The first man begins the Makonde origin narrative as a solitary 'manlike being' wandering the wilderness. To end his loneliness he carves a figure of wood and props it against a tree; when the figure becomes a living woman at sunrise, he is himself transformed into a true man. The two bathe in the Ruvuma river and become wholly human, and from their union (after the loss of children born by the river and on the lower ground) descend the Makonde of the plateau. Because the people are matrilineal, tradition centres the lineage on the woman he made rather than on him, and his defining act, the carving of life from wood, is remembered as the mythic origin of Makonde sculpture.