The Fat of the Land: Anthropomorphic Representations of Earth in Mesoamerican Ideology

The varied representations of Earth in Mesoamerican art and iconography are often couched and blended in a variety of ways but always packed with meaning. The landscape, particularly hills, mountains, and caves were personified as living and sentient beings.Temple doorways for instance formed the breathing entrances of symbolic mountains while the backs of crocodiles and turtles could represent the hard rocky surface of the earth. Many depiction's of Earth indicate that it was constantly watching, seeing, and breathing. In this respect it occupied the most fundamental component of Mesoamerican ideology as a place of emergence and rain bringing wind.