Roal (also Ruwal) is the creator spirit of the Q'ero communities of the Cusco highlands, first documented during the 1955 Cusco university expedition to Q'ero led by Óscar Núñez del Prado and Efraín Morote Best. In the Q'ero cosmogony the world before the present age belonged to the ñawpa machu, the ancient ones who lived by the light of the moon; when the present sun rose, Roal, the chief of the apus, created the primordial couple Inkarrí and Qollari and gave Inkarrí a golden rod with which to found a great people. Roal stands at the apex of the hierarchy of mountain lords described for southern Peru, above the regional and local apus, and is distinct from the imperial Inca creator Viracocha, belonging instead to the post-conquest oral tradition of the Quechua herding communities.