ANT 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 43: Yuri Knorozov, Epigraphy, Ethnography
Document Summary
Hero twins the central figures of a narrative included within the colonial k"iche" document called popol vuh, and constituting the oldest maya myth to have been preserved in its entirety. Wacah chan represented the three levels of the mayan universe. It was believed that all three universes were joined by a central tree. The roots of the tree plunged into the maya underworld and its branches reached into the overworld or the heavens. The central tree was associated with the color green and the four trees in the middle world were white, red, yellow, and black. The white tree represented the ancestral dead and the north, the red represented the rising sun and the east, the yellow represented the south and right hand of the sun, the black represented the west and the underworld. Kul ahaw means hol lord, what mayans call the king.
