d to be
of a round shape."(12) As a contrast to this conception, the influence of
which is also obvious in the form of the round temples and towers of the
ruined cities of Central America, I would cite the allusions to the solid
earth contained in the sacred books of the Mayas, the Popol Vuh, as being
"the quadrated earth, four-cornered, four-sided, four-bordered." These
data establish the important fact, to which I shall recur, that the native
philosophers associated the Above, composed of air and water, with the
rounded, and the Below, composed of fire and water, with the angular form.

The Copan stone altar exhibits the circular form and is surrounded by a
sculptured cord which conveys the sound of its name kaan or caan=heaven.
On it a cup-shaped depression=ho-och, marks the sacred centre of the
heaven, the counterpart to the terrestrial bowl whence all life-giving
force proceeded. Two curved lines diverge from this and divide the vaulted
circle into two parts. The curve in the lines may be interpreted as
conveying motion or rotation whilst the division of the sky may have been
intended to signify the eastern or male and the western or female portion
of the heaven, the whole being an abstract image of central rulership and
of a dual principle incorporating the four elements. It is obvious that
the meaning intended to be conveyed might also include the duality of the
Heaven or Above, composed of the union of the elements air and water. By
painting the stone in two or four colors either of these meanings could
have been expressed. In either case it will be recognized, however, that
much as Dr. Ernest Hamy's deductions concerning this altar have been
criticised, the learned director of the Trocadero Museum, Paris, was
undoubtedly right in recognizing that the stone is a cosmical symbol,
intended to convey the idea of a two-fold division and analogous to the
Chinese tae-keih which it resembles, with the difference that the Copan
sign is more complex exhibiting, as it does, a central bowl-shaped
depression. A glimpse at the other symbols in fig. 21 will show that the
identical idea is expressed in the Mexican signs exhibiting a central
circle, usually accompanied by a four-fold division.

An analogous attempt to express the same native idea is recognizable in
the peculiar mushroom-shaped stone figures, represented by a number of
examples at the Central American exposition recently held at
Guatemala,(13) and recently descr