Talk:Aztecs/2005

This is an archive of past discussions about Aztecs. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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The chronological archives are: Talk:Aztec/2002-2004 Talk:Aztec/2005

The topical archives are: Talk:Aztec/Slavery Talk:Aztec/Cannibalism

It is suggested that all current discussion be restricted to the Talk:Aztec page. Please do not conduct discussion on an archival subpage as many people will watch only the Talk:Aztec page for new entries.

List of Emperors?

I'd like to do a List of Aztec emperors, and a sequence template for each emperor (like we have for so many monarchs on Wikipedia – compare the thingy at the bottom of George II of Great Britain, for example). But what's the proper title to use? Aztec emperor? King of Tenochtitlan? Head of the Triple Alliance? QuartierLatin1968 06:32, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

mmhhh, i think the correct title should be "Tlatoani" or speaker. Emperor or king, suggest an european point of view, with hereditary rights. Although aztec tlatoanis came from a close set of families, they were chosen, and even deposed by they peers. I think it´s position would be more like the old greek Dictators. Eventually they could have became kings, but we would never knew. . Nanahuatzin 07:22, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for the clarification. Okay, how do people like the idea of a List of speakers of Tenochtitlan (following Wikipedia's dislike for untranslated terms) with redirects from places like List of Aztec emperors for the benefit of the unenlightened (like me as of ten minutes ago!). QuartierLatin1968 18:40, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Go for it! -- Jmabel | Talk 20:34, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I started doing my thing on List of speakers of Tenochtitlán only to discover midway through that we already had a small article at Tlatoani. (The labyrinth that is wiki!) This covered in substantial measure the same territory, so I eventually decided to merge my new article with it. In the meantime, all ten Tlatoani's for which we have articles now have my favourite template for successions at the bottom. :-) I think I might add little stubs for the other two Tlatoanis, for the sake of completeness. In the meantime, Tlatoani would be an excellent place to add further information on Aztec statehood. QuartierLatin1968 19:31, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good, i did not know of that entry, i will try to provide with info on thos tlatoanis :) Nanahuatzin 23:11, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Any help would be great

I'm wondering, in many picutres of Aztec gods they include funny looking hook things they're juggling. You can check the one I've included as an example at the following link.

[1]

They're in most of the pictures of gods in the document Rig Veda Americanus, an 1890 book on American aboriginal literature.

What are they? I must know!! Any help would be great.

Speech balloons. –Hajor 12:45, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they indicate that the subject of the drawing is saying something important.

Could you point me toward a published source regarding these aztec "speech bubbles"? It would really help me out if you could.

I have no idea of the canonical references. I found this excerpt online: "Perhaps the best-known representation of sensation in Mesoamerican art is the speech scroll. [...] speech scrolls make elite song visible by depicting it as colored spirals curling from opened mouths. And just as Mixtec depictions of elite vision are often specified by marking what kind of vision is being represented, so too are speech scrolls often marked to indicate the type of speech being articulated. This happens a number of times in the Mixtec corpus." Bayann Hamann. "Seeing and the Mixtec Screenfolds." Visible Language. 2004. Link

Statehood of Triple Alliance vs. Nahua Nation

I suggest the following change to more accurately reflect the differences between the statehood of the Triple Alliance and related entities as opposed to the Nahua Nation.

In Nahuatl, the native language of the Aztecs, "Aztec" means "someone who comes from Aztlán", a mythical place in northern Mexico. However, the Aztec referred to themselves as Mexica (IPA [meˈʃihkah]) or Tenochca. The modern usage of the name Aztec as a collective term, applied to all the peoples linked by trade, custom, religion, and language to the Mexica state, the Triple Alliance, was suggested by Alexander von Humboldt.

should instead read :

In Nahuatl, the lingua franca of what we now call the Aztecs, "Aztec" means "someone who comes from Aztlán", a legendary place located somewhere in northern Mexico or in the southwestern United States. The modern usage of the name Aztec has come to refer to anyone who lived under the Triple Alliance before the arrival of the Spanish as first suggested by Alexander von Humboldt. The Triple Alliance was a state that brought together inhabitants of three city states of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan (modern-day Tacuba) under the political control of the Mexica (IPA [meˈʃihkah]) or Tenochca.

The last line in the original version is flawed since all people in Mesoamerica were somehow linked by trade and customs. Religion as it is know in western society did not exist since people saw it as something much more fluid, so once again everyone in the region could be considered to share the same religion. In regards to the language, the Tlaxcalteca also spoke Nahuatl, but to call a Tlaxcaltecatl 500 years ago or today an Aztecatl or a Mexicahtl would be an insult. --mexicatl 23:11, 2005 May 21 (UTC)

I think that would be fine except your placement of the phrase about von Humboldt doesn't make it clear what he "suggested". I believe what you want to say is:

In Nahuatl, the lingua franca of what we now call the Aztecs, "Aztec" means "someone who comes from Aztlán", a legendary place located somewhere in northern Mexico or in the southwestern United States. The modern usage of the name Aztec, first suggested by Alexander von Humboldt, refers to anyone who lived under the Triple Alliance before the arrival of the Spanish. The Triple Alliance was a state that brought together inhabitants of three city states of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan (modern-day Tacuba) under the political control of the Mexica (IPA [meˈʃihkah]) or Tenochca.

-- Jmabel | Talk 01:16, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Article moved...

