Historia De La Venida De Los Mexicanos Y Otros Pueblos

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The Strange World of Human Sacrifice

Author : Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher : Peeters Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9789042918436
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (184 download)

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Book Synopsis The Strange World of Human Sacrifice by : Jan N. Bremmer

Download or read book The Strange World of Human Sacrifice written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Strange World of Human Sacrifice is the first modern collection of studies on one of the most gruesome and intriguing aspects of religion. The volume starts with a brief introduction, which is followed by studies of Aztec human sacrifice and the literary motif of human sacrifice in medieval Irish literature. Turning to ancient Greece, three cases of human sacrifice are analysed: a ritual example, a mythical case, and one in which myth and ritual are interrelated. The early Christians were the victims of accusations of human sacrifice, but in turn imputed the crime to heterodox Christians, just as the Jews imputed the crime to their neighbours. The ancient Egyptians rarely seem to have practised human sacrifice, but buried the pharaoh's servants with him in order to serve him in the afterlife, albeit only for a brief period at the very beginning of pharaonic civilization. In ancient India we can follow the traditions of human sacrifice from the earliest texts up to modern times, where especially in eastern India goddesses, such as Kali, were long worshipped with human victims. In Japanese tales human sacrifice often takes the form of self-sacrifice, and there may well be a line from these early sacrifices to modern kamikaze. The last study throws a surprising light on human sacrifice in China. The volume is concluded with a detailed index

Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico

Author : Ross Hassig
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292749023
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico by : Ross Hassig

Download or read book Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico written by Ross Hassig and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating study offers a radical new understanding of how the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican societies conceived of time and history. Based on their enormously complex calendars that recorded cycles of many kinds, the Aztecs and other ancient Mesoamerican civilizations are generally believed to have had a cyclical, rather than linear, conception of time and history. This boldly revisionist book challenges that understanding. Ross Hassig offers convincing evidence that for the Aztecs time was predominantly linear, that it was manipulated by the state as a means of controlling a dispersed tribute empire, and that the Conquest cut off state control and severed the unity of the calendar, leaving only the lesser cycles. From these, he asserts, we have inadequately reconstructed the pre-Columbian calendar and so misunderstood the Aztec conception of time and history. Hassig first presents the traditional explanation of the Aztec calendrical system and its ideological functions and then marshals contrary evidence to argue that the Aztec elite deliberately used calendars and timekeeping to achieve practical political ends. He further traces how the Conquest played out in the temporal realm as Spanish conceptions of time partially displaced the Aztec ones.

Return to Aztlan

Author : Danna A. Levin Rojo
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806145609
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Return to Aztlan by : Danna A. Levin Rojo

Download or read book Return to Aztlan written by Danna A. Levin Rojo and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-03-10 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before the Spanish colonizers established it in 1598, the “Kingdom of Nuevo México” had existed as an imaginary world—and not the one based on European medieval legend so often said to have driven the Spaniards’ ambitions in the New World. What the conquistadors sought in the 1500s, it seems, was what the native Mesoamerican Indians who took part in north-going conquest expeditions also sought: a return to the Aztecs’ mythic land of origin, Aztlan. Employing long-overlooked historical and anthropological evidence, Danna A. Levin Rojo reveals how ideas these natives held about their own past helped determine where Spanish explorers would go and what they would conquer in the northwest frontier of New Spain—present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Return to Aztlan thus remaps an extraordinary century during which, for the first time, Western minds were seduced by Native American historical memories. Levin Rojo recounts a transformation—of an abstract geographic space, the imaginary world of Aztlan, into a concrete sociopolitical place. Drawing on a wide variety of early maps, colonial chronicles, soldier reports, letters, and native codices, she charts the gradual redefinition of native and Spanish cultural identity—and shows that the Spanish saw in Nahua, or Aztec, civilization an equivalence to their own. A deviation in European colonial naming practices provides the first clue that a transformation of Aztlan from imaginary to concrete world was taking place: Nuevo México is the only place-name from the early colonial period in which Europeans combined the adjective “new” with an American Indian name. With this toponym, Spaniards referenced both Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the indigenous metropolis whose destruction made possible the birth of New Spain itself, and Aztlan, the ancient Mexicans’ place of origin. Levin Rojo collects additional clues as she systematically documents why and how Spaniards would take up native origin stories and make a return to Aztlan their own goal—and in doing so, overturns the traditional understanding of Nuevo México as a concept and as a territory. A book in the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Mexican Spirituality

Author : Francisco Schulte
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742513556
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (135 download)

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Book Synopsis Mexican Spirituality by : Francisco Schulte

Download or read book Mexican Spirituality written by Francisco Schulte and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book celebrates a number of Guadalupan sermons that serve as the fundamental source of the Mexican people's unique spiritual devotion and identity. These sermons were preached, published, and circulated among the populace of Mexico in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They proclaim an unshakable conviction that the peoples of the American continent are the uniquely blessed recipients of God's, and especially Mary's, favor. In their modern sense, these sermons provide a wealth of information on Mexican theology, spirituality, and religious self-understanding at a pivotal time in a people's culture.

