Ancient Mexico

“ Almost all cultures shall share the same avocations, but the iconography is slightly changed and the name totally changed according to each language.
One of the most important legacies from ancient Mexico indisputably is the spiritual and mystical vision that Mexicans have about the world and life. The old grandparents very wisely knew how to adjust to the imposed religion. Changed everything on the outside, but inside maintained the fundamental bases of their millenarian religion until today, especially in the original Anahuac towns. ”

“ Our knowledge of the religion of ancient Mexico, they will say, is still too vague and too fragmentary to permit of the assemblage and criticism of its material. Such a charge it is impossible to gainsay. Yet the bitter-sweet experience of twenty years of meditation among the ruins of the Mexican pantheon has emboldened me to attempt its partial restoration by the aid of such reconstructive capacity as I possess. ”

“ ANCIENT Mexico, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, built upon an island situated in a great highland lake, the scene of the almost incredible exploits of Cortes, has long been familiar as a name to the western world, chiefly owing to the wonderful account compiled by Prescott. The story of the fall of Aztec civilization before the Spanish invaders has deservedly won a great hold upon popular imagination, for every page is redolent of romance, and indeed few, if any, writers of fiction have conceived a tale so full of incident, or have brought their heroes to victory in the face of greater odds. ”

“ Long gray threads of Spanish moss hang pendent from the extremity of their limbs and cover the lower leaves. These trees are the only living links that unite modern and ancient American civilization; for they were in being while that mysterious race, the Toltecs, were still upon the table-lands of Mexico—a race that has left behind, not only at Teotihuacan, but in the hot country, the imperishable memorials of a civilization like that of Egypt; and from them the Aztecs acquired an imperfect knowledge of a few simple arts. ”

“ It is what survived the Aztec after their ideological, philosophical and religious reform, ordered by Tlacaelel, and ultimately was what the tlamatinimes saved from the relentless Spanish destruction. The incursion in the recovery of the ancient Mexico philosophy, is the pursuit of values and principles that are present and fractionated in almost all aspects of their way of understanding life and the world, it is an inescapable task to recognize our own face. ”

“ Entering the largest room, one sees some fine specimens of that famous picture-writing of the Aztecs, such as they used for conveying to Montezuma the intelligence of the arrival of the white strangers on his coast, in those fateful years of the conquest. There are images here, and gods of every known shape and kind, for the ancient Mexicans rejoiced in a greater variety of gods than any other nation existing at that time. ”

“ The only civilization that the Mexicans can have received from the Old World must have been from some people whose cutting implements were of sharp stone, consequently, as we must conclude by analogy, some very barbarous and ignorant tribe.
From this point we must admit that the inhabitants of Mexico raised themselves, independently, to the extraordinary degree of culture which distinguished them when Europeans first became aware of their existence. ”

“ Each civilization with autonomous origin, among other things, had a philosophy, a religion, a teacher, a basic grain as staple food and an aesthetic language. While some had Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism; we have the Toltecáyotl, the philosophical thought of ancient Mexico. If other civilizations had Zoroaster, Hermes, Akhenaten and based their power on wheat, rice or potatoes ”

“ Though the ancient history of Mexico commences with the annals of the Toltecs, it is believed the country was inhabited by a wild people before this race came into prominence. There were the Olmecs and Xicalancas, the Otomies and Tepanecs—we are speaking now of the Mexican valley. Then, also, if we may believe the traditions, there were giants in those days. But we may find that the history of every people begins with fables and traditions regarding giants, and a great flood that may have occurred before or after the arrival of the giants upon the earth. ”

“ It has been said, not without reason, that the civilization found in Mexico by Spanish conquerors consisted, to a large extent, of "fragments from the wreck that befell the American civilization of antiquity." To find the chief seats and most abundant remains of the most remarkable civilization of this old American race, we must go still farther south into Central America and some of the more southern states of Mexico. Here ruins of many ancient cities have been discovered, cities which must have been deserted and left to decay in ages previous to the beginning of the Aztec supremacy. ”

“ Rarely does a visitor to Merida, or indeed to any portion of Mexico, obtain an inside view of life there; but, fortunately for me, while there, society was turned inside out by the occurrence of the carnival. It was near the middle of that memorable sixteenth century that witnessed the conquests of Cuba, of Mexico, and of Peru, that the Spanish invaders founded, upon the ruins of the Indian city of T'ho, this now ancient metropolis, the capital city of Yucatan. Probably no one of the old cities of Mexico has so faithfully preserved its old-time characteristics as this. ”

“ Recreate new myths that support "our-own" future, with the foundations of the ancient civilization. Add it to the paradigms and the magical stories that give us memory and roots. Make the "ancient Mexican" our beloved and admired old grandparents, and put an end to the evil perception that there are no existing links or continuity between the ancient past and present. Understand and feel that the Anahuac civilization is alive and vibrates in every one of our dozing hearts. ”

“ This philosophical element is very important in order to understand the cultures of ancient Mexico. Indeed, while other civilizations seek to dominate, exploit and transform nature, ranking themselves at the apex of universal creation; for ancient Mexicans the objective of human beings was to support the god’s creative project and to humanize the world, while considering the planet as their "beloved mother" Tonatzin.
"Man is the measure of all things," said the Greek, giving people a sort of dominion over the world; "Kill and eat", God says to man in the New Testament. ”

