Titicaca, the inland sea of Peru. According to that myth, the
Children of the Sun, the ancestors of the Incas, came out of the earth
(as in Greek and African legends) at Lake Titicaca, or reached its
shores after wandering from the hole or cave whence they first emerged.
The myth, as adapted by the Incas, takes for granted the previous
existence of mankind, and, in some of its forms, the Inca period is
preceded by the deluge.

Of the Peruvian myth concerning the origin of things, the following
account is given by a Spanish priest, Christoval de Moluna, in a report
to the Bishop of Cuzco in 1570.(1) The story was collected from the
lips of ancient Peruvians and old native priests, who again drew their
information in part from the painted records reserved in the temple of
the sun near Cuzco. The legend begins with a deluge myth; a cataclysm
ended a period of human existence. All mankind perished except a man and
woman, who floated in a box to a distance of several hundred miles
from Cuzco. There the creator commanded them to settle, and there, like
Pund-jel in Australia, he made clay images of men of all races, attired
in their national dress, and then animated them. They were all fashioned
and painted as correct models, and were provided with their national
songs and with seed-corn. They then were put into the earth, and emerged
all over the world at the proper places, some (as in Africa and Greece)
coming out of fountains, some out of trees, some out of caves. For this
reason they made huacas (worshipful objects or fetishes) of the trees,
caves and fountains. Some of the earliest men were changed into stones,
others into falcons, condors and other creatures which we know were
totems in Peru. Probably this myth of metamorphosis was invented to
account for the reverence paid to totems or pacarissas as the Peruvians
called them. In Tiahuanaco, where the creation, or rather manufacture of
men took place, the creator turned many sinners into stones. The sun was
made in the shape of a man, and, as he soared into heaven, he called out
in a friendly fashion to Manco Ccapac, the Ideal first Inca, "Look upon
me as thy father, and worship me as thy father". In these fables the
creator is called Pachyachachi, "Teacher of the world". According to
Christoval, the creator and his sons were "eternal and unchangeable".
Among the Canaris men descend from the survivor of the deluge, and a
beautiful bird with the face of a woman, a siren i