The Codex Mexicanus

Author : Lori Boornazian Diel
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477316752
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis The Codex Mexicanus by : Lori Boornazian Diel

Download or read book The Codex Mexicanus written by Lori Boornazian Diel and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2018-12-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Roland H. Bainton Book Prize, The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, 2019 Some sixty years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a group of Nahua intellectuals in Mexico City set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea, which was recorded in pictorial form with alphabetic texts in Nahuatl clarifying some imagery or adding new information altogether. This manuscript, known as the Codex Mexicanus, includes records pertaining to the Aztec and Christian calendars, European medical astrology, a genealogy of the Tenochca royal house, and an annals history of pre-conquest Tenochtitlan and early colonial Mexico City, among other topics. Though filled with intriguing information, the Mexicanus has long defied a comprehensive scholarly analysis, surely due to its disparate contents. In this pathfinding volume, Lori Boornazian Diel presents the first thorough study of the entire Codex Mexicanus that considers its varied contents in a holistic manner. She provides an authoritative reading of the Mexicanus’s contents and explains what its creation and use reveal about native reactions to and negotiations of colonial rule in Mexico City. Diel makes sense of the codex by revealing how its miscellaneous contents find counterparts in Spanish books called Reportorios de los tiempos. Based on the medieval almanac tradition, Reportorios contain vast assortments of information related to the issue of time, as does the Mexicanus. Diel masterfully demonstrates that, just as Reportorios were used as guides to living in early modern Spain, likewise the Codex Mexicanus provided its Nahua audience a guide to living in colonial New Spain.

Fifth Sun

Author : Camilla Townsend
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190673079
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Fifth Sun by : Camilla Townsend

Download or read book Fifth Sun written by Camilla Townsend and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story--and the story of what happened afterwards--has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially translated, and rarely consulted by scholars. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The Mexica people had a history of their own long before the Europeans arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and colonization. Instead, they realigned their political allegiances, accommodated new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured. This engaging revisionist history of the Aztecs, told through their own words, explores the experience of a once-powerful people facing the trauma of conquest and finding ways to survive, offering an empathetic interpretation for experts and non-specialists alike.

Pueblos within Pueblos

Author : Benjamin Johnson
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607326914
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Pueblos within Pueblos by : Benjamin Johnson

Download or read book Pueblos within Pueblos written by Benjamin Johnson and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the specific case of Acolhuacan in the eastern Basin of Mexico, Pueblos within Pueblos is the first book to systematically analyze tlaxilacalli history over nearly four centuries, beginning with their rise at the dawn of the Aztec empire through their transformation into the “pueblos” of mid-colonial New Spain. Even before the rise of the Aztecs, commoners in pre-Hispanic central Mexico set the groundwork for a new style of imperial expansion. Breaking free of earlier centralizing patterns of settlement, they spread out across onetime hinterlands and founded new and surprisingly autonomous local communities called, almost interchangeably, tlaxilacalli or calpolli. Tlaxilacalli were commoner-administered communities that coevolved with the Acolhua empire and structured its articulation and basic functioning. They later formed the administrative backbone of both the Aztec and Spanish empires in northern Mesoamerica and often grew into full and functioning existence before their affiliated altepetl, or sovereign local polities. Tlaxilacalli resembled other central Mexican communities but expressed a local Acolhua administrative culture in their exacting patterns of hierarchy. As semiautonomous units, they could rearrange according to geopolitical shifts and even catalyze changes, as during the rapid additive growth of both the Aztec Triple Alliance and Hispanic New Spain. They were more successful than almost any other central Mexican institution in metabolizing external disruptions (new gods, new economies, demographic emergencies), and they fostered a surprising level of local allegiance, despite their structural inequality. Indeed, by 1692 they were declaring their local administrative independence from the once-sovereign altepetl. Administration through community, and community through administration—this was the primal two-step of the long-lived Acolhua tlaxilacalli, at once colonial and colonialist. Pueblos within Pueblos examines a woefully neglected aspect of pre-Hispanic and early colonial Mexican historiography and is the first book to fully demonstrate the structuring role tlaxilacalli played in regional and imperial politics in central Mexico. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American ethnohistory, history, and anthropology.

