Article suitable for older students

Eating the earth

19th Feb 2022

Aztec travellers eating the earth as a salutation

In the Old World, the act of prostrating oneself on - and kissing - the ground is a familiar and ancient custom, showing respect, humility and religious devotion. In ancient Mesoamerica it was all these things as well as a form of salutation or greeting protocol. Moreover, you didn’t just kiss the earth, you ate it... We’re most grateful to Dr. Justyna Olko (University of Warsaw) for her permission to précis a section on this specific subject from her article Body Language in the Preconquest and Colonial Nahua World (2014) (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

A truly pan-Mesoamerican gesture was the ‘eating of earth’, called tlalqualiztli in Nahuatl. While most accounts link it to the Nahuas, the gesture was apparently practiced throughout Mesoamerica, for it figures in several written colonial sources referring to the Maya and Totonacs. In the Nahua world, the eating of earth is mentioned in several different contexts and according to various sources it was a gesture accompanying an oath, a sign of reverence before a god, a salutation, or an act of submission and humility. The only image of it known to exist is in Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales (picture 1) which shows a woman in a standing position, although according to much written evidence, the earth eating was performed in a lowered body position, most probably squatting (see main picture).

Some descriptions imply that ‘eating earth’ at least sometimes involved the actual ingestion of soil as opposed to being purely a symbolic act. In this sense it may well have been a form of communion with the gods, an act of sacrifice and a way of communicating with the divine through the consumption of the flesh of Tlaltecuhtli (Earth Lord), the earth deity whose mutilated body formed the surface of the present terrestrial world. In the Florentine Codex Sahagún lists the eating of earth as one of the acts accompanying prayer, and tlalqualiztli itself seems to be classified as nextlahualiztli (sacrifice). The text of the Primeros Memoriales also places tlalqualiztli among other offerings, such as those of fire, incense, food and blood, libation (the ritual pouring out of a drink for gods), human sacrifice, and the practice of abstinence (picture 2).

Another possible meaning of tlalqualiztli can be found in colonial sources that characterise it as an act of humility and reverence made before both the gods and particularly important humans. Tlalqualiztli was reportedly performed at crucial ritual moments and usually in association with other forms of sacrifice. It was carried out by Mexica rulers in coronation rites along with bloodletting following ceremonial fasting.
It is also possible to interpret it as a greeting protocol. Here the gesture could have conveyed the sense of humility, an indispensable element of polite, elegant behaviour in the Nahua world. Several acts of tlalqualiztli mentioned by Sahagún’s informants could be seen as standard diplomatic gestures of respect. The expression of respect through creating a symbolic distance and acting in humility is indeed quite conspicuous in other gestures and postures common in the Nahua world - in both what we classify today as religious and secular contexts.

NOTE! Contrary to the impression given in the main picture above, which we commissioned, the Primeros Memoriales specifically states ‘Everyone ate earth with one finger’ - so the depiction in Picture 1 is the more accurate one!

Source:-
• Olko, Justyna (2014) ‘Body Language in the Preconquest and Colonial Nahua World’, Ethnohistory 61:1 (Winter 2014).

Quote:-
• Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 71.

Picture sources:-
• Main: illustration produced for Mexicolore by and © Steve Radzi (mayavision.com)
• Codex images scanned from our own copy of Primeros Memoriales by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Facsimile Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1993.

Ode to eating the earth (Aztec limerick no. 34):-

Eating earth was a hard act to follow
Or I should say a hard act to swallow.
It showed your civility
With the utmost humility.
- We hope to have more for you ‘tomollow’...!

Aztecs

Maya

Eating the earth

Comments (1)

More Aztec Life