Page:Myths of Mexico and Peru.djvu/372

 grasped the idea of a creator capable of evolving matter out of nothingness. Occasionally we find the sun acting as a kind of demiurge or sub-creator. He it is who in later legend founds the city of Cuzco, and sends thither three eggs composed of gold, silver, and copper, from which spring the three classes of Peruvians, kings, priests, and slaves. The inevitable deluge occurs, after which we find the prehistoric town of Tiahuanaco regarded as the theatre of a new creation of man. Here the creator made man, and separated him into nations, making one of each nation out of the clay of the earth, painting the dresses that each was to wear, and endowing them with national songs, languages, seeds to sow suitable to the environment of each, and food such as they would require. Then he gave the peoples life and soul, and commanded them to enter the bowels of the earth, whence they came upward in the places where he ordered them to go. Perhaps this is one of the most complete ("wholesale" would be a better word) creation-myths in existence, and we can glean from its very completeness that it is by no means of simple origin, but of great complexity. It is obviously an attempt to harmonise several conflicting creation-stories, notably those in which the people are spoken of as emanating from caves, and the later one of the creation of men at Tiahuanaco, probably suggested to the Incas by the immense ruins at that place, for which they could not otherwise account.

Local Creation-Myths

In some of the more isolated valleys of Peru we discover local creation-myths. For example, in the coastal valley of Irma Pachacamac was not considered to be the creator of the sun, but to be himself a descendant of it. The first human beings created by 258