Tlacaelel Remembered

Author : Susan Schroeder
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806157666
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Tlacaelel Remembered by : Susan Schroeder

Download or read book Tlacaelel Remembered written by Susan Schroeder and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-11-16 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enigmatic and powerful Tlacaelel (1398–1487), wrote annalist Chimalpahin, was “the beginning and origin” of the Mexica monarchy in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica. Brother of the first Moteuczoma, Tlacaelel would become “the most powerful, feared, and esteemed man of all that the world had seen up to that time.” But this outsize figure of Aztec history has also long been shrouded in mystery. In Tlacaelel Remembered, the first biography of the Mexica nobleman, Susan Schroeder searches out the truth about his life and legacy. A century after Tlacaelel’s death, in the wake of the conquistadors, Spaniards and natives recorded the customs, histories, and language of the Nahua, or Aztec, people. Three of these chroniclers—fray Diego Durán, don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and especially don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin—wrote of Tlacaelel. But the inaccessibility of Chimalpahin’s annals has meant that for centuries of Aztec history, Tlacaelel has appeared, if at all, as a myth. Working from Chimalpahin’s newly available writings and exploring connections and variances in other source materials, Schroeder draws the clearest possible portrait of Tlacaelel, revealing him as the architect of the Aztec empire’s political power and its military might—a politician on par with Machiavelli. As the advisor to five Mexica rulers, Tlacaelel shaped the organization of the Mexica state and broadened the reach of its empire—feats typically accomplished with the spread of warfare, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In the annals, he is considered the “second king” to the rulers who built the empire, and is given the title “Cihuacoatl,” used for the office of president and judge. As Schroeder traces Tlacaelel through the annals, she also examines how his story was transmitted and transformed in later histories. The resulting work is the most complete and comprehensive account ever given of this significant figure in Mesoamerican history.

Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800

Author : Peter B. Villella
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316679446
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (166 download)

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Book Synopsis Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800 by : Peter B. Villella

Download or read book Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800 written by Peter B. Villella and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Mexico derives many of its richest symbols of national heritage and identity from the Aztec legacy, even as it remains a predominantly Spanish-speaking, Christian society. This volume argues that the composite, neo-Aztec flavor of Mexican identity was, in part, a consequence of active efforts by indigenous elites after the Spanish conquest to grandfather ancestral rights into the colonial era. By emphasizing the antiquity of their claims before Spanish officials, native leaders extended the historical awareness of the colonial regime into the pre-Hispanic past, and therefore also the themes, emotional contours, and beginning points of what we today understand as 'Mexican history'. This emphasis on ancient roots, moreover, resonated with the patriotic longings of many creoles, descendants of Spaniards born in Mexico. Alienated by Spanish scorn, creoles associated with indigenous elites and studied their histories, thereby reinventing themselves as Mexico's new 'native' leadership and the heirs to its prestigious antiquity.

Cave, City, and Eagle's Nest

Author : David Carrasco
Publisher : UNM Press
ISBN 13 : 9780826342836
Total Pages : 538 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (428 download)

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Book Synopsis Cave, City, and Eagle's Nest by : David Carrasco

Download or read book Cave, City, and Eagle's Nest written by David Carrasco and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culmination of recent restoration and analysis, these richly illustrated essays examine the history and meaning of one of Mesoamerica's surviving documents dating from the 1540s.

Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America

Author : Susan Toby Evans
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 9780815308874
Total Pages : 1322 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America by : Susan Toby Evans

Download or read book Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America written by Susan Toby Evans and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2001 with total page 1322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reference is devoted to the pre-Columbian archaeology of the Mesoamerican culture area, one of the six cradles of early civilization. It features in-depth articles on the major cultural areas of ancient Mexico and Central America; coverage of important sites, including the world-renowned discoveries as well as many lesser-known locations; articles on day-to-day life of ancient peoples in these regions; and several bandw regional and site maps and photographs. Entries are arranged alphabetically and cover introductory archaeological facts (flora, fauna, human growth and development, nonorganic resources), chronologies of various periods (Paleoindian, Archaic, Formative, Classic and Postclassic, and Colonial), cultural features, Maya, regional summaries, research methods and resources, ethnohistorical methods and sources, and scholars and research history. Edited by archaeologists Evans and Webster, both of whom are associated with Pennsylvania State University. c. Book News Inc.

The Oxford History of Historical Writing

Author : José Rabasa
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191629448
Total Pages : 750 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford History of Historical Writing by : José Rabasa

Download or read book The Oxford History of Historical Writing written by José Rabasa and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 750 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume III of The Oxford History of Historical Writing contains essays by leading scholars on the writing of history globally during the early modern era, from 1400 to 1800. The volume proceeds in geographic order from east to west, beginning in Asia and ending in the Americas. It aims at once to provide a selective but authoritative survey of the field and, where opportunity allows, to provoke cross-cultural comparisons. This is the third of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world.

