A guest post from Enrique Ortiz, an artist, painter, and web designer, a man who knows way too much about anything Mexica-Aztec related, a man who would not miss a single archaeological conference in the Temple Mayor museum.

Enrique is a talented painter and I promise to link to his works later on, when his beautifully detailed and historically accurate paintings will be properly water-marked and protected (soon, as he promised). He is also one of the founders of In Tlilli In Tlapalli – pre-hispanic blog where you can read many more fascinating articles by him, and other knowledgeable, well-versed in history people.

Prehispanic Mexican Food

This article is published because of the great interest that aroused around this data on pre-hispanic food on Twitter some time ago. Many were surprised to discover what our ancestors were feeding on in the Mexican Valley. One or two even mentioned the magic words “It seemed to me ..”. Well, after this brief but fanciful explanation, we can begin with the article.

The four main crops in the valley of Mexico were always of an equal importance: maize (centli), amaranth (huauhtli), beans (etl) and finally the chia. It is noteworthy to mention that the Spanish, due to the religious importance amaranth held – Amaranth statues were being made for the main deities, some mixed with blood, others with honey – tried to prevent its cultivation and use, lest this food would stimulate the original Mexican religions. The amaranth that was particularly appreciated by our grandparents was called wild amaranth (quilitl). Even the mother of the forth Mexica tlatoani Itzcoatl (who was not a woman of noble birth) was selling amaranth-quilitl on Azcapotzalco market.

An important aspect related to the Mexican food were the times when one had one’s breakfast, lunch or dinner. Having no clocks, people were helped to determined the meal-time with the assistance of conch-shells or drums, which were played from the top of the different teocalli (temples), as also by the position of the sun.

The time of any Mexican breakfast was around 10 in the morning. For ordinary people, this was a frugal meal, consisted of a couple of tortillas with beans and salsa, although on one’s way to work or back home one could buy himself a tamalli. In some families after the end of the day, around the 6-8, a light supper was served, usually a gruel accompanied by lake fish or poultry and tortillas.

But the well-invested, royal dinners in the Palace could have started at midnight and lasted until dawn, taking many courses of food and dessert. Such evening would usually end with an invigorating chocolate drink xocolatl (for the journey back home) and a clay pipe filled with vanilla flavored snuff or scented woods. In some banquet, the dessert consisted of the digestives, including peyote, hallucinogenic mushrooms as teonanacatl (mushroom gods) or covered nanacatl miel.

A banquet like that would demand a huge amount of supplies, plenty of beans, corn, 80 to 100 turkeys, a dozen dogs and about 20 loads of cocoa. Only a few rich nobles or unusually rich merchants of pochteca-traders guild could afford such expense.

The only two domesticated animals found in these lands were dark hairless dogs called acutalmente xoloitscuintli and turkeys (uexolotl). The fowl’s meat was usually more appreciated that that of a dog, due to its taste and smoothness. So much so that, when a host had to put up the dish, the parts of turkey were laid prettily above the main bulk of a dog meat. Or so claimed Sahagun.

Some anthropologists have sought the origin of the alleged Aztec cannibalism in the lack of protein in their diet. Nothing of the sort! Prehispanic Mexican food was the most diverse in the world, and filled with all variety of proteins. Our ancestors ate frogs, reptiles such as iguanas, ants and their eggs (escamoles), maguey worms that even today are considered a delicacy. A water shrimp, salamanders, flies and aquatic larvae (aneneztli) added to that diet.

Poor people and peasants were gathering a substance floating in the lake, known tecuitlatl, which were told by the chronicles to be cheesy. This was pressed between the mass of the tortillas to give a bitter and stronger taste. Many interesting foods roamed the swamps of Lake Texcoco at pre-hispanic times.

Among the most appreciated delicacies, the nobility most appreciated tamales stuffed with meat, snails and fruit (the latter served with poultry broth); frogs with chili sauce, white fish from the west of the country with chilli and tomato. Also the axolotl seasoned with ground pepper and yellow nugget was a treat for those times. The old recipe of maguey worms was savored by everyone, from leaders to high priests and common people of the whole Mexican Valley.

