In Mesoamerican worldview, the cosmos were created, destroyed, and remade in cyclical fashion. At the end of an era, the sky would collapse on the earth, and a divine sacrifice would be made to reorder cosmic space-time. To lift the sky, deities would raise a world tree at the four corners of the cosmos and its center, a five-directional order held sacred across Mesoamerica. These trees would once again sustain the three levels of the cosmos: the celestial, earthly, and watery realms. Finally, a new sun, chosen through divine trial, would take his place in the skies, propelling time forward with his daily journey through the sky and his nightly journey through the primordial sea. These four works—an Olmec jade tablet, a Mixtec codex-style vase, an Aztec carved relief, and an early colonial chalice cover—attest to the fundamental nature of this cosmic arrangement for numerous Mesoamerican societies dating back millennia.