“ The ancient Mexicans life on earth was temporary. Eternal life was found after death. Whether in the Chichihuacuahco for children, place where infants that died at an early age went. A paradise with a huge tree that sprouted milk droplets from its branches. These children would wait there for the creation of the sixth Sun to be born again. ”

“ It is to be expected, too, that a changed complexion put upon the interpretation of Mexican society will eventually modify the interpretation of Mexican ritual and mythology, giving it, for example, something less of the uranian significance upon which scholars of the school of Förstemann and Seler put so great weight, and something more, if not of the Euhemerism of Brasseur de Bourbourg, at least of reliance upon social motives and historical traditions.
[24] Of all regions of primitive America, ancient Mexico is represented by the most extensive literature ”

“ Social life found a perfect balance between meeting the material subsistence needs and the needs of transcendental existence. Art has been the best testimony of this luminous period.
If the basis of human development occurred with the Olmecs in the preclassical period, the upper vertex of the cultural development of ancient Mexico was reached during the classical period. It covered more than a thousand years of impressive humanist progress in the Anahuac. All “Mother” world civilizations sought in the apogee of their development the spiritual significance of the existence. ”

“ When a new province was conquered the Inca carried its principal huaca to Cuzco. One or more living representatives of the conquered tribe, wearing its characteristic dress, were obliged to reside in the capital. In ancient Mexico these “living images of the gods” are one of the most striking features of the native civilization and have been persistently misunderstood, especially by modern authorities. ”

“ To maintain the myth of the alleged Aztec power and its inaccurate greatness, is to remain at the mercy of the conquerors cultural heirs, who in this way prevents us from knowing at a greater depth the ancient civilization of which we are living part.
Of course, the mexica formidable ability to break the depressive inertia of the Anahuac culture in the Postclassical must be recognized. Their great will power and temperance to overcome the hegemony consolidation challenges. Their ability to re-functionalize art is an undeniable proof of the reaches and talent that the mexica culture had. ”

“ All paid a very expensive price for their mistakes. The aztecs for transgressors and imperialists, and the people who fought with the spaniards against them; because at the end of the war they realized the spaniards were not Quetzalcoatl envoys and turned out to be more exploitative and sanguinary than the mexicas.
The "famous" aztec empire did not last but 196 years, since the founding of Tenochtitlan in 1325, until its destruction in 1521. The most important ancient Mexico period was the Classical, between 200 BCE and 850 CE ”

“ Numberless manuscripts have been rescued from monastic limbo, the caked dust of centuries has been scraped away from scores of volumes in the public archives, and the searchlights of modern scientific investigation have been turned upon places that once seemed hopelessly dark. As if this were not enough, explorers from many lands have plunged into the depths of the Mexican forests, and penetrated the quebradas of the Andes, in{xvi} attempts to wrest from them the secrets of their ancient history. ”

“ The old types descend, almost unchanged, from generation to generation. Everything that is really Mexican is either Aztec or Spanish. Among the Spanish types we may separate the Moorish. Our knowledge of Mexico is not sufficient to enable us to analyse the Aztec civilization, so we must be content with these three classes. I will not go further into the question here, for occasions will continually occur to show how—for three centuries at least—the inhabitants of Mexico, both white and brown, have taken their ideas at second-hand, always copying but never developing anything. ”

“ The Aztecs, it seemed, had not originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built. When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they increased and multiplied, and became a great and powerful nation. ”

“ The natives of Mexico were people of a different stamp. The Aztecs were pueblo or town Indians, highly organized as soldiers, skilled in arts and crafts, with a developed civilization and certain intellectuality. They were highland folk, the Mexican plateau lying at seven to eight thousand feet above sea level, protected by mountain fastnesses. It was, in fact, an empire of the New World such as, in some respects, might compare with those ancient semi-barbaric empires of the Old World, in times more ancient. ”

“ It naturally suggests the idea of two distinct sources, and authorises the belief that the Aztecs had inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was afterwards engrafted their own mythology. The latter soon became dominant, and gave its dark colouring to the creeds of the conquered nations,—which the Mexicans, like the ancient Romans, seem willingly to have incorporated into their own,—until the same funereal superstition settled over the farthest borders of Anahuac.
The Aztecs recognised the existence of a supreme Creator and Lord of the universe. ”

“ Every intelligent Mexican must wish for an event so greatly to the advantage of his country and of the world in general.
Some of our good friends in Mexico have bought land on the American frontier by the hundred square leagues, and can point out patches upon the map of the world as large as Scotland or Ireland—as their private property. What their gains will be when enterprising western men begin to bring the country under cultivation, it is not an easy matter to realize. ”

“ OF all that extensive empire which once acknowledged the authority of Spain in the New World, no portion, for interest and importance, can be compared with Mexico;—and this equally, whether we consider the variety of its soil and climate; the inexhaustible stores of its mineral wealth; its scenery, grand and picturesque beyond example; the character of its ancient inhabitants, not only far surpassing in intelligence that of the other North American races, but reminding us, by their monuments, of the primitive civilisation of Egypt and Hindostan ”

“ It is an unquestionable fact that the Mexican robbers, whose exploits have become a matter of world-wide notoriety, all belong to the cold region of the plateaus, the tierra fría. Once down in the tierra templada, or the tierra caliente, the temperate or the hot regions, you hear no more of them; or at least this is the case in the parts of Mexico we visited. The reason is clear; it is only on the plateaus that the whites, preferring a region where the climate was not unlike that of Castile, settled in large numbers ”