Ngutapa is the primordial being of Tikuna cosmogony, the ancestor who stands before the ordered world. In the canonical account he was bathing in a stream when wasps dispatched by his wife stung his knees, which swelled enormously; from the right knee issued the elder hero Yoi together with his sister Mowatcha, and from the left the younger hero Ipi with his sister Aicuna, each pair already occupied with the arts of blowgun, net, bow and weaving. From his body thus descends the whole subsequent generation of world-shapers. Sources differ over whether Ngutapa is better understood as a creator deity or as a primordial ancestor, since his generative act rather than any sustained rule defines him.