I have already shown that the meaning of the ocelot-skin and the spider, employed as symbols by the Mexicans, is apparent only when studied by means of the Maya language of Yucatan, the land whence the culture-hero is said to have come by the foregoing authorities. I will add here that in the Maya chronicles, it is stated that the culture-hero had ruled in Chichen-Itza, the first part of which name, _Chichen_, means _red_. In Mexican records it is described that he departed by water from the Mexican coast and travelled directly east, bound for Tlapallan--a name which means _red_-land. I draw attention to the fact that any one sailing from the mouth of the Panuco river, for instance, in a straight line towards the east, would inevitably land on the coast of Yucatan, not far from the modern Merida and the ancient ruins of Chichen-Itza.
I shall also produce evidence, further on, to show that the meaning of the much-discussed name of the culture-hero's home, Tullan, is also furnished by the Maya language. From more than one source, we learn, moreover, that there were several Tullans on the American continent. The conception of _Twin-brothers_ as the personification of the Above and Below had been adopted in Yucatan and it is to the influence emanating from that source that I attribute the movement made in Mexico, to substitute male twin-rulers in the place of the man and woman, who had previously and jointly ruled the ancient Mexicans.
Let us now analyze the Maya title Kukulcan, of which Quetzalcoatl is the Mexican equivalent. As already stated, the word _can_ means serpent and the numeral 4 and is almost homonymous with the word for sky or heaven=_caan_. The image of a serpent, therefore, directly suggested and expressed the idea of something quadruple incorporated in one celestial being and appropriately symbolized the divine ruler of the four quarters. In the word Kukulcan the noun _can_ is qualified by the prefix _kukul_. In the compiled Maya dictionary published by Brasseur de Bourbourg (appendix to de Landa's Relacion) the adjective _ku_ or _kul_ is given as "divine or holy." Kukulcan may therefore be analyzed as "the divine serpent" or the "Divine Four." When Maya sculptors or scribes began to represent this symbol of the divinity they must have searched for some object, easy to depict, the sound of whose name resembled that of ku or kul. The Maya adjective "feathered" being _kukum_, the artists evidently devised the plan of representing, as an effigy of the divinity, a serpent decorated with feathers and to this simple attempt at representing the "divine serpent" in sculpture or pictography is due, in my opinion, the origin of the "feathered serpent" effigies found in Yucatan and Mexico, which have so puzzled archaeologists.