The Gods did not give up until they created man. And we are made of corn.
According to the Popol Vuh, the gods decided to create a being that would worship and make offerings to them. In this process their first attempt failed because they created beings incapable of speaking: four-legged animals and birds. They then created the first humans, first of clay, then of wood and finally of straw, but they were got destroyed and the latter turned into monkeys. In a last attempt the gods used corn -the sacred plant of all Meso-American cultures- to create humanity, and those men were the ancestors of the Maya.