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Question for December 2020

If you lived in Aztec times, what would you change?? Asked by Denmead School (Prep Dept.). Chosen and answered by Professor Elizabeth Graham

I’d lower the age at which old people could drink alcohol!

Editor’s Note: According to the Codex Mendoza, only if you reached the age of 70 and were a grandparent could you drink as much alcohol as you liked. Before that, there were strict limits on who, when and how much you could drink, whether it was chocolate, an alcoholic drink like ‘pulque’, or anything else...

Image from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from our own copy of the 1938 James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, James Waterlow, London.

‘Dangers of the ‘fifth cup’: the Aztec approach to alcohol’ (an academic answer - for older students)

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Professor Elizabeth Graham

Professor Elizabeth Graham

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