World trees are a prevalent motif occurring in the mythical cosmologies, creation accounts, and iconographies of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. In the Mesoamerican context, world trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which also serve to represent the fourfold nature of a central world tree, a symbolic axis mundi which connects the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial realm. Izapa Stela 5 is considered a possible representation of a World Tree, as is the tree on Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal's sarcophagus at Palenque.