Monday, February 23, 2015

Cinco Quetzales

Not my picture, since I have become Nocturnal lately
Quetzales are the Guatemalan currency and they are appropriately named after a bird, who I think was named after a bird in the Nahuatl language and there may be a Mayan god involved too but I'm not sure. The Quetzalcoatl is a feathered serpent god, not to be confused with the dinosaur of the same name.
Compare this to the coin dollar in Canada also called a "Loony" after the Loon that is on the back.
This is as close to seeing this bird as I've gotten. This bird is on every paper paper bill of any denomination
What I do know is that the 5 Quetzales note, which is worth about 80 cents in US currency and buys me a liter of water or a plate of French fries or a bag of Mango slices here, has three unidentified Mayan pictoglyphs that I like.
This god appears to be cooking bread in a radial tire


Your guess is as good as mine, but I suspect drugs were involved.


A fish? Or a fish that ate a turtle? And Why does it say "Canadian Bank Note"? Is it printed in Canada?
 I've looked everywhere to figure out what these glyphs actually are, if they are reproductions of carvings or original or imaginary. The search continues as it's a classic Latin American development that they can explain almost everything that is printed on their money. "Oh, those pictures? No one knows what they are or why they are on our money. They just showed up one day and we didn't question it." 
Every little scratch on a US dollar is scrutinized but Guatemalan currency has a bunch of unidentified pictures. I'm sure if I asked someone they would explain what they are but I don't understand why this is not published information. These gods were so important that they were printed on the money but then never identified? So bizarre.

No comments:

Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.