Conquistadors and Aztecs

Author : Stefan Rinke
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197552463
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis Conquistadors and Aztecs by : Stefan Rinke

Download or read book Conquistadors and Aztecs written by Stefan Rinke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-06 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly readable narrative of the causes, course, and consequences of the Spanish Conquest, incorporating the perspectives of many Native groups, Black slaves, and the conquistadors, timed with the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.Five hundred years ago, a flotilla landed on the coast of Yucatan under the command of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes. While the official goal of the expedition was to explore and to expand the Christian faith, everyone involved knew that it was primarily about gold and the hunt for slaves.That a few hundred Spaniards destroyed the Aztec empire - a highly developed culture - is an old chestnut, because the conquistadors, who had every means to make a profit, did not succeed alone. They encountered groups such as the Tlaxcaltecs, who suffered from the Aztec rule and were ready to enterinto alliances with the foreigners to overthrow their old enemy. In addition, the conquerors benefited from the diseases brought from Europe, which killed hundreds of thousands of locals. Drawing on both Spanish and indigenous sources, this account of the conquest of Mexico from 1519 to 1521 notonly offers a dramatic narrative of these events - including the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and the flight of the conquerors - but also represents the individual protagonists on both sides, their backgrounds, their diplomacy, and their struggles. It vividly portrays the tens ofthousands of local warriors who faced off against each other during the fighting as they attempted to free themselves from tribute payments to the Aztecs.Written by a leading historian of Latin America, Conquistadors and Aztecs offers a timely portrayal of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the founding of an empire that would last for centuries.

Tezcatlipoca

Author : Elizabeth Baquedano
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607322889
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Tezcatlipoca by : Elizabeth Baquedano

Download or read book Tezcatlipoca written by Elizabeth Baquedano and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on “the lord of the smoking mirror,” one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipoca’s nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Postclassic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations—objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull—and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture.

Our Sacred Maíz Is Our Mother

Author : Roberto Cintli Rodríguez
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816530610
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Sacred Maíz Is Our Mother by : Roberto Cintli Rodríguez

Download or read book Our Sacred Maíz Is Our Mother written by Roberto Cintli Rodríguez and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weaving archival records, ancient maps and narratives, and the wisdom of the elders, Roberto Cintli Rodriguez offers compelling evidence that maíz is the historical connector between Indigenous peoples of this continent. Rodriguez brings together the wisdom of scholars and elders to show how maíz/corn connects the peoples of the Americas.

How to Write the History of the New World

Author : Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804746939
Total Pages : 490 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (469 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Write the History of the New World by : Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

Download or read book How to Write the History of the New World written by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Economist Book of the Year, 2001. In the 18th century, a debate ensued over the French naturalist Buffon’s contention that the New World was in fact geologically new. Historians, naturalists, and philosophers clashed over Buffon’s view. This book maintains that the “dispute” was also a debate over historical authority: upon whose sources and facts should naturalists and historians reconstruct the history of the New World and its people. In addressing this question, the author offers a strikingly novel interpretation of the Enlightenment.

The Fifteenth Month

Author : John F. Schwaller
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806164107
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fifteenth Month by : John F. Schwaller

Download or read book The Fifteenth Month written by John F. Schwaller and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mexica (Aztecs) used a solar calendar made up of eighteen months, with each month dedicated to a specific god in their pantheon and celebrated with a different set of rituals. Panquetzaliztli, the fifteenth month, dedicated to the national god Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird on the Left), was significant for its proximity to the winter solstice, and for the fact that it marked the beginning of the season of warfare. In The Fifteenth Month, John F. Schwaller offers a detailed look at how the celebrations of Panquetzaliztli changed over time and what these changes reveal about the history of the Aztecs. Drawing on a variety of sources, Schwaller deduces that prior to the rise of the Mexica in 1427, an earlier version of the month was dedicated to the god Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror), a war and trickster god. The Mexica shifted the dedication to their god, developed a series of ceremonies—including long-distance running and human sacrifice—that would associate him with the sun, and changed the emphasis of the celebration from warfare alone to a combination of trade and warfare, since merchants played a significant role in Mexica statecraft. Further investigation shows how the resulting festival commemorated several important moments in Mexica history, how it came to include ceremonies associated with the winter solstice, and how it reflected a calendar reform implemented shortly before the arrival of the Spanish. Focused on one of the most important months in the Mexica year, Schwaller’s work marks a new methodology in which traditional sources for Mexica culture, rather than being interrogated for their specific content, are read for their insights into the historical development of the people. Just as Christmas re-creates the historic act of the birth of Jesus for Christians, so, The Fifteenth Month suggests, Panquetzaliztli was a symbolic re-creation of events from Mexica myths and history.