Who is Quetzalcoatl?
In Nahuatl the Aztec language, Quetzal means “feather” and Coatl means “serpent.” Thus the name of this character means, “Feathered Serpent,” and that is often how he is portrayed, a snake with feathers, slithering through the sky, a god of wind and the sky itself. There is also a species of bird, eponymously called quetzal, because its most remarkable feature is its glorious tailfeathers, three times as long as its body, like a Dr. Suess creation. It also is emerald green, with a blood-red breast, and its head bears a distinctive forward-pointing crest. The leaves resemble the leaves of a maize plant; the bird could be seen as a zoological reflection of the Mesoamerican staple. These features conspired to bestow upon the bird the status of a god, and the little jewel-like quetzal retains a modern incarnation of its ancient status: National Bird of Guatemala. In Olmec iconography, the ancestor of this sky-serpent is a snake with a raptor’s beak, which many scholars call the Avian Serpe
