The Popol Vuh

your sake. Now you shall feel our strength, and we will grind your flesh and make meal of your bodies." And the dogs upbraided the mannikins because they had not been fed, and tore the unhappy images with their teeth. And the cups and dishes said, "Pain and misery you gave us, smoking our tops and sides, cooking us over the fire, burning and hurting us as if we had no feeling. Now it is your turn, and you shall burn." Then ran the mannikins hither and thither in despair. They climbed to the roofs of the houses, but the houses crumbled under their feet; they tried to mount to the tops of the trees, but the trees hurled them from them; they sought refuge in the caverns, but the caverns closed before them. Thus was accomplished the ruin of this race, destined to be overthrown. In K'iche' mythology, this event explains the transition from the age of wood to the age of true humans, where the gods finally succeed in creating people capable of prayer and sacrifice. And it is said that their posterity are the little monkeys who live in the woods. The K'iche' believed that monkeys were not ancestors of humans, but rather the surviving remnants of a failed, earlier version of humanity.

THE MYTH OF VUKUB-CAKIX

After this catastrophe, ere yet the earth was quite recovered from the wrath of the gods, there existed a man "full of pride," whose name was Vukub-Cakix More commonly known today as Seven Macaw; a monstrous bird-demon of the underworld who claimed to be the sun and the moon in a world that was still dark.. The name signifies "Seven-times-the-colour-of-fire," or "Very brilliant," and was justified by the fact that its owner's eyes were of silver, his teeth of emerald, and other parts of his anatomy of precious metals. In his own opinion