Aztec, Cibola, Zuni, Estevan Quivara and related gold-like conjecture

[Highmountain]

No, though I did compare the footprint of Egyptian versus Mexican examples and the size similarities are (almost) shocking, considering the official theory of isolation. Pure coincidence that the Great Pyramid in Egypt has virtually the identical footprint (not height though) as the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, as if whenever any group of people are living in isolation, they immediately start to building pyramids. And that idea is not supposed to strike us as ridiculous.
Oroblanco

I don't discount what you're suggesting and believe there's a lot of merit to it supported by the kind of reasoning that's often used to draw that conclusion. That particular method of reasoning isn't invalid, in my view.

On the other hand, seems to me there's a danger of assuming more than is sometimes justified. If I'd never seen a wheel and was going about trying to invent one the end product might well resemble a wheel and lead some future person to conclude I'd been shown how a wheel should look.

If worldwide pyramids share a similar footprint it might mean they shared a particular body of knowledge and motivation. But it might also mean each discovered independently the limitations of limestone or sandstone construction, compaction strength, durability, lateral stress and so-on.

I just haven't studied the thing enough to think anything about it one way or another.

Jack

Edit: Pyramids notwithstanding, one thing seems to me plenty strong enough to form an opinion about. Etowah as depicted on the copper plate found in a mound in Georgia and the Aztec diety Ehecatl as depicted from Mexico are the same.

 

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[Highmountain]

Sorry for going off on a tangent viz pyramids; it is fashionable among historians to think of all the ancient cultures as being in virtual isolation with no contact or communications outside their adjacent land-areas, while on the other end of the spectrum we have the diffusionist camp who see Egyptians in Mexico building their pyramids, which is also equally ridiculous. What I would sooner support is that the idea of building pyramids got transmitted, not that the Mound-builders are the ancestors of the Aztecs, for instance.

If the Mound-builders (Hopewell, Mississippian etc) were a single state or a group of city-states (which seems more likely) is it so far-fetched to think that Aztec traders ranging north or Mound-builder traders ranging south might have "discovered" their counterpart? Even a limited level of contact/trade could well allow the transmission of some ideas, like religious ideas for instance, or of an impressive building/structure like a pyramid. The materials used in their respective structures were quite different, being mounds of earth for the Mound-builders, stone, rubble, fill and plaster for Aztecs. Then too, according to the Aztecs own histories, we know that they revered Teotihuacan:

and admitted that they had not built the place, but had found it abandoned when they arrived in the area. So it is one easy step to say that the Aztecs went to building pyramids and such structures in direct imitation of the previous culture (who the original builders were, no one can say for certain - some propose Toltecs, others the Olmecs etc at any rate it was NOT the Aztecs or Mexica) and further their pantheon of blood-thirsty deities also seem to be adapted to the representations they found in the ancient ruins of Teotihuacan. This is not to say that the Aztecs did not build Tenochtitlan, their capital, but that they do seem to have adopted the architecture and possibly the religion (or an adaptation thereof) of the people of Teotihuacan who preceded them by many centuries.

This does not prove that the Aztecs were NOT the descendants or step-children of the Mound-builders either, only that we probably should not draw too much conclusions from the obvious similarities between the two cultures. The Mound-builders lasted for some 46 centuries and spread over a vast area, it is not a big leap of logic to propose that some branch or group might have split off and migrated south to Mexico. If we knew more about the religious belief system of the Mound builders, perhaps a better case could be built? Then again, even if the Mound builders' religion were quite different (and I suspect there are significant differences, for instance as far as I know, no one has found any proof of any kind of human sacrifice among the Mound builders) we do have indications that the Aztecs probably adopted the religious belief system already found in central Mexico.

