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57 books match the query 'Aztecs' and 5 start with c

cover of Chia: Rediscovering a Forgotten Crop of the Aztecs

Chia

Rediscovering a Forgotten Crop of the Aztecs

Ricardo Ayerza Jr. and Wayne Coates

University of Arizona Press, 2005

One of the four main Aztec crops at the time of Columbus’s arrival in the New World, chia is now a forgotten food of the Americas. Chia seed oil offers the highest omega-3 fatty acid content available from plants, but today this species is known only for its use in "chia pets." Yet pre-Columbian civilizations used chia as a raw material for medicines and nutritional compounds, while chia flour could be stored for years as a food reserve and was valued as a source of energy on long journeys.

In this book, agronomist Ricardo Ayerza and agricultural engineer Wayne Coates trace the long and fascinating history of chia’s use, then reveal the scientific story of the plant and its modern potential. They compare fatty acid profiles of chia with our other major sources—fish oil, flaxseed, and marine algae—and provide evidence that chia is superior in many ways.

Here are just some of the benefits that chia provides:
- chia has the highest known percentage of alpha-linolenic acid, and the highest combined alpha-linolenic and linoleic fatty acid percentage of all crops
- chia has more protein, lipids, energy, and fiber—but fewer carbs—than rice, barley, oats, wheat, or corn—and its protein is gluten-free
- chia is an excellent source of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, iron, zinc, and copper
- chia is low in sodium: salmon has 78 times as much, tuna 237 times as much
- chia exhibits no evidence of allergic response, even in individuals with peanut and tree-nut allergies
- chia doesn’t give off a “fishy flavor,” unlike some other sources of omega-3 fatty acid

The need to balance the essential fatty acid content of the human diet, combined with the need for a safe, renewable, omega-3 fatty acid source, positions chia to become one of the world’s important crops. As this insightful study shows, current nutritional understanding provides an excellent opportunity to reintroduce this important food to the world.
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cover of Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco

Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco

Susan Schroeder

University of Arizona Press, 1991

"A thorough treatment of the sociopolitical history of the kingdoms of Chalco as seen through the eyes of one of the great post-Conquest Nahua historians. . . . Students of Nahuatl language will be rewarded by the extensive citations (with accompanying translations) of relevant material from original Nahua sources." —Choice

"By delineating the concepts and personae that were most salient in Chimalpahin's politically-oriented perspective on the past, Schroeder has advanced our understanding of native Mexican political organization and has made a major contribution toward interpreting the work of this Nahua historian." —Anthropos

"In this well-structured volume, Susan Schroeder synthesizes Chimalpahin's detailed information on the Prehispanic kingdoms of Chalco (located in the southern Valley of Mexico) with particular emphasis on their sociopolitical organization. . . . A valuable contribution." —American Antiquity

"This is an important piece of scholarship which makes more accessible to general historians of colonial Mexico an item of Nahuatl literature." —The Americas
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cover of Codex Chimalpopoca: The Text in Nahuatl with a Glossary and Grammatical Notes

Codex Chimalpopoca

The Text in Nahuatl with a Glossary and Grammatical Notes

John Bierhorst

University of Arizona Press, 2011

In this companion volume to History and Mythology of the Aztecs, John Bierhorst provides specialists with a transcription of the Nahuatl text, keyed to the translation, and a linguistic apparatus to help elucidate it. The glossary offers definitions for all unusual usages in the codex, as well as careful treatment of many of the commonest (and most semantically flexible) verbs, adverbs, and particles. Detailed discussions of selected features appear in the Grammatical Notes, which complete the work.
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cover of Conquered Conquistadors: The <i>Lienzo de Quauhquechollan,</i> A Nahua Vision of the Conquest of Guatemala

Conquered Conquistadors

The <i>Lienzo de Quauhquechollan,</i> A Nahua Vision of the Conquest of Guatemala

Florine Asselbergs

University Press of Colorado, 2004

In Conquered Conquistadors, Florine Asselbergs reveals that a large pictorial map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, long thought to represent a series of battles in central Mexico, was actually painted in the 1530s by Quauhquecholteca warriors to document their invasion of Guatemala alongside the Spanish and to proclaim themselves as conquistadors. This painting is the oldest known map of Guatemala and a rare document of the experiences of indigenous conquistadors.
The people of the Nahua community of Quauhquechollan (present-day San Martín Huaquechula), in central Mexico, allied with Cortés during the Spanish-Aztec War and were assigned to the Spanish conquistador Jorge de Alvarado. De Alvarado and his allies, including the Quauhquecholteca and thousands of other indigenous warriors, set off for Guatemala in 1527 to start a campaign against the Maya. The few Quauhquecholteca who lived to tell the story recorded their travels and eventual victory on the huge cloth map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan.
Conquered Conquistadors, published in a European edition in 2004, overturned conventional views of the European conquest of indigenous cultures. American historians and anthropologists will relish this new edition and Asselbergs's astute analysis, which includes context, interpretation, and comparison with other pictographic accounts of the "Spanish" conquest. This heavily illustrated edition includes an insert reproduction of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan.
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cover of Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate

Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate

By Elizabeth Hill Boone

University of Texas Press, 2007

In communities throughout precontact Mesoamerica, calendar priests and diviners relied on pictographic almanacs to predict the fate of newborns, to guide people in choosing marriage partners and auspicious wedding dates, to know when to plant and harvest crops, and to be successful in many of life's activities. As the Spanish colonized Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century, they made a determined effort to destroy these books, in which the Aztec and neighboring peoples recorded their understanding of the invisible world of the sacred calendar and the cosmic forces and supernaturals that adhered to time. Today, only a few of these divinatory codices survive. Visually complex, esoteric, and strikingly beautiful, painted books such as the famous Codex Borgia and Codex Borbonicus still serve as portals into the ancient Mexican calendrical systems and the cycles of time and meaning they encode.

In this comprehensive study, Elizabeth Hill Boone analyzes the entire extant corpus of Mexican divinatory codices and offers a masterful explanation of the genre as a whole. She introduces the sacred, divinatory calendar and the calendar priests and diviners who owned and used the books. Boone then explains the graphic vocabulary of the calendar and its prophetic forces and describes the organizing principles that structure the codices. She shows how they form almanacs that either offer general purpose guidance or focus topically on specific aspects of life, such as birth, marriage, agriculture and rain, travel, and the forces of the planet Venus. Boone also tackles two major areas of controversy—the great narrative passage in the Codex Borgia, which she freshly interprets as a cosmic narrative of creation, and the disputed origins of the codices, which, she argues, grew out of a single religious and divinatory system.

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