From Aztec to Aztec Civilization. Any particular reason? Any particular reason for the upper-case C? (Compare Maya civilization.) –Hajor 16:08, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, no reply. Is anyone going to howl like a Chichimeca prisoner-of-war if I move it back to Aztec (which, after all, makes linking a whole lot easier)? –Hajor 20:49, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK, entering redirect hell. –Hajor 21:02, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good. I saw no reason to have it anywhere other than "Aztec". -- Infrogmation 21:37, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I moved back the talk page too. -- Infrogmation 21:39, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the oversight there with the talk page -- I must have not had the default box checked. Thanks for catching it. –Hajor 21:54, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm late to this game but there really is a good reason for this article to be called "Aztec civilization" instead of "Aztec" and that is precisely that the article on the Maya is called "Maya civilization". Maya redirects to Maya civilization but Aztec civilization redirects to Aztec. Someday, this inconsistency should be resolved. Either we need to convince those who edit Maya civilization to move their article to Maya or we need to move this article to Aztec civilization. I suspect this was what was behind the original move.

Richard 07:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there'd be much support in moving Maya civilization to Maya (speaking as one who has edited there for a while now). For starters, the term maya has a whole bunch of other connotations, as can be seen from Maya (disambiguation), whereas its current title encapsulates its subject nicely. Aztec does not have so many alternate meanings, and so could live happily more here without much potential for confusion. Perhaps the more pertinent reason that Maya civilization is where it is would be that there we have separate articles for the historical civilization (the latter) and the Maya peoples themselves, who both participated in that historical enterprise and have persisted to this day (and are also collectively referred to as "Maya"). Within the Aztec article, this distinction has not thus far been made.--cjllw | TALK 08:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Name

Is 'Nanahuatzin' a true aztec name?

Yes, although it would be more precise to call, a nahuatl name. :) Nanahuatzin 07:30, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Modern-day?

(was a remmed-out comment on the article page)
are the 'modern-day Nahuatl speakers' dealt with anywhere on Wikipedia?

Very cursorily on Nahuatl and Native American, nothing better than that AFAIK. Does anyone feel up to the task? –Hajor 22:21, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Age of Tenochtitlan

According to Wikipedia, Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325, and Orayvi in 1150, which would seem to indicate that "Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, so it can be considered the oldest living city of America" is not correct. --Curtis Clark 15:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, i did not know about Orayi. Altough i do not think Orayvi could be clasified as a city, but as a settlement. is there a criteria to deal with this?. if not, then we can remove it, i just think it was interesting info. In Mexico we celebrate 1325 as the foundation of Mexico City, thinking in terms of historic continuity may not completelly correct, but the city did not died and reborn as an european city, it was a slow and painfull process. Nanahuatzin 18:43, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Isn't Mexico City still the largest city in population in North America? I think it would be safe to say that it is the oldest continuously inhabited urban region in America. Back in the day, the inhabitants of some of the smaller Hopi towns probably thought of Orayvi as the "big city", but it has only recently had a suburb, so in no sense could it be called an urban region.--Curtis Clark 01:16, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

argh... i found i am wrong. The oldest living city, at least in north america would be Cholula, (Cholula, Puebla) stablished about 100 BC, it was considered Tollan (city) about 200 AC ( http://www.inah.gob.mx/zoar/htme/za01801f.html ). I think i need to erase that part. Thanks for your comentaries Nanahuatzin

External reference

The reference that was present as [This text has been deleted due to problem with spam filters] I have amended to:

Zegura, Stephen L.; Karafet, Tatiana M.; Zhivotovsky, Lev A.' and Hammer, Michael F. High-Resolution SNPs and Microsatellite Haplotypes Point to a Single, Recent Entry of Native American Y Chromosomes into the Americas, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol. 21, Num. 1, p. 164-175. Originally published online on October 31, 2003. ISSN 0737-4038.

But I still don't see its relevance to this article. It might be relevant to the article Native Americans, but it does not even mention the Aztecs as such. If no one can explain in the next 48 hours, I intend to remove it from this article. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:23, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

"Picture-writing"

I've just read William H. Prescott's The History of the Conquest of Mexico in which many references are made to Aztec "picture-writing" which the same author calls "heiroglyphical" and states that documents written in this system are known as "maps". This doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article. I knew the Maya had a writing system, but I would like to learn more about what the Aztecs used. — Hippietrail 01:32, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

the aztec sistem was a bit more complicated... it was not as advanced as the maya, but it used pictographic, phonetic, rebus and hierogliphyc symbols, also a lot of symbols were not standard and finally it had ocult esoterics meanings. All that, because it was a system meant to be told.. not to be read. The Aztec used paper for everyday use, and more durable materials for sacred text or codex. Tenochtitlan received hundred of thousands of paper sheet as tribute.. Unfortunatlelly, of the thousands of codex form aztec libraries, only survive four... I am working on the subject... there are still several section missing, like religion phylosophy, technology, art etc... Nanahuatzin 06:50, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Aztec sacrifice

I redirected Aztec sacrifice here. As you can see from the article history, a long unformatted essay (probably a cut and past from somewhere) existed there. There might be some salvagable info to merge, if anyone is interested. --W.marsh 20:27, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

"martial arts"

Recently added "martial arts": is this really supposed to be "martial arts" (physical techniques of personal combat) or "military arts" (all techniques used in war: strategy, tactics, etc.)? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I dont think the military training of the aztec would qualify as a martial art... Specially as almost nothing of it is known... :( Nanahuatzin 18:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)