Te Ancient Maya idea of the world around us was evidently diferent from ours.

But how diferent? Tis article discusses the role of men, animals, and supernatural
beings in Maya iconography: how they are depicted in the art, what designations
the Maya gave to diferent entities, and how various beings took attributes of other
beings in Maya thinking – and in the art and writings that refect it1
.

Vestiges of the ideology of the ancient Maya can be distinguished by means
of diferent types of source materials and research approaches, including archaeological remains, written records and imagery. How these source materials are
interpreted varies between diferent felds, scholars, and times.

Furthermore, analyses concerning the ancient Maya culture escapes the insider’s (emic) view of the
culture and presents an outsider’s (etic) perception of it.

2
However, understanding
archaeological remains as well as iconography and hieroglyphic texts, greatly helps
our conception of ancient Maya thinking.
Te classifcation of diferent entities in Maya art is difcult – and ultimately
impossible – due to the fact that many ancient Maya referents of living beings were
overlapping.

3
Tis article classifes various beings (i.e., any animate4
entities with a
function in Maya imagery) based primarily on the form rather than the function
of the agent. Consequently, some of the designations of beings in this article may
disagree with the existing labels allocated to them in the current academic literature. Te reason behind this is the fact that in most publications on the subject
the designations and classifcations are too broad, too narrow, or inconsistent with
each other.

Troughout the history of Maya studies identical entities have been
allocated dissimilar designations and diferent entities have been categorized under
one broad label. An illuminating example of this is a creature that has been called
a “vision serpent”, “dragon”, “great dragon”, “bearded dragon”, “Och Chan”, etc.

in various publications over the course of the past 12 decades. Similar creatures
have also been called merely deities or zoomorphic creatures