Case file · Folklore / legend
Koch-Grünberg records Makunaima
The German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg published in 1916 the myths of the Pemón (Taurepang and Arekuna) around Roraima, centred on the trickster creator Makunaima and the world tree whose stump became the mountain.
1916 CE · 5.10, -60.75 · status: legend
The account
He recorded them during his 1911-13 expedition from Roraima to the Orinoco. Mário de Andrade turned Makunaima into the hero of the Brazilian modernist novel Macunaíma (1928).
The sceptical view
Pemón people today stress that Makunaima stories are their own sacred history, not a literary invention.