Why did the Maya say people were made of maize?

In the Popol Vuh, the sacred narrative of the Kʼicheʼ Maya, the gods made humanity out of maize. That is why the grain was more than food: the Maya see in their staple crop, maize, a vital force with which they strongly identify.

The story goes that the gods tried more than once. The first humans, made of earth and mud, crumbled. The second, created from wood, did not function well and were washed away in a flood. Only when the gods turned to maize were humans successfully created. The Popol Vuh also tells of the Hero Twins, who have maize plants as alter egos, and of Maize Mountain, the place where the corn seeds were hidden, whose discovery and opening remains one of the most popular tales.

Everyday life matched the myth. The basic staples of the Maya diet were maize, beans and squashes. Kings were identified with the young maize god, whose gift of maize was the basis of Mesoamerican civilization, and the principal focus of the agricultural rites is the sowing and harvesting of the maize.

The Popol Vuh itself survived by a narrow path. It was preserved through oral tradition until about 1550, when it was recorded in writing, and today we read it largely thanks to an 18th-century Dominican friar. For the Maya, then, a cob of corn was a god, a person and a story at once.