Mexica

""Кодекс Мендоса или Кодекс Мендосиано (исп. Códice Mendoza), созданный анонимным автором приблизительно в 1547 году в Мехико, один из лучших по сохранности среди ацтекских рукописных кодексов. Это второй ацтекский кодекс, переведённый на русский язык специалистами по доколумбовым цивилизациям В. Талахом и С. А. Куприенко.

Книга рассчитана на студентов, аспирантов и преподавателей исторических факультетов, а также всех тех, кто интересуется историей доколумбовых цивилизаций, и в частности ацтеками. ""

An intense interaction necessarily takes place between the individuals of any given society and the animals that share the same habitat, a relation that goes beyond the limits of biological depredation and that has changed according to the needs and the greed of humankind throughout history. The first type of interaction between humans and fauna was not a religious one but rather something more prosaic: survival. Nevertheless, the animals not only help to satisfy the stomach but also to provide answers to many of society's questions and needs. With them and because of them people learned about animals' natural history, their habitats, their marvels and their times. Animals taught humans how to behave, how to approach them and what was needed in order to hunt them. The displacement of certain fauna provoked the mobility of societies and the acquisition of a way of life that would be taken as a symbol of courage, anger, boldness, survival and power. Societies of ancient times had learned how to find food and what was good to hunt or to eat by observing the animals. This information was gathered, codified and transmitted from generation to generation through rituals, verbal communication (histories), and images (drawings, paintings, carving, sculpture, etc.). Animals participated actively in all kind of narratives and showed features in common with society's deities and other cosmic forces, enhancing their stories and giving them ethical and moral values to follow. In the stories animals were heroes, saviors, teachers, mediums, alter egos and victims. They established different levels of complexity because of the intermediary position they played between the sacred world and humankind. Animals could be found at any cosmic level and in any direction, some more versatile than others in the sacred histories and also in everyday activities. The evidence of this can be observed in the wide variety of cultural expressions and actions in what has been called a total vision of the world: a cosmovision. Sacred histories, components of this cosmovision, are as old as humankind and have helped to explain the natural world, its relation with societies and the order of the universe. But how was this perception of the animal in the eyes of the Native American Indians? How much did they differ from the XVI century conquerors that gave accounts of the fauna found in the New World? The main objective of this dissertation is to explore the functions played by animals in the mentality of Mesoamerican societies, seeking to provide the elements or factors that may help us to understand the intricate interaction human-nature. Social development and religion created differences in the relation between societies and the natural world, where hunters and gatherers considered animals as something closely related, while agricultural-urban societies began a process of separation that led them to see non-domesticated animals as something distant. These differences in conceptions raised a new set of questions that give direction to this investigation and that intends to cope with: a) how did Mesoamerican peoples perceive animals? b) what kind of factors (natural and cultural) affected the symbolic values they attributed to the animals? c) which features were conserved by agricultural societies from their hunting ancestors or neighboring hunter communities? d) what was the general perception of the natural world of the first European settlers when they arrived in the New World? SUMMARY 404 I have taken the Mexica as a case study, examining different sources the use and functions of animals in their precolonial society. Last to enter into the scenario of Mesoamerica's history, the Mexica shared a common cultural tradition with all the societies of this superarea. At the same time they were also the main group that provided the information that was recorded in many of the early Spanish written sources, documents considered essential for this study. But, the history of the Mexica is complex and fragmented as it was severely affected by the sword and the cross of the conquerors. This makes it even more necessary to use other disciplines and techniques (anthropology, ethnography, history, biology, iconography, etc.) to provide the elements to discuss and back up the main argument. The information gathered and presented in the text allows the relation that the Mexica had with the fauna to be determined and compared to that of hunter-gatherer societies. This makes it possible to note the process of change that the Mexica suffered in relation to the Chichimecs. The fusion of the natural and the cultural world in the perception of hunter-gatherers is slightly different to that of the Mexica as a state society, where a process of separation was starting, but still quite different to the one present in the mind of the Europeans. Information about the Mexica's behavior towards the animals that shared the natural areas they controlled is likewise presented here. This information has been used to point out the perception this society had, as well as the others that share the cultural tradition, and allowed to infer a wide range of values contributing to the detailed and comprehensive knowledge of the species and their environment. The ways in which these ideas, values, and beliefs were incorporated within the socio-cultural sphere are examined, but above all, this investigation emphasizes the intensity in which the seemingly external elements of the natural world merge with culture. The vision of the cosmos is an element of interaction between religious thought and the physical world in which the Mexica lived. It is important to note that ethnographical data are used to support some of the arguments presented in order to understand prehispanic societies, as I (as well as others) consider that contemporary indigenous beliefs are derived from a common ancient religion. Some ideas still haunting the literature, such as the qualification of the precolonial world as cannibal, ecologist or idyllic, are refuted; the data simply do not support such theses. This research has been structured and presented in the following way.