There is an important feature in the Aztec story of their own origins, which involves them crossing a large body of water to get from their homeland (Aztlan) to their new home (Mexico). If the Aztecs homeland were located in Arizona/Utah/New Mexico/Colorado, what need is there for any crossing of a large body of water to be in their origin-story? A land route would have been the logical and simple way to get from the southwest US to central Mexico. I suppose they could have simply marched SE to the coast and followed the coastline south, but that is not the way it is depicted in their own codices, rather it is a crossing of a body of water - not just following a coastline. I am aware that our mutual amigo Blindbowman has taken the position that this interpretation is incorrect, however I am not convinced of his alternate reading of the pictograms in the codices. Or do we just ignore this particular part of the Aztec history? How do you see this? Thank you in advance,
Oroblanco

You make a strong case on the pyramid similarities not having much significance. There's certainly a widespread belief the mound-builders weren't a single cohesive culture, as well.

I see 800 as being the Aztlan ancester faction of the mound-builders equivalent to around 900 for the southwestern tribes [assuming for the sake of the discussion the ancestors of the Aztec were among the mound-builders]. A time of intensified social organization along with the architectural changes. I'd tend to suspect the faction was centered near the Missouri cave complexes near the Mississippi River, and for reasons I might conjecture about later, westward and maybe northward.

Some song in one of the codices speaks of a despot the Aztecs were fleeing in their homeland. Maybe that was the motivation that decided them on the migration. So according to their neighbors in Mexico, they began arriving in great numbers from the north about a century before the Spaniards.

Seems to me there's a body of what's not said there a lot larger than what is. Firstly, 50,000 to 100,000 people then, or now couldn't just pack up and leave to some unknown destination on the spur of the moment. In those days transporting, say 75,000 people across a large body of water to arrive within a decade or half-century of one another would involve an enormous amount of planning, coordination and logistics. More so considering the conditions of the time and the terrain and distances involved. The great body of the people migrating would have to know where they were going in advance. They couldn't live off the countryside like a pack of locusts, they couldn't rely on drinking salt-water if they were at sea, they couldn't rely of having plenty of water available if they were on land, just wandering around willy-nilly looking for eagles attacking snakes.

One option might be the group that crossed the large body of water was the advanced scouts looking for the eagle/snake scenario. Then, in a complex society that's already made up its mind to go somewhere, they'd have reported back with their findings and the location of the destination.

That same complex society would probably do more scouting then, finding available routes of travel, reconoitering water and available food supplies, planning how many people each route could supply by foraging and how much could be traded from the locals, how much must be pre-positioned in outposts, and how much could be carried by the travelers.

The water route would present major problems for all the obvious reasons with the sole advantage being speed of transit. A land route east to west across the lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf bayou country would be out of the question. Anything south of Texarkana probably wasn't among the routes. Some might have come across Arkansas, Oklahoma, and north Texas meandering to cross the Rio Grande between Matamoros westward to Laredo. Some might have followed the Brazos to its headwaters and worked south along the Rio Grande and to the west somewhat beginning somewhere above the Jornada where they might depend on the Mimbres folk to supply some grain if it had been pre-arranged. Some might have gone even further west to encounter Anasazi and Mogollon before turning south.

It seems to me a migration of that size would only have been successful to the extreme it was by a people sophisticated enough to pull it off. A society accustomed to the difficulties of presiding over a large area with localities sometimes plagued by drought or localized crop failures to be supplied from areas with plenty. These people, if they became the Aztec, were long-term planners, bureaucrats, thinkers and engineers.

The testimony was in the resulting arrival and domination of the Valley of Mexico. They arrived [or converged on the place] numerous enough to do whatever fighting needed doing in a state of health and mental preparedness sufficient to allow whatever was required. They survived the journey, weren't enslaved, didn't vanish somewhere along the route like poor old Hunter's 500 men when they evacuated Tucson in the face of the Yankee advance to arrive at Mesilla numbering 12 men [those were modern's with far fewer difficulties to overcome].

This says an awfully lot about them when you consider what was involved.

 

[cactusjumper]

It seems to me, that no discussion of this topic should be carried on without giving consideration to the astounding history of Peru. Specifically.....Caral.

What if the pyramids actually started at that location and spread from there, to the rest of the world.

http://www.philipcoppens.com/caral.html

Just a thought. Sorry for the interruption.

