LBST 1B05 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Sapa Inca, Barter, Hierarchical Routing
Document Summary
No look to antiquity, no humanist tradition, no early forms of capitalism (with patronage, etc. ) here. Aztec empire: founded by nomadic mexica people, who settled and created cities. Aztec the founding of tenochtitlan, 1545: from a codex (codex mendoza) containing the history of the aztec rulers; uses language of aztec pictograms. Gives us a sense of the aztec vision of time: the calendar based on the notion of a cycle of 52 years based in the aztec belief that time is cyclical. Each square in the calendar represents one year: four recurring symbols are found in each square (arranged in sequences of 13). It is therefore both a religious and a historical document. Aztec or mixtec, a view of the world, 1400. Aztecs believed that the casting of body points to four quarters created both the calendar and the four directions. At the centre is xiuhteculi, who is represented as a warrior from which radiate four streams of blood.