The Shark
with the
Birth Hand of Pacal

The "hand" in Mexican iconography has always been considered too ordinary to decipher. Everyone has hands and everyone uses their hands. There could be no special meaning to a hand appearing in the codices or on the monuments, except maybe as a phonetic reading.

One must ask a man who once had hands, but no longer does, just how many different things he could do with his hands. Because they are now missing, he will be able to make a long, detailed list of the various things that were done with his hands. A man or woman who never lacked hands will not think twice about their uses, so their lists would be very short. Each item on either list would need a completely different drawing to illustrate its purpose even though each icon would include a sketch of a hand.

We don't know yet if a visual concepts or a phonetic element was the main purpose of the iconography of a hand within the Mayan glyphs. Today, most of the transliterations known are considered only as phonemes or sounds. Yet even though "words" have been defined, at times, the "word" does not translate well.

One of the first glyphs, Linda Schele translated was a visual. Listening to her Maya friends, she discovered that "to touch the earth" was a modismo that had the meaning "to be born." The glyph she discovered on the Alfardas at the Temple of the Sun in Palenque was a "hand" touching "caban," (the earth). This particular glyph set contained a xoc fish (an ocean shark) on the left side. If the xoc fish ceremony is an indication, not of "blood sacrifice," but ordinary male circumcision, then the xoc fish element in the glyph could indicate a male birth.

The fish symbol appears as various forms within the glyphs. The "xoc" fish is a salt water fish. It has been identified as a bull or cub shark. This particular fish leaves the Ocean sea and travels into fresh water. It has been found far up the Mississippi River and is considered dangerous. Thus, Meso-americans who lived along the gulf coast were familiar with this shark, as well as many inland river towns. (Miller & Taube, 1993, p. 131.) The presence of this fish in connection with a birth glyph might indicate that the person who had just been born was a foreigner from across the Ocean: probably an Itza.

In 1975, Guillermo Garcés Contreras identified the Itza in his book, Los Codices Mayas, as "Los Brujos del Agua." (p. 103) In 1981 M. Demetrio Sodi, in his book The Mayas, discovered the Quiche Maya, used Ah Itzam for "water witch." (p. l55). The Itza have been identified with the Putun or Chontal (foreigners) in ancient Maya literature. Temple XIX in Palenque, shows a wall mural with men with moustaches and wounds that only could come from handling the sheets (ropes to haul up or in the sails).

This same concept could be used for sailors who are buried in sand by the same waves that flung them up on to the beaches during a storm that destroyed their ships. As the sailors recovered consciousness, and shook off the blanket of sand, they would seem like the new born iguanas, hence, they would have acquired the name Itzam, iquana. My new book The Lady Hung gives further information regarding a possible stellar event that may have caused a ship-wreck that brought these men to the Yucatan.

This is just a suggested reading for the "xoc" fish element in the birth glyph of the famous Pacal of Palenque ("to touch the earth"). One cannot discount the fact that it might also have a completely different phonetic meaning, since the ruler Pacal, had more mythic lineage records than real ones.