It is scarcely necessary to refer again here to more than one authority for the statement that the temples of the air (of the Above) were circular, and the reason given by the natives for this was that “just as the air circulates around the vault of the heaven, so its temple had to be of a round shape.”(12) As a contrast to this conception, the influence of which is also obvious in the form of the round temples and towers of the ruined cities of Central America, I would cite the allusions to the solid earth contained in the sacred books of the Mayas, the Popol Vuh, as being “the quadrated earth, four-cornered, four-sided, four-bordered.” These data establish the important fact, to which I shall recur, that the native philosophers associated the Above, composed of air and water, with the rounded, and the Below, composed of fire and water, with the angular form. The Copan stone altar exhibits the circular form and is surrounded by a sculptured cord which conveys the sound of its name kaan or caan=heaven. On it a cup-shaped depression=ho-och, marks the sacred centre of the heaven, the counterpart to the terrestrial bowl whence all life-giving force proceeded. Two curved lines diverge from this and divide the vaulted circle into two parts. The curve in the lines may be interpreted as conveying motion or rotation whilst the division of the sky may have been intended to signify the eastern or male and the western or female portion of the heaven, the whole being an abstract image of central rulership and of a dual principle incorporating the four elements. It is obvious that the meaning intended to be conveyed might also include the duality of the Heaven or Above, composed of the union of the elements air and water. By painting the stone in two or four colors either of these meanings could have been expressed. In either case it will be recognized, however, that much as Dr. Ernest Hamy’s deductions concerning this altar have been criticised, the learned director of the Trocadéro Museum, Paris, was undoubtedly right in recognizing that the stone is a cosmical symbol, intended to convey the idea of a two-fold division and analogous to the Chinese tae-keih which it resembles, with the difference that the Copan sign is more complex exhibiting, as it does, a central bowl-shaped depression. A glimpse at the other symbols in fig. 21 will show that the identical idea is expressed in the Mexican signs exhibiting a central circle, usually accompanied by a four-fold division.