The while ear of corn had been transformed into our most ancient male ancestor. And the yellow ear of com had been transformed into our most female ancestor.
It was the wind that had given them life: the very wind that gives us our breath as we go about our daily affairs here in the world we ourselves live in!
When the wind ceases to blow inside of us, we become speechless. Then we die.
In the skin at the tips of our fingers we can see the trail of that life-giving wind.
Look carefully at your own fingertips.
There you will see where the wind blew when it created your most ancient ancestors out of two ears of corn, it is said. (Zolbrod 50-51)
For the Mayans, humans were first created in the same corn grinding process one uses to make cornmeal or bread. This implies that humans are no more than food for the gods, and subject to their hungers and desires. A story of this kind helps discourage hubris, or the god-like superiority of humankind, because it suggests that we could be eaten or otherwise disposed of should we fall out of favor with the gods. The Navajo, on the other hand, actually equate their origins with the ear of corn itself. This equates humans with the regenerative function of the corn plant, because the ear is the plant’s “child” or offspring. The gods are still acknowledged as the “parents” or creators, and the wind’s involvement is akin to the fertilization of the plant through pollenization. This perspective regulates humans to a subservient position, but one with more potential equality upon maturity to the gods than the Mayans.
Thus, both accounts demonstrate how humanity is lined inextricably to corn. That people are tied so strongly with a food item suggests that humanity is not above even the simplest plant life on the food chain, and that agriculture is not just a matter of survival, but of physically tending to one’s soul, ancestors and family. Seen in this perspective, cultivators of corn are helping future people be born, former people to be laid to rest, while also, psychologically, connecting with a part of oneself psychoanalysts would like to relegate to an intangible unconscious. It is this connection to one’s food that is missing from modern times, perhaps as a result of the floating gap, phase two. Food is now seen as a commodity to be consumed and subservient to the whims of farmers.
Corn and Resurrection
Just as humans have long questioned their origins, so they have also questioned what happens when they die. Both the Aztecs and the Mayans have a parallel story that equates corn with resurrection. In both cases, a particular god or gods descend to the underworld on a mission to bring back the bones of the original twins. Their return comes with the bringing of corn to the overland. In the Mayan Popol Vuh, the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque descend to the underworld to rescue their father, One Hunahpu, and uncle, Seven Hunahpu. Before leaving on their journey, the twins advised their grandmother to watch the corn they planted.
We’re on our way, dear grandmother. We’re just giving you instructions. So here is the sign of our word. We’ll leave it with you. Each of us will plant our ear of corn. We’ll plant them in the center of our house. When the corn dries up, this will be a sign of our death:
“Perhaps they died,” you’ll say, when it dries up. And then the sprouting comes: / “Perhaps they live,” you’ll say, our dear grandmother and mother. From now on, this is the sign of our word. We’re leaving it with you,’ they said, then they left. (Tedlock 116)
The twins are tested in the underworld, eventually meeting their death – ground up and baked like cornbread. Note the similarity to the origins of humans in the same manner. They resurrect in the underworld, rehydrated by the water, like seeds flowering under the nourishment of water. Impervious to death, they conquer Xibalba. Meanwhile, their grandmother watched their journey imitated in the corn they have planted: “Corn plants grew, then dried up. / And this was when they were burned in the oven; then the corn plants grew again” (139).
The divine cycle of life is linked to the events of the underworld and is reflected in the seasonal death and resurrection of the corn plant. Similarly, the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl is linked with a similar process: In Fragment A, “The Restoration of Life,” Quetzalcoatl descends to the underworld to collect the precious bones from Dead Land Lord and Dead Land Lady. His return is delayed, because he fell unconscious and the precious bones were scattered. He collects them and brings them to Quilaztli, who grinds them, and Quetzalcoatl ejaculates on them, creating the servants of the gods, or, humans (Bierhorst 19). Rather than creating humans from corn, Quetzalcoatl creates them from the bones taken from the underworld. The issue of corn comes from trying to figure out how to feed the new creation. Quetzalcoatl is lead to the Food Mountain by an ant. When Quetzalcoatl breaks the mountain open, corn is introduced to the world (20). Unlike the Mayans, Quetzalcoatl’s journey to the underworld is not mimicked by the corn plant. Rather, it is because of his journey that the corn plant exists in the world at all. Humanity is created from the bones of the underworld, suggesting that the Aztecs, human origins are linked to a divine realm and that Quetzalcoatl is a spiritual hero for bringing them to the surface. Corn is viewed as a pure food source, used for feeding the new humans recently resurrected from the bones of the underworld. In the Popol Vuh, the connection between life and death is clearer. As Hunahpu and Xbalanque died in the underworld, so the corn plant “died” in the upper, and when they came back to life, so did the corn plant by blooming and bearing fruit.