Sun and Moon Pyramids at Teotihuacan

Raptor imagery was used to reflect military might in Mesoamerica. A mirror back in the exhibit sports a dart-armed owl found at Teotihuacan. A war shield featuring a similar emblem has been connected to Spearthrower Owl, a Mayan warrior who enjoyed military success in the takeover of Tikal, the catalog reveals.

Karen Petersen published a pictographic dictionary in her book about Plains Indian Art from Fort Marion. She includes a pictograph of an undulating line used to indicate the path taken by a sacred or mysterious object, person, or phenomenon by Fort Marion ledger artists. The Storm God with power over rainfall is depicted in a stucco painting in the Teotihuacan exhibition holding a lightning bolt which similarly undulates. There may be a convention for abstraction that relates the symbols.

There is a convention of symbolizing speech or sound emanating from figures such as in this wall mural depicting the Mesoamerican Storm God.

This well-known ledger painting by Wohaw shows sound coming from a buffalo and a steer as though they are both speaking to the man between them and to each other using a pictographic convention also shown in Peterson's Pictographic Dictionary.

The Storm God uses an undulating lightning bolt to speak to the forces that produce rain to make maize grow.