Numboolyu is the primal male ancestor in the cosmogony of the Sambia, the Angan people of the eastern highlands fringe documented by Gilbert Herdt. In the myth of the first parents he belongs to the founding generation from which humankind descends, and the narrative accounts for the origin of reproduction, of vital substance and of bodily growth. It serves as the charter for the male initiatory practices at the centre of Sambia ritual life. The primal pair are described with some variation between tellings, and the ancestor's name is bound up with the sacred flutes, the namboolu, whose secret was said once to have belonged to women before it passed to men.