Back in pre-hispanic days the lands of central Mexico were very rich in hunting. Deer, rabbits, hares, wild pigs or peccaries, birds like pheasants, doves and various waterfowl species abounded everywhere. But people inclined to favor vegetarian food did not suffer, either. Tlacoyo, green mass, and the traditional red for these foods, accompanied with beans, insects, and the typical cactus salsa provided rich diversion to meat. Just as tamales, atole and pozole those were enjoyed by Chichimeca, Mexica, Acolhuas, Tepaneca matlazincas, Otomi, Nahua and many other nations of ancient Mexico.

In pre-Hispanic times, like in our days, the months of June and July were the period of anxiety and scarcity: “So there was a hunger, when grain of maize was very expensive and had great need of sources, they tell us.” The Mexican government tried to remedy this situation by distributing seeds and foods from the royal granaries, which Tlatoani administered directly with the dignitaries. “The emperor showed his goodwill towards the poor, making tamales and they were given gruel.”

I hope you have enjoyed this brief overview of Hispanic food. In many remote villages in the mountains you can taste these dishes, or even in the heart of the city on Saturdays. This is just one of the great legacies of civilizations that inhabited the territory we now call Mexico. Let’s not forget them or their heirs who still live in our times.

Comments, suggestions or questions by twitter account Cuauhtemoc_1521

Thanks you

Enrique Ortiz Garcia

What wouldn’t you bet while watching a fierce ball game where the players were not afraid to hurt themselves? A kernel of maize? A good obsidian knife? A golden necklace studded with precious stones?

Well, why not? Like anywhere else around the globe, people of the Mexican Valley and its surrounding, the Lowlands and Highlands alike, loved to gamble. Throughout important altepetls, small villages and regular towns, commoners or nobles, warriors or peasants, men or women, they all could be found betting, with patolli, a bean game, being the most popular of them all.

Patolli was a game of luck and skill, requiring practice and a measure of strategic thinking, while the player depended on the caprice of the rolling beans as well.

The players would gamble whatever they felt fit – from blankets, to food, to precious stones, to their freedom even, and the onlookers would hold their breath, liking to watch the game as much as they liked to participate in it.

In the alleys of the marketplace or in the warriors’ camps, in the Palaces and the dwellings of the nobles as much as in the cane-and-reed houses of the poor, crowded neighborhoods, people would challenge each other readily, trusting Xochipilli, the god of gambling, to watch over their luck. Xochipilli – the Prince of Flowers (xochitl – flower, pilli – prince or child) – was the patron of art and beauty, gambling, dancing and music, and feasts. Before the beginning of the game he would be offered sincere prayers, and sometimes even a part of the offerings out of the betting pool.

The board, in a form of a cross, could have been drawn upon the ground, or embroidered on a reed mat, or carved on the floor or a table, and, probably, arranged in a beautiful mosaic all over the Palaces and the houses of the nigh nobility. It would always present 52 landing positions, as this number was sacred according to the calendar. And so was the number four, which would be also represented on the patolli board in the form of the four colored middle squares. A figurine of the player would better not land there for more than one round, as if caught by the figurine of the opponent it would be kicked from the board, resulting in one of the bets switching hands.

Another dangerous area were the triangles on the edges of the board, as landing one’s figurines there the player would be required to transfer to his opponent one of the bets right away.

Twelve figurines would commence the race up the board. Six for each player, unless more than two contesters were involved, and then the number of figurines would be divided accordingly.

The goal of the game was to move one’s figurines across the board, from the starting squires to the finishing ones. To do that the players would cast the beans (the word patolli means beans), that marked with a dot on one side of each bean.

In order to place one’s figurine on the board the player needed to throw his beans until it displayed only one dot, with the other four showing their blank sides. From there the players would move their figurines according to the number of dotted sides each toss of the beans displayed – two dots, two moves, three dots, three, but if all the beans would display their dots the lucky man’s figurine would jump ten squires all at once.

Each figurine that would complete its round across the board would win its owner a bet. Six figurines, six bets. And so someone would go away richer, and happier, than the other.

Totoloque was a simpler game, but one that required more skill and fitted the warriors best. The players were to toss small pellets as close to the target as possible. Each player had five tries and the one who would score more hits would win the bet.

And so, between wars and politics and betting games, the people around Lake Texcoco would not complain of boredom, most of the times.

