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| This Guatemalan vessel, dated around 650 AD to 850 AD, has bat heads painted on it. From LACMA. |
All kinds of bats (or zotz (also
spelled sotz') in a lot of Mayan languages) live in the Maya area. It makes
sense then, that bats became part of the Maya civilization, including religious
beliefs, their writing system, and their calendar.
What the Maya Thought of Bats
Two things the ancient Maya
connected bats to were caves and the underworld -- they also thought that bats
were messengers from the underworld. The Maya also connected bats with
sacrifice -- they drew bats with symbols of sacrifice, like “death eyes” around
their neck (or on their wings) and a sort of split scroll coming out of its
mouth that might be a symbol for blood.
Three other possible views the ancient
Maya may have had – according to a paper called Bats and the Camazotz:
Correcting a Century of Mistaken Identity are: as a wahy,
a choice for a city name, and as a pollinator.
The Bat God
Starting with Eduard Seler’s
conclusion about images on a pot, it’s now thought that the ancient Maya
believed in a bat god – archaeologists call this god Cama Zotz’. This name
comes from a bat god in the Popol Vuh, a Quiche (also K’iche’) “bible”. This
god was connected with death. (It must be said though, that Maya experts don’t
have a lot of info about this god outside of vessels taken from burials found
in the Maya highlands.)
However, the paper Bats and
Camazotz not only has the view people interpret bat images as this
deity too often – but also doubts that Seler’s conclusion was right. (This
doubt comes from the fact that they haven’t found any pre-contact images of the
Hero Twins in the House of Bats.)
Agricultural Significance
Speaking of pollination, a lot of
plants that the ancient Maya used were pollinated by creatures (as opposed to
wind pollination, like corn.) This includes certain kinds of bats, like
Underwood's long-tongued bat (Hylonycteris underwoodi).
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| A detail from an image of Haab months from An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs. From Project Gutenberg. |
In Mayan Writing
The Maya had different glyphs (or
perhaps versions of one glyph) that were bat heads – and they used these bat
glyphs (or perhaps versions of one bat glyph) in different ways. For one thing,
it looks like they may have used it (or them) for several syllables, including
“xu” and “tz’i”. (As to whether or not there is more than one distinct bat
glyph, that seems to be under debate.)
They also used a bat head glyph as
a logogram, and when they did you will see descriptions that say you pronounce
it zotz/sotz’. (There is a theory that in Classic Period inscriptions, though,
it ought perhaps to be pronounced sutz’.) They used this logogram for the
fourth month of the solar calendar (the Haab.)
A bat glyph was also used to
represent "mother of" or “mother of child” in inscriptions --
specifically, for when the mother of that person was alive. For this, the bat
glyph also has two syllable signs with it, one for “ya” and one for “na.”
Bat glyphs have also been used as
part of “emblem glyphs” or city names. Both Calakmul and Copan had a glyph that
was a bat head as part of their emblem glyphs. (Calakmul also had an emblem
glyph that used a snake’s head instead of a bat’s head.)
According to a 2009 paper by Erik Boot, people tend to accept that that the model for the glyph was a species of leaf-nosed vampire bat. This paper also wonders if the model might have been the American false vampire bat because ancient Maya art liked to show powerful carnivores, like alligators and jaguars. (The American false vampire bat is the biggest you can find in North America – at the largest, its wingspan can be as wide as three feet!)
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