Zipacna (Mountain Mover) Son of the giant stone man Vukub-Cakix from the Quiché myths recorded in the PoPol Vuh. The family had amazing powers that made them very boastful and arrogant.
Vukub-Cakix had a body made of precious metals that he claimed made him shine brighter than the Sun and Moon. His son Cabrakan had the power to shake the Earth, while Zipacna had the power to build and move mountains. Every day, Zipacna dug up dirt and piled it into mountains, and then his brother shook the ground hard enough to crumble the mountains. This caused so much chaos on Earth that the gods decided to send the Hero Twins to destroy Vukub-Cakix and his sons. After killing Vukub-Cakix, the twins devised a plan to kill the brothers. They enlisted the help of 400 teenagers, who were excavating land to build a house. The teenagers wanted to cover the roof with tree branches, so they asked Zipacna if he could move a huge tree to the building site. Flattered, Zipacna easily balanced the tree on his shoulder and brought it to the site. Then the 400 teenagers asked if he would help them dig a ditch. Again, he agreed, but as he was working, the teenagers pitched dozens of tree trunks into the ditch to kill him. Zipacna managed to escape by ducking into a side tunnel. To fool his enemies, he cut off his hair and bit off his nails and gave them to the ants to carry to the surface. When the teenagers saw what the ants were carrying, they took it as a sign that Zipacna was dead. That night, the 400 teenagers celebrated by getting drunk on pulque. Silently, Zipacna rose from his hiding place and shook the house where they slept. He killed all but a handful of the youngest, who fled to the sky and became the constellation Plieades. Finally, the Hero Twins devised a better plan to kill Zipacna. He liked to eat seafood and would often enter one particularly deep cavern to find the tastiest crabs. First, the twins created an artificial crab to lure him deep inside the cavern. Next, they dug out a hole in the neighboring mountain. When Zipacna entered the cavern, it triggered an avalanche of dirt and stone, burying him and turning his corpse into stone. In other Mayan stories, Zipacna was the lord of dawn who killed 400 stars in the sky, which Hunahpu, one of the Hero Twins, put back every night.
SEE ALSO:
South and Meso-American Mythology A to Z – by Ann Bingham (Author) and Jeremy Roberts (Author)