Article suitable for older students

The question of beards

14th May 2022

Bearded Quetzalcóatl, from a Teotihuacan fresco, discovered by Laurette Séjourné during excavations 1955-6

This image (right) of a bearded Quetzalcóatl, from a Teotihuacan fresco discovered by Laurette Séjourné during excavations in 1955-56, raises interesting questions about how the Mexica (Aztecs) viewed facial hair, before they encountered Spaniards. To answer this we’ve leant heavily on an excellent article on the subject by Guilhem Olivier originally written in Spanish and titled ‘Las “barbas del Sol” y otros relatos míticos mesoamericanos según la Histoyre du Mechique de André Thevet’, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 58, julio-diciembre de 2019, pp. 137-183. (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

The subject has barely been touched on in the literature, and is perhaps more complex than one might at first think. Of course, the stereotype put about by Europeans 500 years ago was one of the world’s uncharted continents being populated by uncivilised, hairy ‘savages’. Contact with the New World and its inhabitants led swiftly to this perspective having to be reviewed - but replaced with a no less racist image of Native Americans being lampiños or smooth-skinned and by implication lacking in virility, a notion that lingered in the European mindset for centuries.
Within the Indigenous world, appreciation of beards was anything but (forgive the pun) clear cut...
On the one hand, a beard was seen as the mark of a distinguished, mature, highly venerated, even semi-divine, senior man: two prominent examples come quickly to mind, emperor Motecuhzoma II (picture 1) and the ruler of the Toltec city of Tollan (Tula), Topiltzin Quetzalcóatl.
But such cases were rare and exceptional.

On the other hand, it’s a commonly known fact that Native Mexicans - Mexica, Maya, Mixtec, Tarahumara, Tarascan... - generally disliked facial hair and were at pains to get rid of it, either by pulling out unwanted hairs with the fingernails or by using pincers. Evidence for the use of such tweezers comes not just from Mexico but from several South American countries, including Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Chile. Famously, the great Mexican archaeologist and historian Alfonso Caso discovered an example of a pair of tweezers - made of gold, 82 mm long, each arm ‘lightly concave’ - in Tomb 7 at Monte Albán in 1932. He was certain of their use, and referred to an image of what appears to be a large pair of similar gold tweezers held by a priest in a procession in Michoacán (picture 2).

Little wonder, then, at the shock, amazement (some writers indicate even disgust) shown - and documented by Spanish chroniclers at the time - by native Mesoamericans at the sight of so many strange, bearded, relatively young foreigners (picture 3). The same sense of awe, it should be noted, was expressed by the Maya: Friar Diego de Landa commented that in the Yucatán, when receiving the members of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba’s expedition in 1517, ‘los indios se espantaban de ver a los españoles y les tocaban las barbas y personas’ (note the subtle difference in tone in the English translation of this sentence - ‘The Indians marvelled at seeing the Spaniards, touching their beards and persons’.) The fact that later, under colonial Spanish rule, beards would become an élite status symbol associated with Europeans should not distract us from looking more closely at their meaning in pre-contact Mexico.

Much has been made of the now debunked myth that the Aztecs mistook Cortés for a returning god - Quetzalcóatl (follow the link below to learn more...) By coincidence, he was frequently depicted with a beard (eg in the Borgia, Vaticanus 3773 and Fejérváry-Mayer codices), more often in fact than other ancient Mesoamerican gods, including Tezcatlipoca, Tonatiuh and Tlaloc (picture 4). Moreover, god impersonators and their statues quite often feature beards; in some cases deity impersonators carefully removed their own few facial hairs first, replacing them with artificial beards made of gold, silver or copper. Why? In part it could reflect the association mentioned above with the wisdom of elders. A 17th. century document describing the local Tlaxcallan patron god Camaxtle and his impersonator image states: ‘There they set Camaxtle up, on the eagle’s mat, he who was their god, who perhaps was only a bearded wiseman. Big was his beard...’ (Aguilera 2010: 67).

A further clue comes from looking at the main associations of the gods featuring beards: it is no coincidence that, for instance, Tlaloc and Tezcatlipoca in his guise as Tepeyóllotl (‘Heart of Mountain’) are related closely to mountains, vegetation and animals, which could explain their depictions with beards. in individual cases specific associations have been put forward: for example, that the Sun god’s beard (picture 5) might symbolise the whiskers of the all-powerful jaguar.
Finally, we should recall that Quetzalcóatl’s name includes the sacred quetzal bird; some depictions of quetzals at Teotihuacan show the bird with a feathery tuft of a beard under its beak (picture 6). Aguilera suggests this is evidence that the bird represents Quetzalcóatl (ibid, 222).
Clearly there’s more to the Mesoamerican beard, in symbolic terms, than meets the jaw...

Sources/references:-
• Main: Olivier, Guilhem (see intro)
• Aguilera, Carmen (2010): Ensayos sobre iconografía vol II, INAH, Mexico City.

Image sources:-
• Main: image scanned from Firefly in the Night by Irene Nicholson, Faber and Faber, London, 1959 (illustration by Abel Mendoza)
• Pic 1: Illustration scanned from our own copy of the Codex Mendoza, James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938
• Pic 2: (L and centre) images downloaded from El tesoro de Monte Albán/Estudios técnicos sobre la Tumba 7 de Monte Albán https://www.mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/libro%3A562; (R) image from Relación de las ceremonias y ritos y población y gobernación de los indios de la provincia de Mechuacan (Edited by Moises Franco Mendoza) scanned from our own copy of the El Colegio de Michoacan facsimile edition, Mexico, n.d.
• Pic 3: image scanned from The Conquest of Mexico by W. H. Prescott, vol. 1, Chatto & Windus, London, 1922
• Pic 4: image from the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1971
• Pic 5: image from the Codex Vaticanus 3773 scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1972
• Pic 6: photo downloaded from Museo Amparo website, https://museoamparo.com/colecciones/pieza/514/quetzal-alegorico-fragmento-de-pintura-mural.

Aztec limerick no. 36 - ode to facial hair:-
When Spanish invaders appeared
The locals reacted ‘They’re weird!’
Forget gun and horse -
Both frightening, of course -
‘Twas the fact that EACH MAN had a beard!

‘Did Aztec men grow beards?’‘Why did Moctezuma think that Cortés looked like Quetzalcóatl?’