dogs and they burned the bottoms of their cooking pots. They had forgotten how they were made and could not remember any of the names of God. So he said, "These men will not do either. I must destroy them also".

And he sent a great flood and the houses of the wooden men fell down. The wooden men wanted to escape, but the animals they had starved and beaten, and cooking pots they had burned, and the trees whose branches they had chopped off, all turned against them and wouldn't help them. Only a few of them escaped from the flood, and it is said that their descendants are the monkeys. And it still hadn't dawned; and God wanted to make real men when the dawn came and the sun rose.

. . . He took ears of yellow corn of white corn and ground them into meal. With the corn meal he make nine kinds of liquor, and these became man's strength and energies. With the dough of the meal he shaped the body and he made four men, very strong and handsome. They were called the Wizard of the Fatal Laugh, the Wizard of the Night, the Careless and the Black Wizard...They were gifted with intelligence and they managed to know everything there is in the world. While the men slept, he made four women very carefully, and when the men woke, each found at his side a beautiful wife.

. . . When they looked they would see everything that was around them, and they constantly contemplated the arch of the sky and the round face of the earth. "Thank you for our life!" they said. "We can see, we can hear, we can move and think and speak, we feel and know everything, we can see everything in the earth and in the sky. Thank you for having made us, Oh Father!"
Then the Creator was troubled, for he realized that these men could see too much and too far, so that they would not really be men, but gods. He saw that he had to change them so that they could be what he needed. So he leaned down and blew mist in their eyes and clouded their vision, like breathing on a mirror, and from then on nothing was clear to their sight except what was close to them.

The four men and their wives went up on a mountain and waited for the dawn. First they saw the shining face of the great star, the Morning Star which comes ahead of the sun, and burned incense and unwrapped three gifts to offer the sun.
Then the sun came up. Then the puma and the jaguar roared and all the birds stretched their wings and sang, and the men and their wives danced with joy because the sun had risen."

From the Popul-Vuh of the Quiche Maya