Aztec Drought and the "Curse of One Rabbit"
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AZTEC DROUGHT AND THE "CURSE OF ONE RABBIT" BY MATTHEW D. THERRELL, DAVID W. STAHLE, AND RODOLFO ACUNA SOTO Aztec codices and tree-ring chronologies provide a new record of the occurrence and impacts of extreme drought in central Mexico, and corroborate Aztec climate folklore. he name "Aztec" has generally been applied to Boone 2000). The Spanish destroyed most of the an- the people of central Mexico who shared a simi- cient manuscripts they called "codices" because of Tlar language, religion, and political system at the heretical or appalling content, such as descriptions time of Spanish contact. They are exemplified by the of human sacrifice or cannibalism. Many others were Mexica who dominated the region from their capitol simply lost to time. However, during the decades fol- of Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City), in a "triple al- lowing conquest many historical annals and other liance" with two other nearby city states, Texcoco and codices were recreated both as pictorial copies of the Tlacopan. originals and as written descriptions of what the Prior to conquest, the Nahua-speaking Aztecs original images portrayed. Some manuscripts were lacked an alphabetical writing system and documents prepared exclusively for native Nahua readers, while were produced as pictorial "books" painted on skins others were commissioned by Spanish civil and reli- or native amatl (bark) paper. Included among these gious entities, which accepted the painted manu- documents were maps, tribute records, genealogies of scripts as valid historical records (Boone 2000). ruling families, and alteptl annals that principally re- The annals were primarily focused on religious and corded the history of individual alteptl (i.e., city-states; political events, such as conquests, but a variety of Gibson 1964; Boone 2000). natural phenomena were also recorded. These include Only about 10% of the 160 or so known natively volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, solar eclipses, and produced manuscripts from Mexico are thought to anomalous climatic events such as storms and drought be prehispanic, and none of the historical annals are (Fig. 1). None of the Aztec historical documents cover considered to predate conquest (Bierhorst 1992; the general history of the Aztec sphere of influence or even the Valley of Mexico (Dibble 1981). Because AFFILIATIONS: THERRELL AND STAHLE—Department of Geo- each of the alteptl annals are focused on historical sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas; ACUNA events that impacted individual city-states, they serve SOTO—Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Ciudad as independent sources for major events such as Universitaria, Mexico drought. These major events were usually recorded CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Matthew D. Therrell, I 13 Ozark by multiple sources (Dibble 1981). In the pictorial Hall, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701 manuscripts, history is recorded as a continuum of E-mail: [email protected] year signs with portrayals of important events con- DOMO.I 175/BAMS-85-9-1263 nected to the year sign (e.g., Fig. 1). In final form 23 April 2004 Although correlation between the Aztec and West- ©2004 American Meteorological Society ern calendars suffers from problems such as the treat- AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY SEPTEMBER 2004 BAFIS* I 1263 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/04/21 04:35 AM UTC ment of leap years and slight differences in the begin- drought and have compiled a record of 13 events spe- ning of the annual cycle, the content and general tem- cifically described as droughts between 1332 and 1543. poral accuracy of the codices has been extensively This Aztec drought chronology is compared with studied and is largely confirmed by the cross- newly developed tree-ring chronologies from central referencing of indisputable historic events recorded and northern Mexico that have proven to be valuable in multiple codices (e.g., Caso 1971; Dibble 1981; as proxies for drought and crop production (Fig. 2). Quinones Keber 1995; Boone 2000). The temporal We investigate these Aztec records of drought in an- accuracy of the codices, in the latter portion of the cient Mexico, and evaluate the Aztec belief in cycli- Aztec era, has been further confirmed by comparison cal drought-induced famines associated with the cal- of Aztec dates for celestial events such as solar eclipses endar icon One Rabbit. with known astronomical chronologies (Aveni 1980). We have examined most of the major historical THE AZTEC CALENDAR SYSTEM. The Az- annals from central Mexico for descriptions of tec calendar was based on an ancient Mesoamerican calendar system that computed both a 260-day religious calendar and a 365- day solar calendar. The 260 days of the tonalpohuallii ("count of the days") were represented by a combination of a number (1-13) and 1 of 20 "day signs" (Caso 1971). For example, the day Tenochtitlan fell to