Uncovered History

An adapted image of the top of Stela B of Copan to highlight the Monster Mouth. The mouth belongs to a beast who is known variously as the Witz Monster, Kawak (Cauac) Monster or the Earth Monster. Running down the centre of this image, in both the highlighted and greyed out sections, you can see three different representations of water through the use of circles arranged in a triangle (the bottom one, in the shaded area at the dead centre-bottom of the photo, looks like a face). This spherical icon is also used in the eyes, and is why the monster is often termed as the Kawak Monster, which translates to the Rain Monster. But water was associated with caves, and even the glyph Kawak looks like a cave with water dripping in stalactite form within it. Therefore, the concept of the rain monster closely tied to the idea of a cave, earth or mountain monster (click here to see the full article on Stela B at Copan).