The history of Mexico – a resource page featuring many aspects of Mexican history

A comprehensive presentation of Mexico’s history including timelines, famous people, ancient history, modern history, the peoples of Mexico, ethnic origins, Indigenous Mexico (Mayan, Huichol, Tarahumara) Mexico’s historical traditions and many other articles of significance to the Mexicophile. The Time-Line View: from 3500 B.C. to the present day. This view is fully integrated allowing the reader […]

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Early pictorial and written sources of Aztec history

The pre-Hispanic history of Mexico is contained in the numerous pictorial codices or painted hieroglyphic books produced by the Aztecs, the Maya, the Mixtecs, and others. Unfortunately, very few pre-Conquest codices survived the Spanish Conquest and the destruction of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521. Of course we have the early writings of the […]

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Writing and history

The history of Mexico has generally been written by outsiders, Spanish Conquistadors, Catholic missionaries, and most recently by archaeologists and anthropologists. Consequently Western ideas of historiography have dominated the writing of this history. Our concept of history, along with its method and purpose, begins with the ancient Greeks, although different historians may approach the subject […]

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What is history?

History is generally written from the standpoint of the victors or the dominant society. Consequently the other side of the story is hardly ever told in full. This is especially true of Mexico, although the balance is now being redressed to some extent through improved translation and interpretation of native sources. Advances in the decipherment […]

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Primary sources of Maya history – part four

In the last column we looked briefly at the history of the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic writing system and some of the modern myths about the ancient Maya propagated by certain popular writers, such as J. M. Jenkins ( Galactic Alignment theory) and J. Argüelles ( Dreamspell Calendar). My purpose was not simply to discredit these popular […]

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Primary sources of Maya history – part two

Four major cultural areas provide us with the most extensive documentation in Mesoamerica: the Valley of Mexico (Aztec), Northern Yucatan (Lowland Maya), Western Oaxaca (Mixtec), and Guatemala (Highland Maya and Cakchiquel). In previous articles we looked at the first two of these primary sources of native historical tradition. Most of the pre-Hispanic historical codices come […]

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Primary sources of Maya history – part three

Decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic system of writing represents perhaps the greatest breakthrough in unravelling the history of the ancient Maya. Estimates vary on the actual percentage of the glyphs that have been successfully interpreted so far, but enough progress has been made to enable researchers to piece together much of the early dynastic histories […]

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