Codex Fejérváry-Mayer: Cosmological diagram

The human need to record and thereby preserve information for later use manifests itself pictorially and hieroglyphically in Mesoamerica to an extent not seen elsewhere in the ancient Americas. Mesoamerican peoples developed several pictographic writing systems to preserve their knowledge; they painted and carved images on walls, containers, and sculptures, but, more fundamentally, they painted in books. The painter-authors and keepers of the books were guardians of community knowledge and …

What is time? Saint Augustine answered, in effect: if you do not ask me, I know what it is; it is only when I am asked to express it in words that I have a problem. Ideas about time, modes of reckoning it, ways of using it—these form one sphere among a universe of beliefs and customs viewed through the distinctive cultural lenses of diverse indigenous peoples. These ideas differed greatly from the temporal notions held by the Europeans who came to these shores half a millennium ago. The …

The most numerous Southern Indian peoples, west of the Maya, are today the Zapotec and Mixtec, who occupy Guerrero, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Tehuantepec. Oaxaca proper is divided into the western highland, or Mixteca, and the eastern valleys, where Zapotec is spoken. Oaxaca is the most central of all the regions of ancient Mesoamerica, having neighbours to west, north, east, north-east, and south-east, and overland communications to all these regions, fixing Oaxaca as the least marginal or …

There is a biting chill in the morning air which nips at his toes through the weave in his sandals. His stomach, however, is still warm from the drink of hot cacao and honey that he had heated over an open fire. During the night he had taken shelter in a grove of huamuchil trees that now seem to vibrate from a faint pulsating drumbeat originating in the west. In that direction, just over a low hill of terraced farming plots, the traveler can make out tall poles stretching toward the last of the …