Just as it has been shown that the first may signify cabal=the Below, so it is evident that the second is connected with the preposition and adverb canal, signifying "above, on top of, on high." Dr. Brinton sees in the kan symbol a presentation of a polished stone, or shell pendant, or bead, and cites the Maya dictionary of Motul which gives kan as the name for "beads or stones which served the Indians as money and neck ornaments." In connection with this important statement I revert to the carved shell-gorgets which have been found in the mounds and ancient graves in the Mississippi valley and exhibit Maya influence. The greater number of these exhibit a carved serpent (which in Maya is _kan_) in their centres and this fact affords a clue to the possible origin of the Maya name for a neck ornament given in the Motul dictionary. It is undeniable that all evidence unites in proving that the ancient peoples of the Mississippi valley were in traffic, if not more intimately connected, with a Maya-speaking people and came under the influence of the ideas and symbolism current in Yucatan.
Returning to the employment of the glyph kan in Maya Codices, for more reasons than I am able to enumerate here, I conclude it served as an indicative of the Above or Heaven. It is a curious fact that the Maya word for cord is kaan, whilst the name for sky is caan. I cannot but think, therefore, that a carved pendant with a serpent effigy=a kan, worn on a cord=kaan, must have been associated by the Mayas with the Heaven or sky=caan, and that this linguistic coincidence must have been a strong factor in the development of the symbolism attached to the glyph can or kan.
An interesting fact, which I shall demonstrate by a large series of illustration from native Codices in a chapter of my forthcoming work on the ancient Calendar System, will show that in their hieratic writings, the ancient Mexican scribes represented the nocturnal heaven or sky as a circle composed of a cord, to which stars were attached, whilst the centre of the circle exhibited one or four stars. In my opinion the origin and explanation of the association of the cord with stars are clearly traceable to the above mentioned fact that in the Maya tongue the word for cord, kaan, closely resembles the sound of the word caan=sky. The presence of the cord in the Mexican symbols is, therefore, another indication of their Maya origin. A proof that the Mayas also employed the cord as a symbol of the sky, or heaven, is furnished by the much-discussed lentil-shaped stone altar found at Copan, a small outline of which is represented in fig. 21, no. 1. In order fully to understand the meaning expressed by this stone, it is necessary to bear in mind how indissolubly the idea of something circular was associated by the Mayas and Mexicans with their conception of the vault of heaven resting on the horizon, and of the Above, consisting of the two fluid elements, air and water.