Pinsbkan is the sacred origin-rock of a large part of the Atayal nation. In the emergence myth the primordial stone bursts open and the first human beings step forth, from whom the lineages spread out across the mountains; Atayal genealogical tradition remembers Pinsbkan as the point from which the ancestors migrated in successive waves to their later valleys. The site is localized in the highlands of Nantou, near Ruiyan in present-day Ren'ai. Sources differ on whether the true place of origin was Pinsbkan or the crag Papak-Waqa, and different groups preserve the memory differently, but in both traditions the ancestors are born not of a womb but of the living rock of the homeland.