The first woman is the female origin of the sacred flutes and, in the wider Baruya myth, of nearly all the powers the men now claim. Women existed before men, and it was a woman who made the first flute; she is also credited with inventing the bow, the cultivated plants, life itself, and the initiations. Because her creativity was held to be as destructive as it was fertile, the men seized these things from her by force or cunning, above all the flutes, which they hid and refashioned as the secret instruments of the male cult. The flutes keep the trace of their maker in their secret name, namboula-mala, which the men also use for the woman's vagina, so that the men's holiest object is understood to hold the generative power of the woman from whom it was taken. Sources vary on whether this primordial woman bears a personal name or stands simply as 'the woman' of the myth.