When It Breathes, It Pours: Empirical Foundations for the Ancient Mesoamerican Reptilian Earth
and (UC Riverside)
Cosmological beliefs and empirical environmental phenomena were not discrete subjects for ancient peoples of Mesoamerica. Rather, empirical observations dialectically informed cosmological and metaphysical knowledge. As our own geological, archaeological, and iconographic understandings become increasingly nuanced, our efforts may further illuminate the beliefs of ancient people as they re-conceptualized their environment and created new representations of the natural world.
Common to many Mesoamerican cosmologies is the zoomorphic representation of the earth as a reptilian creature floating on the waters of the underworld. In addition, many depictions of the Mesoamerican zoomorphic earth illustrate the emanation of rain-bringing easterly winds from the cave-like maws of the earth. The open jaws of the reptilian earth also form an entrance to the watery underworld, a layer of the earth pierced by the world tree.
Ostensibly the products of Formative-era rationalism, recent findings reveal empirical elements that informed ancient cosmological and metaphysical beliefs about the reptilian earth. An analysis of environmental phenomena combined with interpretations of iconographic materials suggests that, for ancient Mesoamericans, environmental observations formed a base constituent of many cosmological models.