Article suitable for Top Juniors and above

School children vote for their favourite Aztec day sign

19th Jan 2020

Mexicolore’s poll of primary school children’s favourite Aztec day sign

Over the last three years, ending in January 2020, we conducted an extensive poll of primary school children’s favourite out of the 20 Mexica/Aztec calendar or day signs. When time permitted we asked for their first and second choices at the end of one of our in-school history workshops on the Aztecs and Maya. Shown here (right) is our tally sheet: note that this is merely the summary - each ‘1’ or ‘2’ represents the pooled votes of those sampled, usually an entire class, occasionally just a handful of children. We estimate conservatively that each ‘1’ or ‘2’ represents the votes, on average, of AT LEAST 5-6 children. With 715 class responses ‘in’, this gives a combined total poll sample of over 4,000 children... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

The results? A quarter of all first choices, and clear overall winner (22.5% of all votes), was DEATH! Intriguing: was this thanks to the popularity with children of Day of the Dead themed films such as Coco and Book of Life? Or is it just ‘cos kids like the red bean-like icon (which in fact represents blood) on the nose of the Death sign...?! We didn’t ask them so we can only speculate. Second in popularity was JAGUAR (19.5% of votes), followed by EAGLE (15%) and DOG (14.5%).
Trailing these came MONKEY (6%), followed by FLOWER, MOVEMENT and DEER (each with around 4%). All the others lagged behind, with 1-2%. The least popular? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s GRASS, which, as you can see above, only received a single (second choice) vote...