Mesoamerica

Nezahualcoyotl – the most famous Mesoamerican ruler, part 1, early life

10 June 2020

A brilliant statesman, lawmaker, a renowned poet and engineer, Nezahualcoyotl Acolmiztli, the Acolhua offspring of the royal house of Texcoco, was born into turbulent times.At the end of the 14th century, the Mexican Valley of Central Mexico was dotted by city-states/altepetls, each with a different... Read More

Pulque and the four hundred divine yet helplessly drunken rabbits

6 May 2020

Not overly strong alcoholic beverages were certainly a part of pre-contact Mesoamerica and had their undeniable presence in people’s lives. In Central Mexico it was a fermented sap of agave/maguey plant that provided local populations with a slightly bitter-tasting and not overly strong, milky beverage... Read More

Nahuatl that we speak every day

27 January 2020

In the previous article on Nahuatl and its dominance over huge chunks of Mexico and Central America, we looked into its growing outreach through the last two centuries of the pre-contact times and then its surprisingly even greater reach in the first two centuries of... Read More

Nahuatl – the lingua franca of pre-contact and early colonial Central Mexico

27 October 2019

Back in the pre-hispanic days, even before the hugely important and greatly influential Triple Alliance that we know today as the famous Aztec Empire, the Nahuatl/Nawatl language was spoken widely all across the Mexican Valley and beyond it. Not only the Nahua people used it,... Read More

Ahuitzotl – the Mysterious Creature of the Lake

30 April 2018

The legendary animal that reportedly haunted many fishermen’s sleep back in the 15th century Central Mexico, ahuizotl was widely known around the great Lake Texcoco and among towns and altepetls surrounding it; widely known and greatly feared. Described as a lethal creature with spiky fur,... Read More

Battle of Too Many Ambushes

31 March 2018

In 1474, the war in the Toluca/Tollocan Valley began and almost ended with the remarkable battle through which the Tenochtitlan ruler was wounded severely, an unheard of occurrence according to most primary sources. No tlatoani of Tenochtitlan or either of its allied city-states was hurt... Read More

From the feasts of Tenochtitlan Royal Enclosure to the kitchens of the commoner-folk

11 February 2018

Between the grand feasts consumed by the Mexica rulers in Tenochtitlan Palace and the daily meals the last of the commoners living by the wharves or the marketplace hastily devoured, the flow of the edible goods entering the island city had to be maintained and... Read More

Priestly career

11 January 2018

Various servants of gods held an important place in Tenochtitlan’s life, even though their importance is tended to be often overplayed by the later-day records of Spanish conquerors. Like anywhere around the globe at those times, Mesoamerica seemed to be superstitious and religiously pious, but... Read More

Mocuilxochitzin – the most famous poetess of Tenochtitlan

31 December 2017

In the Mexica Capital, women composing poetry were not uncommon, if less famous than their fellow contemporary noblemen poets. Sahagun in his “Florentine Codex” presents us with a glyph that is thought to be depicting Nahua noblewomen composing songs, still among the plethora of beautiful,... Read More

Reinforcements from the Otomi north

31 October 2017

While Axayacatl was busy recruiting his army, which in as giant an island city as Tenochtitlan was not an easy or a short process, the independent city-states of the Toluca Valley weren’t idle as well. Not only Tenantzinco sought alliances outside of its immediate surroundings.... Read More

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