History of the Western Hemisphere

  A section of the rolled-out painted vase by Akan Suutz', 8th century. "The tenuous line between legibility and pseudo-writing is less a necessity than a strategy for other scribes, as in the fully literate Akan Suutz’, a painter of a vessel now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Fig. 10, M.2010.115.12, see also K1599). The main text on the vessel is legible, even bold and confident. This is someone who understood, as do illustrators today, the impact of the la ligne claire (Clear Line; Ligne Claire). Small vessels throughout the scene have glyphs that appear to repeat, if with the usual alternation or juxtaposition of “affixes” and larger signs. Yet there is also an expert execution of a “12 Ajaw” on a jar for pulque. That may correspond to a date of, in the Maya Long Count system, 9.17.0.0.0 (an ending for a 20-year span often commemorated with Ajaw signs written in this way, without months), or, in the Western calendar, a Julian Date of Jan. 21, AD 771." For con...

The Mapa de Cuahtinchan no. 2 placed over the modern satellite map of the corresponding region.   These maps show features and landmarks like other maps do but with history and time overlayed on to the landscape. Although this and other maps like it were created in the time after the beginning of the Hispanic presence in the Western Hemisphere, it nonetheless a faithful Mesoamerican style map. Another similar map that chart very large geographic areas is the Mapa de Quauhquechollan. This latter one, however, was mainly a history of the conquest of the region known to the central plateau Nahuas as Cuauhtemallan or Guatemala. Editing continually...

Among the best of the reconstructions, even if the scale of some buildings is innacurate or some buildings are outright fanciful. The Spanish chronicles describe a gleaming white city, Bernal Diaz del Castillo describes the buildings shining so brightly as if they were made of silver. The artists used Nahua architectural forms, many of which survive to this day in Mexican architecture, namely the rectangular whitewashed adobe or stone houses, many times featuring an inner courtyard. Laurette Sejourne found tools for polishing lime cement plaster which covered almost all of the major buildings of Teotihuacan some 1,000 years prior to Mexico's prehispanic glory days. The artisan would scrape the tool repeatedly to get a mirror-like reflection. This was also undoubtedly a technique used by later Nahua builders and artisans considering the descriptions. Here is a visual treat of the Stuart and Scott Gentling's vision of Mexico Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the prehispanic Mexic...

Inka or pre-Inka, Nahua, or Maya law may be hiding right underneath our very noses. Some points to be made and which deserve to be pursued further: - Law or legal codes can be distilled from historical and archaeological information. - A political act in a society of institutions is law or perhaps the boundaries of the legally possible can be discerned. - Andean and Mesoamerican societies and states had institutions: political, economic, military, and religious. This is obvious. - Formulaic simplicity: "For instance, in the case of the Nahuas of the plateau, the chronicles state that.... (insert any interjection of power or the state upon the lives of people or in military matters or religious matters and you have law)". - Repeat for the Andean states. - Triangulate perhaps but surely extrapolate for archaeological information on poorly documented societies. - Chroniclers surely wrote of Inka and Nahua law, perhaps Maya law (must look into others). Can this be extrapolated on...

  Pre-ceramic ceramic art In approximately 3500 BC, the civilization of ancient Peru was beginning to fully take off. Slowly, an incipient figural art is being discovered by archaeologists working in the many river valleys punctuating the coast of Peru. The earliest iconographic works were likely dried gourds which preceded fired ceramics in Peru. That is not to say that ceramics did not exist anywhere.  The earliest indications and fragments of ceramics are actually found downstream on the lower Amazon river sometime around 6,000 to 5,000 BC near Santarem in Brazil, approximately the same time or perhaps a bit after they were being experimented with in Mesopotamia (Iraq). They made it up to the northern Andes and down to eventually reach Peru at Ancon in approximately 2,200 BC, and at La Florida in around 2,100 BC.  This doesn't mean late archaic people in Peru were drinking with cupped hands. Their earliest vessels were made of cured and oftentimes sculpted gourds. It's...