Joe Ribaudo

 

[Highmountain]

Also if the Aztecs didn't arrive in central Mexico until the 13th century AD, this only allows a couple of centuries for them to increase in numbers - say six generations; even so a starting group of say 100 families, successfully raising four children per family (probably a low estimate) over six generations could still reach a population of over 1.5 million, barring catastrophic loss. Since we know that the Aztecs were held in a tributary status to other tribes for some time, like the Israelites living in bondage in Egypt, their numbers might have swelled very quickly since they might have been exempt from serving in the military forces.

Whatever works best for you.

Jack

 

[Highmountain]

It seems to me, that no discussion of this topic should be carried on without giving consideration to the astounding history of Peru. Specifically.....Caral.

What if the pyramids actually started at that location and spread from there, to the rest of the world.

http://www.philipcoppens.com/caral.html

Just a thought. Sorry for the interruption.

Joe Ribaudo

If you care to discuss it I'll be interested in reading it. The "spread from there, to the rest of the world" piece of of your post carries uncomfortable shades of Erik Von Dan and probably can't be accused of being taken seriously among the great majority of pyramid studying academians. But among the Erik Von genre it's taken as pretty much a given.

 

[Highmountain]

Clearing the slate for a sub-sub-sub thread of this thread that assumes

1] "The Aztec arrived in great numbers from the north" in the time of the grandfathers of the Spanish allied tribes [Bernal Diaz], and,

2] The copper plate found in the Georgia Etowah mound depicts the Aztec diety Ehecatl and the Mississippian preoccupation with snakes in their religious depictions is significant, rather than coincidental, and,

3] Some large faction among the mound builders occupied a place in the direct cultural and ancestral heritage of the Aztec,

I'd be interested in pursuing the idea a bit to see where it leads if anyone shares that interest. I don't mind doing it here, but I'm not married to that approach and can just as easily do it privately or on some other forum.

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

OHIO: Just placing an Oro Blanco type of reference marker here.

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[Cynangyl]

Can I have one of those markers too? lol Guess I got one now!

 

[Highmountain]

Highmountain wrote:

Quote
Whatever works best for you.


Well that is quite an argument, I take it that you don't approve of and/or dislike the idea(s) I posted? It might help if you were to post the theory(ies) you find more acceptable/viable? Thank you in advance,

Highmountain also wrote: (in response to a post by our amigo Cactusjumper)

Sorry to have given you the impression I wanted to argue. I lean more to discussing than arguing and more to attempting to discover than attempting to persuade to a particular point of view. I don't have a theory, as I explained here numerous times.

Highmountain also wrote: (in response to a post by our amigo Cactusjumper)

Quote
If you care to discuss it I'll be interested in reading it. The "spread from there, to the rest of the world" piece of of your post carries uncomfortable shades of Erik Von Dan and probably can't be accused of being taken seriously among the great majority of pyramid studying academians. But among the Erik Von genre it's taken as pretty much a given.


Is it safe for me to assume that you have read the various works of the celebrated author and 'free thinker' Erik von Daniken, and concluded it is nothing to take seriously? I have several questions if this is the case. (I should probably go get my Tinfoil Hat and keep it handy now... )

I've read Von Daniken and drawn my own conclusions about the facts he's presented, his methods, but generally not about a lot of the underlying premises. I haven't read him in a couple of decades, maybe more. That's probably an indication I don't have a lot of interest in his work or discussing it at any length.

I'll break off the response here and put the rest on another so's not to get too long with it.

 

[Highmountain]

Highmountain also wrote:

Clearing the slate for a sub-sub-sub thread of this thread that assumes

1] "The Aztec arrived in great numbers from the north" in the time of the grandfathers of the Spanish allied tribes [Bernal Diaz], and,

2] The copper plate found in the Georgia Etowah mound depicts the Aztec diety Ehecatl and the Mississippian preoccupation with snakes in their religious depictions is significant, rather than coincidental, and,

3] Some large faction among the mound builders occupied a place in the direct cultural and ancestral heritage of the Aztec.

I'd be interested in pursuing the idea a bit to see where it leads if anyone shares that interest. I don't mind doing it here, but I'm not married to that approach and can just as easily do it privately or on some other forum.

If you would prefer to limit the discussion to this set of precepts, I have zero problems with this approach; there is no need to take it to PM format or to another forum, certainly not on my account.

