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New Aztec Codices Discovered: The Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco
- otras 3y ago> The newly discovered corpus was acquired by the Mexican government from a local family that wants to remain anonymous, but which were not collectors but rather traditional stewards of the cultural legacy of Culhuacan and Iztapalapa It’s fascinating to imagine the journey of these books throughout the years. Kept in a basement somewhere? Passed down from generation to generation for safekeeping? Reminds me of the Sarajevo Haggadah, surviving from the 1300s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo_Haggadah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo_Haggadah
- UberFly 3y agoI always wonder just how much like this gets thrown away through the generations.
- ductsurprise 3y ago... and the lost MicroSD cards grandma has been holding onto for you. We will leave next to nothing.
- prmoustache 3y agoI went back to printing photos on a regular basis. It is relatively easy to select the best and edit photos every other day on vacations or at home for printing. It is however a major PITA to do that for hundreds or thousands of photos at a time. Thus I am still too lazy to have a look at those 20 years gap where the only pictures I took were digitized and are stored on a hard drive and remote backup.
- tetris11 3y agoMy ex and I had a wonderful tradition of collating all the photos we'd taken in a single year, and making a printed album of it. It's a fantastic ritual to let you appreciate the good moments.
- YurgenJurgensen 3y agoI would print more photos if I could find a printer that didn't actively hate me. Even the ink tank one I got turned out to have non-replaceable waste ink sponge with an internal counter that will brick the unit long before it wears out.
- ramses0 3y agoColor Laser. Rumor is that HP-M254DW is great b/c it's before a lot of E15N has taken place (enshittification... we should numberize it!). I got mine used off Craiglist nearing 10 years ago and it's been a pretty serious workhorse, along with pretty decent "trash" picture output. I say trash b/c home printed photos on regular paper are never going to compete with your local CVS/Walgreens prints (which I do batches about 2-3 times per year, putting them in letters / christmas cards). ...but if I'm willing to wait for really good prints, I've had a great experience with "PersnickityPrints" who I tried after a local pharmacy print shop gave me an envelope of my wedding prints where some of the fancy B&W ones showed ~2mm chromatic aberration (hence: all the photos were misaligned / mis-calibrated). Persnickity basically says: "you take the photo, we print the photo!" ...no auto-redeye reduction, no trying to make the colors pop, and they calibrate their machines at least once per day as opposed to once a month or whatever the generic pharmacy places do. 1) Color Laser for "tossable" printouts. 2) Walgreens + Mobile App for "5 copies to send in letters" (pick up in ~1hr, ~$0.20 per print, often less). 3) Persnickity for 8x10's, custom paper, cards, or if I'm planning ahead. (~$0.40/print, modulo shipping, etc).
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- prmoustache 3y agoI have a canon Selphy for 10x15 format as well as a Kodak Mini Shot Saqure "instant camera" that I really use as a printer for square polaroidlike photos from the smartphone. I also own a Fujifilm Instax Wide and an old Polaroid 600 that I converted to rechargeable batteries so that I can buy the slightly less expensive I-Type films. Between the Polaroid and the Instax, I take an average of maybe 2 instant pictures per week, maybe more during Christmas period or if I have family visiting me. Sometimes pictures that I don't keep but just gift to friends I am meeting with. All in all 2 pictures per week is just around 100 pictures. 2 packs of 10 Instax Wide cost me around 20€, a pack of 8 polaroid I-Type is much more expensive, around 17€ but I don't think spend more than 150€ a year on those anyway. Both printing with the Selphy/Kodak and taking instant pictures is expensive compared to bulk printing at a shop or online but in my opinion it is worth it and is still better than forgetting about those photos or even not taking them in the first place. I tend to think it is still less money wasted than if I was smoking. One of the last Polaroid picture I took was of a little girl playing with her mom. Her husband told me several week later that it had become a bookmark that he has pleasure rediscovering everytime he grab his current book. Sometimes the smallest but meaningful gifts are the nicest. For holidays, special events, whenever I have more than a handful of pictures to print or if I want bigger format I am doing it through the local photo print shop or online.
- tomek_ycomb 3y agoI told my [family member] this for years she should edit her digital photos. She said, no, my 40k pictures are a retirement project. Then I said <<you'll be overwhelmed by that many photos>> and actually I was wrong. AI photo stuff massively improved, and all her bad photos were very easy to sort in Picasa and bring down to a reasonable 5k or so photos to put into albums over few years of retirement.
