The Aztecs were fascinating people, as they were most famous for their agriculture, architecture, and land. Even though these people flourished in today’s central Mexico in the post-classic period between 1300 and 1521, they were able to develop writing skills, a calendar system, and more.
A new study that ScienceAlert reveals and having Exequiel Ezcurra as leader, who is a Riverside plant ecologist from the University of California, confirms that the Aztecs had been using Mount Tlaloc to keep an eye on the agricultural calendar in order to match the seasons as per the end of each solar year.
Mount Tlaloc is placed in Mexico. It has an elevation of 4,129 meters and a prominence of 958 meters. It also serves as an archaeological site. To be more precise, you can find the mountain in the State of Mexico and in the municipalities of Ixtapaluca and Texcoco, which means close to the state border with Puebla.
A strict schedule
Exequiel Ezcurra, the leader of the new study, explained more about the strict schedule that the ancient civilization had to obey:
Planting too early, following the cue of a first haphazard early rain, can be disastrous if the true rainy season does not continue,
Waiting to plant late, after the monsoon season has clearly started, can expose the corn field, or milpa, to an overly short growing season and will also put the crop under competition from weeds that have already germinated.
Scientists also believed that specific buildings might have gotten their orientation established in such a way that people were able to look at the Sun from a certain point as it was going beyond the horizon.
Do you need any more confirmation that the people from the Basin of Mexico possessed incredible knowledge for their time? Here’s what another official statement of the new study writes:
These results confirm that, even without the celestial instruments used by Europeans at the time of their arrival … the people in the Basin of Mexico could maintain an extremely precise calendar that would have allowed for leap-year adjustments simply by using systematic observations of sunrise against the eastern mountains of the Basin of Mexico.
The Basin of Mexico has its location in the center of the Mexican Volcanic Belt, and it covers a huge area of 9560 square kilometers. Also known as the Valley of Mexico, this area is also surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. Besides the Aztecs, other pre-Columbian civilizations were dwelling there, such as Teotihuacan and the Toltec.
It seems that alignments, including illustrations and texts found in ancient Mexica codices, imply that Mount Tlaloc was used for marking important dates for calendric adjustments. The people knew that the Sun had to rise directly behind the mount once a year, which also means once every 365 days.
Another statement of the study says:
From an ecological perspective, it seems clear that the rugged eastern horizon of the Basin provided precise landmarks that would have allowed to adjust the xiuhpohualli, the count of the years, with the true solar calendar. Sahagún’s description of the feasts and ceremonies associated with some of the Mexica “months,” or 20-d periods, coincides well with themes from landmarks visible in the sunrise horizon from the Templo Mayor.
Other research indicates that the Aztecs were responsible for building dikes and aqueducts. These people even built floating gardens in an ingenious attempt to grow more land for crops. The Aztecs are also responsible for building causeways with the purpose of connecting their capital city to the mainland.
The new research was published in PNAS.