the Spaniards (13 August 1521) was called "One Snake" and was followed by "Two Death," "Three Deer," and so on. The 365-day solar year or xihuitl generally began in late January and was divided into 18 months of 20 days each, with five "leftover" days, which, while taken into account, were consid- ered unlucky and outside the official xihuital calendar. Each year takes its name from the last (360th) day the year (Caso 1971). One result of the mathematical arrangement of the cal- endar is that only four day symbols; tochtli (rabbit), acatl (reed), tecpatl (flint knife), and calli (house) can be FIG. I. Detail of folio 32 v(erso) from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis taken as year signs and that each suc- portraying a fatal blizzard in 1447. Quinones Keber (1995) describes cessive year sign will be raised by one. the image as "a profusion of blue drops, representing precipitation, For example, "Three House" (1521) is indicates a violent storm. They envelop a temple, a plant, a bird, a followed by "Four Rabbit," "Five blue striped banner, and two male figures, whose upturned bodies and Reed," "Six Flint Knife," "Seven closed eyes indicate that they have perished in the storm. [The] image shows how all of nature—plants, animals, and humans—were House," "Eight Rabbit," and so on. equally victimized by the catastrophe. The upturned figures literally This arrangement results in a 52-yr represent an inversion of the natural order, when people died as a "century" or xiuhmolpilli, composed result of nature's failure to function in a predictable way." The blue- of 13 occurrences of each symbol. striped banner may indicate that the storm occurred in early Dec (e.g., Each number-sign combination, such Quinones Keber 1995). The years 1447, 1448, and 1449 are repre- as the year One Rabbit, may occur sented by their Aztec year signs as Seven Reed, Eight Flint knife, and only once in a 52-yr cycle. Nine House, respectively. A black line connects the storm image to the year Seven Reed (1447). The erroneous Julian year dates above the signs were corrected by the original authors of the codex, who placed the THE AZTEC DROUGHT corrected date below the signs (Quinones Keber 1995). Image repro- CHRONOLOGY. Some of the im- duced with permission of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. portant historical annals that we have 1264 I BAflS- SEPTEMBER 2004 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/04/21 04:35 AM UTC years along with the relevant histori- cal citations and tree-ring values for each year. In a following section, se- lected drought episodes are discussed in detail using quotations from writ- ten annals, images from pictorial cod- ices, written descriptions of the im- ages, and available tree-ring data. TREE-RING CHRONOLOGIES. The tree-ring data available for the time period covered in this study in- clude a recently developed Douglas fir FIG. 2. The annual values for the total-ring-width tree-ring chronolo- chronology from Cuauhtemoc la gies from Casas Grandes, Chihuahua (blue), Cerro Baraja, Durango (green), and Cuauhtemoc la Fragua, Puebla (red), are shown along Fragua, Puebla (Therrell 2003), a with their respective 10-yr spline (black) values, from 850 to 2001. Douglas fir chronology from Cerro The 39-yr gap from 1337 to 1375 between the end of the Casas Baraja, Durango (Stahle et al. 2000), Grandes archaeological pine chronology and the beginning of the and an archaeological Ponderosa pine Cerro Baraja chronology is indicated. For this figure the variance of (Pinus Ponderosa) chronology from Casas Grandes (std dev = 0.338) and Cerro Baraja (std dev = 0.331) the Casas Grandes site in Chihuahua chronologies have been adjusted to match the variance structure of (Scott 1966; DiPeso et al. 1974; Fig. 2). the Cuauhtemoc la Fragua (std dev = 0.220) chronology. These are the longest tree-ring chro- nologies available for Mexico and the consulted to resurrect this drought chronology in- only exactly dated, annually resolved climate proxies clude the Codice Aubin [also known as the Codice de available for the region prior to the arrival of Euro- 1576 (Penafial 1902; Dibble 1963)], the Codex en Cruz (Dibble 1981), the Codex Chimalpopoca (Bierhorst TABLE I. The chronology of 13 drought events compiled from 1992), the Codex Telleriano-Remensis major Aztec historical annals, source of each reference, and (Quinones Keber 1995), the Codex tree-ring value during each event year. The conversion of Mexicanus (Mengin 1952), and Las Aztec years to the Gregorian calendar was based on calcula- Ocho Relaciones y Memorial de tions by Caso (1971) using the Web-based calculator devel- Colhuacan (Chimalpahin 1998). oped by Voorburg (2003; www.azteccalendar.com). These records cover events in vari- ous alteptl in the Valley of Mexico, Aztec drought years Tree-ring including Texcoco, Cuauhtitlan, and Gregorian Aztec Source value Tenochtitlan. The Codice Aubin and Codex Telleriano-Remensis are picto- 1332 9 Flint Knife Chimalpahin (1998) 0.330 rial manuscripts with Nahua and or 1333 10 House Chimalpahin (1998) I.I 1 Spanish interpretive text.