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Question for June 2025

If you lived to old age, did they think you were blessed by the gods?? Asked by St Luke’s Primary School. Chosen and answered by Professor Barbara E. Mundy

For the Aztecs, old age began at 52 years. Their calendar started on the year 1 Reed, and after 52 years, it reached 1 Reed again, so 52 years was their century. If you made it to 70, you were considered a very old, and very special, person. Younger people valued your advice. No Aztec histories tell us if the emperor Moteuczoma sent you a special gift or letter if you made it to a century. But from the Codex Mendoza, we learn that if you were 70, and had children and grandchildren, all restrictions were lifted on how much pulque (the Aztec beer, made from fermented maguey juice) you could drink. So 70-year old men and women had the freedom to be drunk, which was prohibited to other, younger people. The picture tells us why: their children and grandchildren (the smaller people without the wrinkled faces) were on hand to keep them out of trouble.

Picture source:-
• Image scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition of the Codex Mendoza, Waterlow & Sons, London, 1938 (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford).

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Professor Barbara E. Mundy

Professor Barbara E. Mundy

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