Before actors like Adam West, Michael Keaton, and Christian Bale played Batman, there was Camazotz, an ancient Mayan deity who was part-man and part-bat.

Camazotz might've been inspired by an ancient species of vampire bat that the Mayan Kʼicheʼ people of Guatemala may have seen attacking and drinking the blood of larger animals (and possibly humans).

Batman has existed in our lives for 80 years, first appearing in Detective Comics #27 in 1939, but Batman’s roots actually go much deeper. As Ancient Origins points out, Batman goes back millions of years. That's right, before West, Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, and Bale took up the mantle, there was Camazotz.

Camazotz, an ancient deity in Mayan culture, was the OG Batman. He is described in lore as having a humanoid figure with a knife-like nose. Camazotz was a god of death—fitting considering his name means "death bat," when translated from the Kʼicheʼ (also spelled Quiché), the language of Mayans native to Guatemala's central highlands.

Camazotz lived in a cave and had bat-like characteristics causing speculation that the god of death was related to Desmodus draculae, an extinct species of leaf-nosed vampire bat that was native to Central and South America during the Pleistocene epoch.

The Popol Vuh, a text that covers the history and mythology of the Kʼicheʼ, says that Camazotz had the head of a bat and killed his victims by attacking them at the neck and ultimately decapitating them. Some scholars believe that the Kʼicheʼ created the myth of Camazotz based off of D. draculae, who was the largest bat of its kind with a wingspan of nearly 20-inches and weighing in at 2-ounces.

Today's common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, has an 8-inch wingspan, much smaller than its ancestor, D. draculae. It makes sense that D. draculae would need more blood to sustain itself due to its size than the common vampire bat. If the Kʼicheʼ witnessed D. draculae attacking larger animals (and possibly even humans), it makes sense that they would fear and demonize it.

From this perspective, Camazotz' origin story becomes clearer.

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