San Bartolo (Maya Site) - Other Parallels

Other Parallels

For an explanation of many of the mural scenes, the Popol Vuh hardly offers clues, and scholars have started to look in other directions. The three maize god scenes of the western mural, for example, have been suggested to refer to present-day Gulf Coast myths about a maize god subduing the gods of thunder and lightning and creating the conditions for agriculture. The calabash scene of the northern mural, on the other hand, may constitute (as Van Akkeren has suggested) an illustration of a Pipil myth concerning a group of young boys (rain deities) born, together with their 'youngest brother' (Nanahuatzin), from a gourd tree. In this myth, Nanahuatzin is the one who opens the Maize Mountain and introduces agriculture. At the same time, the author interprets the calabash - now taken as a vine gourd (Maya tsu) - together with its four surrounding babies as a symbol for a place of origins often mentioned in Highland Maya sources, Suywa or Tsuywa, to be situated somewhere in the Gulf Coast region.