po00020_c

Just as, from the middle-east, the Hebrew bible records the story of creation of the cosmos, the creation of humans and so forth in Genesis, so too does the Popul Vuh, the south and meso-American equivalent literary collection of mythology. We can enter historical records of civilisation in this region at approximately the same time as we see earliest civilisations begin in the middle-east as well, some 10,500 to 7,000 years before now. However, besides the myths describing the historical archetypal characters in the narrative storyline intertwining the various epoch events, from the period prior to the earliest recorded history, when the Popul Vuh was first written down, we have many fossil and stone artefacts describing several distinct cultural phases in the civilisation of the south american continent. The Popul Vuh record begins after the world-flood, in the modern era, but before that, besides the relics that remain, the Popul Vuh's content is merely conjecture.