So, starting from this set of precepts - if a large faction among the Mound Builders were to separate from the main tribe, what would be the most likely motive? (This is pure speculation on my part - tribes could split over quite trivial matters that seem almost foolish in retrospect) It is a matter of historical record that many Amerindian tribes came about due to a division among the people, which is why there were Plains Apaches versus Mescalero, Chiricahua, etc and Northern and Southern Cheyenne for instance. Since the language of the Aztecs is or was Nahuatl, it is logical that the language of their ancestors must be related to this - and here is our first stumbling block.

Just looking at a single example (for starters) the Etowah mounds of Georgia, which are accepted as a part of the Mound Builder culture. For a long time the builders were assumed to be Iroquoian-speaking Cherokees, until recently when it has been shown that the builders were Muskogean-speaking Creeks. Nahuatl is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan family, and geographically is largely centered in Mesoamerica. This could be just a red herring too, for we can not prove that the Etowah mounds were built by the same culture of those who built impressive mounds through middle-America beyond all doubt. It is also possible that a group that split off from the main Mound-builders might well have adopted the language in the region they emigrated to, perhaps retaining only a few words of their original tongue. In fact, considering the military-political position of the Aztec tribes on their arrival in central Mexico, (a tributary people, described as "barely ekeing out a precarious existence" for some time) it is not illogical that they might adopt the language of the tribe(s) in power, much as they adopted the architectural style of the earlier Teotihuacanos. We can point to many historical examples where a 'conquered' or tributary people adopted the language of their conquerers over time, just look at how widely Latin spread in the Roman empire for instance.

Then too, the Etowah mounds are likely of the Mississippian mound-builder culture, which is the only type of Mound Builder which remained in existence during the period when the Aztecs emigrated. (As far as I know) The tribes believed by historians to have Mississippian-culture roots are:

the Alabama, Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Guale, Hitchiti, Houma, Illinois, Kansa, Miami, Missouri, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage Nation, Quapaw, Seminole, Shawnee, Timucua, Tunica-Biloxi, Yamasee, and Yuchi. (copied from Wiki, I believe it is correct but cannot check it against my own refs - I welcome any corrections and/or additions.)

All of these are either related or believed to be related linguistically to Muskogean language family. However, as we have touched on already - it is conceivable that the Aztecs adopted the language of the people living in central Mexico over time, much as they appear to have adopted architectural and religious systems. An alternate explanation for the linguistic differences between Aztec ancestors and the Muskogean family is that they were an alien group within the Mississippians to begin with, in fact this idea would "fit" with their emigration and could be one key reason for their motivation to separate and live as far away as possible. If the Aztecs were speaking a different tongue from the "lords" of Aztlan, perhaps living in a subservient political/military position as well, we have a strong motivator for the people to wish for a new homeland. So on to the next issue, which may have a key clue - ceramics.

A key cultural practice of the Mississippian Mound-builders was their use of aquatic shell tempering agents in hardening their ceramics. If the Aztecs also practiced this in their manufacture of ceramics, it would lend credence to the idea that they are directly related. Of course even if the Aztecs did emulate this practice, it is possible they had simply adopted or copied it from having contact with the Mound-builders. Anyone know what the case is viz Aztec ceramics, whether they also used river and/or marine shells as a hardening agent? Thank you in advance,

Highmountain, you mentioned that you are "not married" to this set of precepts (1,2, and 3 mentioned above) which I find to be an admirable and open-minded approach to the questions of history. Are there other variations or even completely different alternate ideas you would not mind discussing as well? Again, thank you in advance,

Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
your friend,
Oroblanco

Looks as though you've asked a number of quesitons and made a number of conjectures that might bring good responses from some folk out there who know the answers. Thanks.

I'm making an effort to make sense of where the Aztec might have originated. One possibility I believe exists is the US midwest. At the moment the evidence and reasonings in favor of that and opposed to that origin are still a long way from drawing any conclusion or opinion.

If you prefer other origins I'll be glad to learn what I can from whatever you might offer about it.

