Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Thu Feb 13, 2020, 06:14 AM Feb 2020

Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend review - a revolutionary history of the Aztecs


Ben Ehrenreich

Thu 13 Feb 2020 02.30 EST

In the summer of 1520, the artist Albrecht Dürer viewed a sampling of the treasures the conquistador Hernán Cortés had recently shipped to Europe from the land that would later be called Mexico. In his diary, Dürer enthused about a golden sun “a whole fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the same size”, plus “all kinds of wonderful objects”. “All the days of my life,” he wrote, “I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things.”

The awe with which Europeans at first beheld the civilisation of the people who would be known as the Aztecs – they called themselves the Mexica – would not last long. They would later be remembered mainly through images of hearts torn from living bodies with obsidian blades and corpses tumbling down bloody-stepped pyramids, as a people ruled by ritualised bloodlust, trapped in a rigid fatalism, easily conquered by more agile newcomers from across the sea. Moctezuma, the story goes, mistook Cortés for a god whose return had long been prophesied, and surrendered his empire without a fight.

In Fifth Sun, the historian Camilla Townsend points out that even Cortés, a figure hardly known for his modesty, did not mention being welcomed as a god in any of the letters he wrote at the time. Would he have neglected to include such a detail? The story only began to circulate decades later, and it is no surprise that it took hold: “In such a scenario,” Townsend writes, “the white men had nothing to feel remorse about ... The Europeans had not only been welcomed, they had been worshipped.” Most of the enduring myths about the Aztecs perform the same function, flattering the conquerers by expelling the conquered from the realm of the rational. It did not help that until recently most of the textual sources on the Aztecs were accounts prepared by the Spanish.

Another body of sources survives, the neglected Nahuatl-language texts known as the annals, written in the years following the conquest by men Townsend describes as “indigenous intellectuals” eager to record their experiences in their own tongue for their own people, to preserve their history before it faded from collective memory. They allow Townsend – who has been championing, translating and publishing the annals for more than a decade – to synthesise a history of the Aztecs that relies primarily on their own words. “In the annals,” she writes, “we can hear the Aztecs talking. They sing, laugh, and yell.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/13/fifth-sun-camilla-townsend-history-aztecs-review
3 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend review - a revolutionary history of the Aztecs (Original Post) Judi Lynn Feb 2020 OP
I'm definitely getting this. Thank you. Squinch Feb 2020 #1
So glad people are keeping at penetrating the lies fashioned by the murderous monsters who invaded Judi Lynn Feb 2020 #2
When I think about the literature and learning that was destroyed. Who knows what Squinch Feb 2020 #3

Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
2. So glad people are keeping at penetrating the lies fashioned by the murderous monsters who invaded
Thu Feb 13, 2020, 04:34 PM
Feb 2020

the Americas and nearly destroyed the human race already living there.

I really want to find out more, as well. With time, so much more is going to be learned now that ways of finding cities, temples, etc. lost in time are being created, which can locate them under jungles or layers of sand, etc.

Reading books written by people who dare to think beyond the early lies we were taught is a totally worthy way to spend valuable time.

I'm seriously thinking about this book, too.

Thank you.

Squinch

(50,773 posts)
3. When I think about the literature and learning that was destroyed. Who knows what
Thu Feb 13, 2020, 04:43 PM
Feb 2020

they knew that we don't any more?

Latest Discussions»Region Forums»Latin America»Fifth Sun by Camilla Town...