Photos of a statue allegedly depicting the Indian god of bats, surprisingly similar to Batman, have been circulating on social networks. We checked whether this is actually true.
The photograph, along with captions like “The Mayan Indians had their own brutal Batman” or “What if Batman came from those times...” can be found in several popular public pages on VKontakte, including History Porn, "World of Discovery", "The truth is out there" And "Superhero Cafe". The photo accompanies publications about the Indian deity in Facebook, "Odnoklassniki" and other social networks.
The Mayans, indeed, was a deity named Camazotz. He was represented as an anthropomorphic bat, personifying night and death. This was probably due to the fact that this animal lives in caves, which, according to Mesoamericans, were the gateways to the underworld. Only a part of the Indian tribes in the territory of modern Guatemala believed in Camazotz.
However, the image popular on social networks has a very indirect relation to Camazotz. In 2014, Warner Bros. and Mexican Design Museum offered artists to participate in the exhibition “Batman through the prism of Mexican creativity.” Artists from the Kimbal studio were inspired by archaeological finds related to Camazotz and made a bust of Batman in a similar style.
The deity itself, judging by the artifacts that have survived to our times, looked different. One of the statues depicting Camazotz exhibited in a museum in Guatemala.
We especially note: No There is no evidence that the authors of the first Batman comics were inspired by Mayan mythology. This character, judging by the memoirs of its creators, absorbed the features of a variety of heroes of Western culture, and the existence of a Mayan god in the form of a bat is nothing more than a coincidence.
Not true
- Snopes. Is This an Ancient Mayan Sculpture of Batman?
- Maya Archaeology. Bat sculpture from Izabal or Alta Verapaz
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