I've explained here that I haven't an opinion. I still don't, though I'm satisfied some pieces of evidence for it are there. Whatever I come out the other end of this believing is all right by me. There's nothing at stake. When the discussion's over the Aztec will still have their actual origins the same place they were before the talking started.

The only difference might be someone among us, hopefully me, will have a better understanding of where those origins were located.

 

[Highmountain]

Diety comparison searching continues

 

[Highmountain]

Thank you for posting the pix amigo, that last one is one I need to research for an un-related subject. What about crops? Did the Aztecs raise similar crops to those of the Mound-builders? (ie corn/maize, cotton, tobacco, squash/pumpkins, potatoes, etc?) It stands to reason that a group of emigrants or immigrants would have brought seed stock from their original homes to their new homeland right? Or at least the most useful, I would think, unless they were strictly hunter-gatherer culture which seems unlikely in either the Aztecs or Mound-builders. Thank you in advance,
Oroblanco

Thanks for the suggestion. For the moment I'm still just plodding along trying to find out whether the thing's possible at all, and if so, whether it has a high enough level of probability to pursue it further. Shared artifact similarities and religious icons are just a thread hanging there to be pulled until I have enough to give it weight, one way or another. I'm thinking my next step, if what I find here justifies going further, will be to try to find evidence a migration happened at all from the mound-builders to Mexico.

The Gila Cliff Dwellings site's been nagging at me. I've always believed it was some sort of supply-way-station for someone migrating, but always thought it was the folk living immediately northward. Everything about that site's always been a head-scratcher. Too much corn found stored there to have been grown there, still scads of corn stored when the site was abandoned, and it wasn't occupied long enough to make any sense.

I'd surmised whomever ran the place did so as a supply depot for travelers, and then followed everyone else where they'd gone, leaving the bins and jugs full in case stragglers came in later and needed food supplies.

If that's the case there might be other such sites that have been found further north and east over the centuries I haven't ever heard about. I used to look into some cave dwellings up in the Jemez and always wondered why there was such a tendency to find unused supplies of corn a thousand years old, but figured the folk who owned it must have gotten themselves killed. Not to suggest either of these have anything to do with midwesterners, but possibly they do support the supply-depot theory of people migrating from somewhere to somewhere else and planning ahead for making sure the trekkers didn't starve.

Anyway, I haven't completed the religious and artifacts side enough to start looking at all that.

Gracias,
J

Edit: An archeologist acquaintance in the mid-1990s got me thinking about the way-station thing. They were building a new road up on the Navajo Res and had to call in the pros when they came across a site that turned out to have been a traveller way-station/supply depot rest-stop along the road to Chaco. Had everything including a few grave-sites for those who arrived at a different destination than they'd figured on. That came at a time when I'd already been puzzling over what the Gila Cliff Dwellings meant for a few years, and eventually I sort of put the two together in my thinking as being of similar intent.

During that same time period I'd long pondered what happened to the southwestern folk and concluded they probably migrated somewhere. I figured they were eventually the Aztec, but the archeologists convinced me it didn't make a good fit. But I did a lot of thinking, anyway, about how a sophisticated culture with a lot of population would have to go about planning and pulling off a mass migration without losing half of them or more in route, giving them a decade or so to arrange everything. One conclusion I eventually reached was that they'd do it in relatively small groups using different routes so's not to over-burden the resources along the way.

Lots of fairly-strung-out-and-flimsy assumptions in that, but it's what I see as most probable, even if it's midwesterners doing the migrating. I'll be looking for evidence that somewhere in the midwest a substantial group of localities were abandoned during a relatively short-timespan in the 1100-1150 frame.

 

[cactusjumper]

Highmountain and Roy,

It's really good to see some informed discussion going on concerning this topic. While I am nowhere even near being a student of the subject, I have been a fan for a number of years.

The search for Aztlan may very well lead back into southeastern Arizona. Originally it was thought that Aztlan was in Florida. This was a pretty good bet, because of the people being connected to the White Heron, but Florida is not necessarily the only possibility.

