Aztec renaissance: New research sheds fresh light on intellectual achievements of long-vanished empi
Aztec renaissance: New research sheds fresh light on intellectual achievements of long-vanished empire
Exclusive: David Keys explains how a major study into the Aztecs’ hieroglyphic writing system suggests it was one of the most sophisticated scripts that humanity has ever produced
3 days ago
Aztec writing sometimes used different colours to refine a word's meaning: This page is from an early 16th century book about Aztec imperial taxation, the Matricula de Tributos, now in the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City (wikiCommons)
Exactly 500 years after they were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores, the long-lost intellectual foundations of Aztec civilisation are being rediscovered by a British anthropologist.
In 1521, the Spanish military presided over the destruction of three of the world's greatest libraries – in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and in the Aztec-allied cities of Tetzcoco and Tlacopan.
Of the thousands of books of Aztec poetry, law, rhetoric, medicine, astronomy and history, only one or two works appear to have survived.
So comprehensive was the Spanish obliteration of the Aztec intellectual and literary achievement that much of the modern academic world became convinced that that achievement had never really existed.
Key to that perception was the belief that Aztec hieroglyphic signs did not constitute a proper writing system and that therefore a complex written literary tradition could not have existed.
More:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/aztec-empire-hieroglyphics-archaeology-b1827852.html
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