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The Museum of Copán in Honduras is home to representations of one of the most feared gods of Mayan mythology and one of the most famous modern characters by the cinema. Camazotz or Camazot was an entity worshiped by members of the Mesoamerican civilization that developed for 18 centuries in southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize , El Salvador, and the occidental part of Honduras.
There are many references from this character and the descriptions agree on it being half-human , half-bat , and that it represented the killer god of life, and death.
Camazotz comes from the K’iche words “ kame ,” meaning “ death ,” and “ sotz ,” meaning “ bat. ”
But what has caught the attention of this Mayan god is his resemblance to the fictional character Batman , a vigilante of the comics universe that wears a bat suit to make justice in Gotham City .
In 2014 , Warner Bros Entertainment decided to open a call attended by 30 artists to make a tribute to Batman on his 75th anniversary . Mexican Christian Pacheco was one of the runners-up who decided to make a representation of the feared Camazotz with Mayan carvings to remind Batman was not the first bat-man.
This bust was exhibited in the Mexican Museum of Design and it was sold to a DC Comics fan, but to this day its location is unknown.
The worship to Camazotz dates back to 100 B.C. among the Zapotecs in Oaxaca, who, apparently, were the first to worship an anthropomorphic entity with the head of a bat and the body of a human.
The Popol Vuh (the “Mayan sacred book” that gathers the mythological legends of the K’iche’ people) includes Camazotz as an angel bat that comes from the sky to behead the first men made from wood. The K’iche’ linked the bat-god with their god Zotzilaha Chamalcan , the god of fire.
A scientific explanation
Some historians and scientists assert that one of the possible explanations for the apparition of Camazotz in Mayan mythology corresponds to the arrival and expansion of vampire bats in Mexico , Guatemala , and some areas of Brazil .
Fossils from these creatures, called Desmodus draculae, have been found all over these territories and correspond to an extinct giant variation of Chiroptera that was 30% bigger than the common bat. This species was described in 1988 by zoologists Gary S. Morgan, Omar J. Linares, and Clayton E. Ray.
Scientists based their analysis in bones they found at a cave in northern Venezuela .
Additionally, in the Nahua civilization , there was also a bat-god , that appeared in temples in the shape of a horseshoe and that had the power to heal any disease , as well as cutting the silver thread of life that joins the body to the soul .
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