Noncomala is the principal creator of the Ngäbe (Guaymí), a Chibchan people of western Panama and adjacent Costa Rica. The cycle bearing his name was first recorded in the 1620s by the Dominican missionary Adrián de Santo Tomás (Adrián de Ufeldre) and was popularised in comparative scholarship by J. G. Frazer. Noncomala formed the earth and the waters while they still lay in darkness; wading into a river he encountered the water-sprite Rutbe, who bore him the Sun and the Moon, by whose light the world was illuminated. In a later episode he grew angry with humankind and overwhelmed the world with a flood, killing every man and woman, after which the benevolent god Nubu re-peopled the earth from preserved seed. Several modern ethnographers note that the name Noncomala does not survive in living vernacular tradition, where the creator-protector roles are instead borne by Nubu and the high god Ngöbö.