I am happy to announce the release of my new book ”The Young Jaguar“, the second of my pre-Aztec series that begins with ”At Road’s End“.

This time the action shifts to Mesoamerica.

Having witnessed the fall of the ancient Cliff Dwellers-Anasazi, the main characters, Tecpatl and Sakuna, are now have to deal with an entirely different situation.
It is the middle of the 14th century and the mighty Tepanecs are ruling the whole Mexican Valley.
Every city-state, every village, every settlement fears them, careful to send a tribute each month when the moon is full. The Aztecs, relatively safe upon their small isolated island, are also careful to behave. No nation dares to angry the mighty Tepanecs.

Yet, the trouble, when begin, is coming from within. The old Emperor dies, leaving peculiar instructions. The Second Son is to rule the Empire. He is the one to succeed the beautiful marble throne of Azcapotzalco. But the First Son, who have to reconcile himself with ruling a distant unimportant city-state, is not happy.

As the story unfolds, the main characters from At Road’s End, are finding themselves caught in the maelstrom, doing their best against the forces that are threatening their lives and their family along with the whole Tepanec Empire.

Once upon a time, if you would ask the powerful Tepanecs who had dominated the fertile Mexican valley around Lake Texcoco up to the mid 14th century, the Aztecs were no more than pushy newcomers, coming out of the southwest, poor and semi-nomadic, bringing along nothing but trouble. The lands of the Mexican Valley were amazingly rich, dotted by large city-states, with Azcapotzalco, the Tepanec Capital, the most powerful of them all. Of course, there was the aristocratic Toltec Culhuacan , sprawling upon the southern side of the lake, as influential and as strong, even if Azcapotzalco’s Tepanecs refused to admit it.

The densely populated region was well under control. Still, the unabashed newcomers streamed in and managed to find themselves a very favorable piece of land on the western shore of the lake, fertile and abounded with streams. There they began to flourish, while the suspicious mood of their powerful neighbors grew proportionally. Those Aztecs would not be contented with a small role of another city state, could see the elders of Azcapotzalco. And nothing more would be tolerated.

The tension grew and, toward the end of the 13th century, Azcapotzalco rulers had expelled their troublesome new neighbors. But for the rulers of Culhuacan, it could have been the end of it. For reasons unknown, Culhuacan had decided to allocate the expelled Aztecs a little land at the empty barrens of Tizaapan. Maybe they wanted to keep an eye on those fierce groups of foreigners, to make sure they would not grow too strong. Azcapotzalco’s people were doubtful, united in their suspicions. The further those troublesome newcomers would be drove off, the better. Yet they did nothing, as the rivalry between the two powerful cities went back generations. If one decided to expel a nation, the other would support it, even if halfheartedly. So they watched carefully as the Aztecs seemed to be assimilating into the Culhuacan’s way of life.

Then the unspeakable happened! A few decades later a scandal washed the Texcoco Lake’s shores. The new ruler of Culhuacan had given his daughter to the Aztec’s ruler to marry. Or so he thought. The Aztecs promised to make her a goddess – a fate great enough even for the haughty Culhuacan princess. Well, the cultural differences showed when the princess was sacrificed in order to assist her reaching the promised status by joining the other deities. It said that the priest, wearing her flayed skin as a part of the ritual, appeared at the very festival dinner her father had honored by his presence. The Culhuacan ruler and his nobles were not amused. The roaring declaration of war could be heard in the distant southwestern realm of dwindling Anasazi, it was said.

Azcapotzalco’s Tepanecs shook their heads. Had the Culhuacan Toltecs really thought they could tame the wild beast? But now they had their own dilemmas. Should they side with Culhuacan, or would they better stay neutral? Or maybe, just to spite their old rivals, they should actually assist the despised troublemakers, as those faced a certain defeat and banishment? The warriors argued in favor of destroying the Aztecs once and for all, even if it would result in helping Culhuacan. The rulers, on the other hand, found it difficult to miss the opportunity to sneer at the old insult, when just a few decades ago, Culhuacan had sided with Aztecs against Azcapotzalco’s better judgment. Why not let them eat the meal they’ve been serving their old neighbors?

What will the Tepanec Empire do?