A Maya woman from Campeche tells how her grandmother at the turn of the century told with delight that these wooden men were destroyed in a great flood, and the only survivors, a man named Noah and his family, became the monkeys from which all other primates are descended. The gods, however, refused to give up and then created a nurturing man made of maize. In the Judeo-Christian tradition man is made of dust and in Mesoamerica man is made of maize. Westerners are taught they will return to dust, and the Maya are taught they are nurturing beings. As survivors of an earlier creation, monkeys, then, are mankind's ancestors.
Monkeys are the spiritual progenitors of human beings.
Monkeys are, for the Maya, merely other kinds of people. This is one reason why the first Europeans to arrive in Mesoamerica were the source of such amusement. D. H. Lawrence was acutely aware of how his white flesh and hairy face made him ridiculous to the Zapotec in his employ. A certain resentment is evident when he writes of his experiences in Mexico for he found no comfort in being considered a kind of monkey. This notion of seeing others as non-human is not exclusively Mesoamerican, however.