The Creation of Humanity

When the Fifth Sun was created at Teotihuacan, the world stood empty. The gods had sacrificed themselves to set the sun in motion, but there were no humans to worship them, no hearts to feed the hungry sun. The surviving gods gathered to deliberate: humanity must be restored.

Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, lord of wind and wisdom, volunteered for the perilous mission. He would descend to Mictlan, the realm of the dead, and retrieve the bones of the humans who had perished in the previous world.

Mictlan lay at the end of a four-year journey through nine levels of torment. Quetzalcoatl traveled to its depths, where he found Mictlantecuhtli, the Lord of the Dead, and his wife Mictecacihuatl seated upon thrones of bone.

"I have come for the precious bones," Quetzalcoatl announced. "The gods need them to restore humanity."

Mictlantecuhtli considered. He did not wish to surrender his treasures, but he could not directly refuse a great god. "You may take them," he said slyly, "if you can complete a single task. Take this conch-shell trumpet and blow it while circling my realm four times."

But the conch-shell had no holes. It could not sound.

Quetzalcoatl was not deceived. He summoned worms to bore holes through the shell and bees to crawl inside and fill it with their buzzing. When he blew the modified trumpet, its sound echoed through all the levels of Mictlan. Reluctantly, Mictlantecuhtli told him where the bones were kept.

Quetzalcoatl gathered the bones—those of a man and those of a woman—and bound them in a bundle. But as he began his ascent, Mictlantecuhtli's heart filled with regret. He ordered his servants to dig a pit in Quetzalcoatl's path and fill it with quail.

As Quetzalcoatl strode upward, the quail burst from the pit in a great flock. Startled, the god stumbled and fell. The precious bones scattered and broke, which is why humans are born in different sizes. The quail pecked at the bones, marking them forever.

Despite the damage, Quetzalcoatl gathered the broken bones and continued to the surface. He brought them to Tamoanchan, the place of origin, where the goddess Cihuacoatl ground them into powder in a jade bowl.

The gods assembled around the bowl. To give life to the bone-dust, blood was needed—divine blood. Quetzalcoatl drew an obsidian blade and pierced his own flesh, letting his blood flow over the powdered bones. Other gods followed his example.

From this mixture of bone and divine blood, the first humans of the Fifth Sun were born: the Macehualli, "those deserved through penance." They were called this because the gods had suffered and sacrificed to create them.

This is why the Aztecs offered blood sacrifice—not as cruelty, but as repayment. The gods bled to create humanity; humanity must bleed to sustain the gods. The sun needed hearts to continue its journey. The earth needed blood to remain fertile. All of existence was bound together by this covenant of sacrifice.

Quetzalcoatl had proven that even gods must give of themselves for creation. His blood, mingled with the bones of the ancient dead, flows in the veins of every human being.