UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal

This story was inspired by a scene in Allen Christenson’s translation of The Popol Vuh, the ancient Mayan creation myth. In it, the Farmer and the Shaper, the Mayan world creators, have decided to make beings out of earth and mud to worship them. However, these mud people fell apart and spoke in gibberish. This disappointed the creators so they destroyed them. I liked the mud people, when I read The Popol Vuh. They just seemed sort of silly and sad, and they only had a few sentences for their whole existence. I wanted to give them more of a voice.