Across Timor, including the Mambai highlands, the island itself is told to be the body of a great crocodile. In the origin tale a small crocodile, saved and reared by a boy, grows vast and bears his human friend across the sea; at death the grateful crocodile's body swells and hardens into the mountainous island of Timor, its ridged spine becoming the central cordillera on whose heights the Mambai dwell. Revered as a grandfather and ancestor, the crocodile is treated with ritual respect as elder kin. Sources present the crocodile-island myth as a shared Timorese charter of the land's origin rather than the possession of any single group, the Mambai occupying the mountainous back of the creature.