It may be that you only need to look at the area near the headwaters of the Gila River. The inland sea that existed there was 120 square miles in size. Should the Aztecs originally have lived on an island in this sea, the population may have become to large to continue living there, thus creating the need to migrate. You would need to adjust the actual time of the Aztec migrations to a much, much earlier date, but who's to say how old the legends really are. The Gila was both a trade and migration route. Once Highmountain starts considering the Gila River area as having an Aztec connection, it becomes a fertile field of investigation....IMHO.

It is likely that corn originally came to the area by traders.

It seems to me, the Mississippian Mound Culture is a stretch, but possible. Perhaps the key to that would be historical linguistics, as well as the composition and methodology of their pottery.

I am out of my knowledge comfort zone here, but much like my suggestion of Caral being the birthplace for the concept of pyramid building, I'm only offering up these possibilities to foster debate from those who may have better answers.

Take care,

Joe Ribaudo

 

[Cubfan64]

Don't assume lack input as lack of interest. I'm quite interested in the subject, it's just that other than guesses, thoughts and opinions, I have nothing to add as I've never studied the topic of the Aztecs other than in a cursory manner.

I'd rather observe and learn a little rather than stick my nose in with non-constructive feedback.

Your "strange rock formation" is certainly something that would be interesting to see close up!

Oh - and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure how helpful BB has been in this thread as I haven't seen his name pop up at all.

 

[Highmountain]

One thing I find hard to understand,
is why won't historians, at least consider the fact that that the Spanish had a set of codexes,
that brought them up into this country.
every place my partner and I have been around here, where ancient or traces of an Aztec type culture is concerned, the traces of this previous culture are all but destroyed.
Once in a while we find places where it hasn't and is still intact, but all of the signs are destroyed or are modified to the use of the Spanish.
Sometimes it boggles the mind what was covered up.

Our suspicion is that it was done because the Spanish thought it was pagan and needed to be done away with.

We are at the end of our knowledge in this area an are reaching at this point.
All ideas are welcome.

Thom

Part of the codice reluctance might well be the fact so many new ones are turning up on the web these days and being represented as authentic, pushing what's obviously one or another agenda or attempting to retroactively impose concepts and ideas [as well as particular types of wisdom] on our ancestors that seem anachronistic for those times but fit a bit too nicely with these.

Looking at the images and reading the supposed texts a person might be led to wonder whether there's not an ancestral disinformation league at work trying to assure a broad-brush repudiation of codices by genre. An awfully lot of what's being put out there almost has to be deliberately absurd. It's hard to imagine anyone putting it forward expecting it to be accepted, and it discredits what's real, carrying it along with it to the skeptics and debunkers heaven on the web.

Similar to what's happening with the attempts for new looks Nicola Tesla concepts and inventions regarding energy, and with the various UFO related sites, reports and discussions. Taking the 'damning by faint praise' method of ad hominen attack to an extreme anyone interested in serious inquiry might be driven away by the prospect of surrounding himself with lunatics.

At least that's how it seems to me.

 

[Highmountain]

The corn-caches as a set of way-depots is quite an interesting idea, with several possible explanations as to why it originated. One idea is that they were like the stage stations of the 'old west' - with the travelers being not just traders but also religious pilgrims, making a pilgrimage. If such a network existed, it would have been extremely useful for a migrating mass of people, assuming they had knowledge of its existence, which again referring to the religious pilgrimage idea, might have been common knowledge. Just one possible explanation as to why such a network might have come into being in the first place - it would also have been very useful for re-supplying military forces of warriors, rushing to defend various outlying settlements against raiders etc and this might be another explanation of why such a network was created in the first place. However if the purpose was originally (and/or principally) for feeding war parties on the march, it seems logical that there ought to be caches of weaponry found along with corn - arrows for instance, which are needed in large numbers for combat.
Oroblanco

One idea is that they were like the stage stations of the 'old west' - with the travelers being not just traders but also religious pilgrims, making a pilgrimage.

This is definitely something the Anasazi did. I think the concept's accepted as a given these days among the pointee-headed looters with PHDs.

If such a network existed, it would have been extremely useful for a migrating mass of people, assuming they had knowledge of its existence, which again referring to the religious pilgrimage idea, might have been common knowledge.

