Welcome to the Aztecs* at Mexicolore!

Aztec doctors

The great Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin, in his classic work Textos de Medicina Nahuatl (1984), wrote a nuanced appraisal of Aztec/Nahua/Mexica doctors. We’ve adapted and translated the piece from Spanish... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

IN THE NEWS: Commemorations

In her superlative 2021 study of the Codex Mendoza, Daniela Bleichmar writes that thanks to Samuel Purchas, who reproduced most of the Codex 400 years ago in his Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas his pilgrimes (1625), ‘the Mendoza may well be the single most reproduced and studied New World manuscript’... We’re happy here to quote in extenso from her work (see below). (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Pinocchio’s Mexican birthplace?

All Disney fans would instantly see a connection here with Pinocchio and his tale-telling nose. In fact this is the toponym (place sign) for the garrison town on a ridge in southern Mexico, called Huaxacac in the Codex Mendoza. What’s more, Huax(y)acac is the old Nahuatl name for what is today the city of Oaxaca... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

When The Winged Warriors Returned: Monarch Butterflies and Religious Beliefs in Central Mexico

We’re most grateful to Jesper Nielsen - seen here (on the left) with colleague Hugo García Capistrán in the Sierra Chincua Sanctuary, Michoacán - for writing for us this important article on the place of the Monarch butterfly in Mesoamerican culture. Dr. Nielsen is an associate professor in Mesoamerican studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has published widely on Mesoamerican iconography, epigraphy, and religion, in particular Teotihuacan, the Epiclassic cultures and the relationship between the Maya and Teotihuacan. He also has a strong interest in the early colonial period and the merging of Mesoamerican religions and Catholicism, as well as the field of research history. He is currently Head of Studies at the Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies but is also working on a biography of two pioneering women in Mexican archaeology and ethnography, Danish sisters Helga Larsen and Bodil Christensen.

Aztec justice

‘The juridical system of ancient Mexico was inspired by the same view of the human being - “face and heart” - which produced the moral code. Sahagún wrote of this:-
’”The rulers were concerned with the pacification of the people and the settling of litigations and disputes among them, and for this reason they elected prudent and wise judges, honest people who had been educated in the monasteries of the Calmécac”’ (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Jade - the bogies of the earth monster...?

For the Mexica/Aztecs, what we consider rare and precious metals and minerals they believed, quite logically, to be the physical evidence of the presence of gods, long ago, here on the earth. Thus gold was the poo of the sun god, and silver the poo of the moon goddess. So what about precious jade and turquoise...? (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)