Eldest son of Wei (the Sun) by the mortal Pemon woman Aromadapuén; central culture-hero, trickster, and protagonist of the foundational cosmogonic cycle of the Pemón (Carib-speaking peoples of the Guiana Highlands spanning Venezuela, Guyana, and northern Brazil — including the Arekuna, Kamarakoto, Taurepan, Macuxi, Ingarikó, and Mapoyo subgroups). The cycle was first recorded in detail by the German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grünberg from the Pemón storyteller Mayuluaipu in his expedition of 1911-1913, published as Vom Roraima zum Orinoco (5 vols., 1916-1928). The Pemón-five-brother form (Makunaima, Zigué, Wacalambé, Anzikilán, Ma'nápe) is preserved in María Manuela de Cora's Kuai-Mare (1957); the Macuxi-three-brother form (Makunaima, Anikê, Insikiran) continues in the erenkon songs sung at caxiri-feast pantonkon ceremonies in the present day. Pemon and Macuxi-Kapon groups identify themselves as common descendants of these mythic-hero brothers, the kinship-foundation of the Yomba (Pemon) / Tomba-Domba (Kapon) shared-identity. The defining act of the cycle is Makunaima's felling of the Wazacá tree — the Tree of Life that bore every cultivated and wild plant — which released the Great Flood and left a stump that became Mount Roraima, the source of the rivers that pass through Pemon territory. The post-Wazacá tepui-shaping journeys established the forms of Iru-tepui, Aparmán, Apakará, Chimaté, and Auyan-tepui (over which Angel Falls plunges), and the social-practice norms of the post-flood world. The figure passed into 20th-century Brazilian literature through Mário de Andrade's 1928 modernist novel Macunaíma: O herói sem nenhum caráter, drawn from Koch-Grünberg's ethnography — the literary reception is itself the subject of continuing scholarly attention (Lúcia Sá, Rain Forest Literatures, 2004).