Peter Dunham finds evidence that the modern Yucatec-Maya consider this umbilicus, or "living rope," to be the basic framework upon which both the sky and earth are organized:

"There is a suite of myths among the Yucatec, with reflections elsewhere, that describe a heavenly road connected to and sometimes contiguous with a "living rope" filled with blood that descends from the sky, often through the heart of a giant ceiba at an important site.... The living rope passes through the world tree at the center of creation. It may be connected, perhaps through the tree's roots and the cenote (the cenote is a sort of the underground equivalent of the tree), to subterranean routes that may somehow recirculate this divine celestial power through the realm of the dead and back to the world of the heavens" (quoted in Freidel et al. 1993:425, n. 60).