Eccentric flint depicting a crocodile canoe with passengers
Mexico or Guatemala, Maya culture
c. A.D. 600–900
Flint
The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., in honor of Mrs. Alex Spence, 1983.45.McD

The Maya perfected the art of chipping flint to create thin, flat blades (tok’) for sacrificial and ceremonial use. The complex shapes of many of these objects, which are too fragile for use as cutting tools, have earned them the designation "eccentric flints." Archaeologists have found them in elite tombs and in offertory caches associated with dedication and termination rituals for architecture and stone monuments. Such symbolically charged objects may also have functioned as talismans for living kings.

This particularly elaborate flint depicts a canoe with the head of an open-mouthed crocodile at the prow. Silhouetted human heads mark the stern of the boat and the foreleg of the animal. Three passengers, shown as profile heads facing right, are thrust backward by the force of the canoe’s dramatic downward plunge. Maya scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel have interpreted this image as a moment in the Maya story of creation (on the night of August 13, 3114 B.C.) when a crocodile canoe, paddled by gods, takes the soul of the sacrificed Maize God, or First Father, to the place where he will be miraculously reborn. The creation story seems to have been closely connected with Maya astronomy, in which the movements of the stars annually reenact these events. Looking skyward on August 13, the Milky Way stretches from east to west, resembling a cosmic monster, or canoe. After midnight the Milky Way pivots to a north-south position, and the canoe sinks to the underwater spirit world. Just before dawn the three stars of Orion appear overhead, signifying the three hearthstones of creation where First Father was reborn as Maize, the sustenance and flesh of humanity.