Recent investigations at Acanceh's main building yielded the discovery of four huge architectural stucco masks. Some of the iconography that can still be made out on these masks may hark back to Olmec times (1500-500 B.C.). Notice in this particular example the three-element headband around the forehead, as well as the merlon-shaped insets above the mask's eyes. The three-element headband (which some scholars take to be a representation of sprouting corn) is thought to have given way to the so-called Jester God headdress in Classic Maya imagery, in which a deity that symbolizes rulership wears a three-pointed, jester-like cap. |