Probably true. For the moment I'm postulating something on a grander, more carefully planned scale specifically created for the purpose of serving migrating folk. Not to suggest it has any basis in fact, only that I'm postulating it.

it seems logical that there ought to be caches of weaponry found along with corn - arrows for instance, which are needed in large numbers for combat.

Good point, though while I'm personally aware of a lot of raiding campsites producing raw materials for making weaponry, I've never come across one that produced full-fledged weaponry. A lot do have plenty of flint chips around, and I've watched good knappers turn out prize-winning heads in 15 minutes or so. I lean to thinking those ancient knappers turned out their surplus weaponry when they anticipated it might be needed rather than carrying it around long.

I've got a 12,000 year old axe head sitting on the mantle [guy was SOME kind of good knapper] that was sharpened repeatedly until he came to a platform that left him a lousy edge. The place I found it suggested he just tossed it away in disgust, probably figuring he'd turn out another soon as he finished whatever he was doing.

I'll get to the rest of you're post as time allows.

J

 

[Highmountain]

I respectfully disagree that the Aztecs must necessarily have been a large group on their arrival in central Mexico, the fact that they were rather weak in comparison with the other tribes already present there at least suggests that their numbers were not great - or at least not as great as the tribes already there. So I am asking, how large a group would you propose the Aztecs were on arrival? If we are saying they were many tens of thousands, that is quite a difference from saying they were 5000 or 1000. A group of 5000 people might have less than 1000 able-bodied fighting men, which would still be a "large" group, but likely quite weak in comparison to tribes they found already in central Mexico. As a line of reasoning, if we take the opposite end of our projections and say that the Aztecs numbered over 100,000, it seems likely that they would have been strong enough to overpower one after another of the other tribes already living in central Mexico upon their arrival, rather like the tribes of Israel conquering the Canaanite tribes and cities as they progressed into Canaan. Does that sound logical? My reason for asking what figure we are to use when we estimate the Aztec migration has direct bearing on locating their homeland and route(s) taken, for a group of 50,000 people require considerably more supplies (food for example) than a group of say 2000. A group of 50,000 people need ten times as much food and water as a group of 5000, for instance.

I'm generally starting with a big number figuring I'll work my way down to whatever level eventually seems to hold water, assuming one does. I don't think there's sufficient evidence supporting the notion the Aztec remained long as a secondary force to cause me to go there. I don't doubt they were for a while and it remained long in their memories. But my initial guess is that by the time all the stragglers arrived they were sufficiently strong to make themselves enough a threat so's nobody was ranking them second-rate as a Mexico power.

Again, that's just me postulating. Someone else may be able to convince me otherwise, or some evidence might turn up to do it. I'm fairly easy that way.

Edit: I'm also sneaking around toying with the idea the arrival of midwestern migrating folk were responsible for something that might have been a major religious change among the southwesterners and possibly the cause for the 1100-1150 bloody civil war among them. Built myself a sand-castle or ice-castle of a premise that migrating midwesterners shook things up sufficiently to rattle the southwesterner cultures into giving up their lifestyle and the already declining big houses to join them on their trek south. But I'm not admitting to anyone such fantasies are being entertained in my old gray head.

 

[Highmountain]

Don't assume lack input as lack of interest. I'm quite interested in the subject, it's just that other than guesses, thoughts and opinions, I have nothing to add as I've never studied the topic of the Aztecs other than in a cursory manner.

I'd rather observe and learn a little rather than stick my nose in with non-constructive feedback.

Your "strange rock formation" is certainly something that would be interesting to see close up!

Oh - and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure how helpful BB has been in this thread as I haven't seen his name pop up at all.

Thanks for the post. I'd have sworn BB was here, but it must have been the other thread is all I can figure.
J

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI HIGH: You posted --->

We seem to be the only ones interested in the subject.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Definitely not true, but with my limited experience on the subject, I am afraid that I could add nothing of importance at this moment. I already have formulated ideas and probabilities, but they need to mature a bit first.

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[Cynangyl]

I have to agree wholeheartedly there....more of us are interested, even fascinated.....yet I feel I am not educated enough at this point to join in the discussion....I do, however, read and learn. I am enjoying this thread a great deal! Thanks!