Yu.E. Berezkin, E.N. Duvakin

Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motifs by area

Analytical catalogue

Introduction
Bibliography
Ethnicities and habitats

E3. New people from old bones .25.43.48.52.59.62.63.65.72.

After the destruction of the previous world, new people (rarely: new land) are made from the remains of the dead.

Saisha, Skagit, Klamath, Modoc, Chimarico, Salinan, Aztecs, Wapishana, Puinave, Surui, Huancavelica.

Taiwan - Philippines. Saisya [water flooded the ground, brother and sister escaped to the mountain; after the flood, they put the bodies of the drowned in a deck (in hohle Hölzer), filled them with water, and the children came out and parted in four directions]: Ino 1908:220 on Walk 1949:97.

The coast is the Plateau. Skagit [Creator tells the hero to pile up the bones of those killed by the flood; new people emerge from them]: Clark 1953:140; Klamath [The creator and his daughter descend into the spirit world; spirits they dance at night, turn into bones during the day; The creator must keep his eyes closed; wants to repopulate the earth, collects bones in a basket, carries them to the ground, makes bones into different tribes]: Gatshet 1890:79- 84 in Clark 1966:133; modoc [during initiation, daughter Kumush 'a dreams of someone dying; that means she will die herself; K. reluctantly gives her funeral clothes; she dies as soon as she dies puts it on; K. follows her to the lower world; spirits dance at night, lie in a pile of bones during the day; K. collects a basket of bones, stumbles along the road; on the third attempt, brings the bones to the ground, throws them into different parties, saying which tribes will emerge from them and what they will be; modoc are few but brave; names all types of fish, plant and animal foods; goes with his daughter to the sunrise, then to the zenith by the Sun's way to the place where he stops at noon; K. builds a house there, lives in it now]: Curtin 1912:39-45.

California. Chimarico [during the flood, the Frog swims in the boat, the Otter and the Mink in the water; the frog finds the rib of a drowned person; it turns into a girl; she grows up; the Frog (?) marries her; people are their descendants]: Dixon 1910b, No. 2:346; salinan [after the flood, the Eagle sends a Coyote to bring the bones of the drowned; creates people from different tribes from them]: Mason 1912:191.

Mesoamerica The Aztecs [after raising the sky, Quetzalcoatl went to the underworld, asked its owner and mistress for human bones; the owner told him to blow into the horn first; K. asked the worms to do in holes in the bones, put beans there; blew into the horn; the owner changed his mind, ordered to leave the bones; nagual K. advised me to say, Yes, pick up the bones yourself; the owner ordered to dig a hole on K.'s way; quails they frightened K., he fell, dropped his bones; brought only fragments; in the upper world, the goddess Sinaconatl-Kitaztli grinded them into flour, all the gods injured their penises, moistened the flour with blood; this is how people appeared]: Bierhorst 1992 [Codex Chimalpopoca; the fact that bones are broken may explain why today's humans are smaller than the giants that inhabited the earth before (as in Histoyre du Méchique), or why humans are different heights (as in Mendieta, lib.2, cap.1)]: 145-146; Krickeberg 1928:10-11; Aztecs (16th century) [after the destruction of the first world, the goddess Tlaltentl (Tlalteutli) was the land itself, some say she was a woman and others a man; Tezcatlipuca entered her through her mouth and Ehecatl through her navel, both penetrated her heart in the depths of the earth, raised the sky, helped them with this; Eekatl (according to Mendiet - Scholotl, note 6 at p. 26) descended to hell to Mitlantentli? carried the ashes of the dead and a huge bone from there, but it broke on the ground, so the new people turned out to be small, and the people of the first world were giants; the gods sprinkled blood from their tongue, created man and woman; according to another version (pp. 28-29), the goddess of the earth was Atlalteutli (=Ilamatecutli, the "old goddess", she had eyes and mouths in all her joints, she bit them like a predatory creature; Quetzalcoatl (aka Eecatl) and Tezcatlipoca took her one by the right hand and left leg, the other by her left arm and right leg, tore her, made the earth out of one half, and the sky out of the other; to comfort her, they said that her hair would become trees, herbs and flowers, her skin would become low grass and little flowers, her mouths would become rivers and large caves, her nose would become valleys, her shoulders would become mountains; this goddess cries at night and did not calms down until it is given humans (to be eaten) and bears fruit unless it is irrigated with human blood]: Histoyre du Mechique 1905, ch. 7:25-29.

Guiana. After the flood. Wapishana [Tominikare tells Noah that the world will die; people do not believe N.; it is raining, the water rises to the sky; it is dark; when the bindorinha bird sang, it is a little dawn; N. sent soc & #243; to find out if the earth was dry, he did not return; the seagull found the ground, reported that it was dry; blowing on the bones of the dead, N. revived them]: Wirth 1950:170-171; aparai [after the flood, Kuzhulis finds human bones in fish bellies; makes them new people]: Rauschert 1967, No. 6:182.

NW Amazon. Puinawa [the first humans lived above the clouds; the monkey quarreled with them, they died fighting each other; a woman stayed, collected bones, put them to dry on the roof of the house; Tú arose from them pana, his brother Qáitan, their sisters Máunuddua and Amárrundua; T. killed his adopted mother, made her flesh into the underworld; underground people are dwarfs; they eat cassava, they have no fish in their rivers; they hardly hunt, because the animals in their world are huge; T. descended from the sky, blew into a rolled leaf, summoned some underground people to the ground through a hole on the Isana River, where the center of the world is; blew on them through a leaf tobacco, people have become normal; taught culture; some are plotting to kill T.; he sends a flood, allows the good to escape]: Waldegg 1942:195 in Wilbert 1963:110.

Central Amazon. Surui [the jaguars have devoured all humans, the bones are hung along the path on a rope; Palop pushes the stone down the hill, tells two species of deer to run ahead; the marsh deer runs faster than the stone; P. smears it with a bitter composition, sends it to the jaguars; they lick it, make sure that its taste is disgusting; the bee gnaws through the rope with bones; the deer runs away, carrying the bones of various endogamous surui groups; P. fumigates them tobacco, turns into people; makes teeth from corn kernels, so people's teeth are fragile]: Mindlin 1995, No. 9:66-68.

The Central Andes. Dep. Huancavelica [after the flood, new land emerges from the bones of the inhabitants of the lost world]: Ortis Rescaniere 1987:197.

(Wed. Chaco. Ayoreo [(the text is called the first woman); two birds collected bones, made them a woman, she came to life; later died; another bird (this is a woman) seduced other people's husbands; women killed her; men collected her bones, made two women; one died, the other was reborn as before]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1989b, No. 65:115-116).