The lowest image is a usually a deity representing earth; in this case, a long-nosed tapir is portrayed.
I have shown, for instance, that there are examples of one deity substituting for another, and others in which two figures may be conflated.
Even heroes who are raised within an existing religious tradition and know its teachings well are still surprised by their deities.
It is replete with deities, but is not a place of worship where the faithful enact a fixed set of rituals.
A third method was rhetorically to use epithets that were appropriate to a deity, thus associating with the divine being.
But ethnographic reports indicate that malevolent and predatory deities are as culturally widespread, historically ancient, and socially supreme as benevolent deities.
It evoked the most powerful agrarian symbols such as maize and rain deities to represent central authority through ritual reenactments.
The connections to deities enhanced supernatural ties and ideological power.