- serallak 3y agoOf course Picasa is one of Google abandoned projects...
- sethammons 3y agoI'm still sore about Picasa. while it was great to use, it lost a few years of photos that I hadn't backed up outside the service. Figured it was online and safe.
- teddyh 3y ago> Figured it was online and safe. That’s a contradiction in terms.
- samplatt 3y agoAlways been frustrated that this abstraction became so commonplace. It's not even like there's ever been a time in history where 'online' meant 'safe and reliable'. Marketing always wins out, I guess.
- a_gnostic 3y agoThe cloud is just someone else's computer.
- heavyset_go 3y agoPrint photos degrade over time, if you want them to last you'll need to preserve them in an additional way.
- harywilke 3y agoWhat survives is sometimes just by sheer luck. In the Acropolis Museum, there are a few reproductions of sketches on display by Jacques Carrey, a french artist who happened to visit Athens in November 1674. The Venetian's siege of the Acropolis in September 1687 famously destroyed a large section of the South side. Without this artists sketches, we would have no record of these lost parts of the frieze.
- dzdt 3y agoThere are remarkably few surviving Aztec codices. Wikipedia lists 39, of which only 3 are possibly pre-hispanic. The new codices all seem to be in the later group, but this is still a substantial increase of the corpus. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_codex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_codex
- alpacca-farm 3y agoThat's pretty fascinating, dzdt. The idea of a palimpsest hiding older Aztec text opens up so many possibilities. Wonder what kind of insights or history was considered worth erasing back then. Has anyone come across any initial findings or interpretations of the erased text?
- dzdt 3y agoMy impression is so far investigations are extremely preliminary, not much more than was necessary to validate the authenticity of the documents. Hopefully we will see a lot more detailed analysis come out in the coming years.
- Tuna-Fish 3y ago> Wonder what kind of insights or history was considered worth erasing back then. Generally, everything that they didn't know would be useful or important. These are written on parchment, which has great durability over time, but sadly this means that very little of all the material that was written on parchment survives. This is because parchment is both very expensive and easy to recycle, which means that for most of history the second someone no longer values the material written on their parchment, they are going to wash that off and use it for something else.
- galaxyLogic 3y agoEtch-a-Sketch
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dzdt 3y agoAccording to the article in La Jornada one of the codices is a palimpsest! Under multispectral imaging older erased Aztec text is visible. If anything substantial can be recovered there it may be this should be counted as four new codices. [1] https://www.jornada.com.mx/2024/03/21/cultura/a03n1cul https://www.jornada.com.mx/2024/03/21/cultura/a03n1cul
- infecto 3y agoAssumed based on the context but first time seeing this word as far as I can remember. Palimpsest - a manuscript on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.
- owendlamb 3y agoWebster's definition lacks the connotation of incompleteness, but otherwise you're spot on: http://www.websters1913.com/words/Palimpsest http://www.websters1913.com/words/Palimpsest I guess it's possible for a palimpsest's erasure to be complete to the naked eye, but for its original text to still be distinguishable outside the visible spectrum.
- zer00eyz 3y agoBefore someone asks: No you're not gonna see this in an LLM/ML/AGI anytime soon. The corpus of text is far too small to make the statistical simulation viable.
- keithalewis 3y agoMaking true statements on HN seems to be a great way to get shadow banned. Dang it.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoWhat?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- acheron 3y agoVery nice. Will be interesting to see what comes out of studying these. Semi-related, I still hold out hope for more discoveries of the Isthmian/Epi-Olmec script. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmian_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmian_script
- canjobear 3y agoFascinating. I didn’t know Aztec writing used glyphs for their phonetic value.
- nathancahill 3y agoIt's heavily debated.
- wolverine876 3y agoHow many of these are by Aztecs about Aztecs? * "The first is called Map of the Founding of Tetepilco, and is a pictographic map which contains information regarding the foundation of San Andrés Tetepilco ...": San Andrés Tetepilco must have been Spanish, of course. * "The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco ...": Churches would be Spanish. * "Tira of San Andrés Tetepilco, is a pictographic history ... comprising historical information regarding the Tenochtitlan polity from its foundation to the year 1603.": At least it seems to be about Aztecs. Why were the first two books about Spanish topics but written in the local language? If Spanish people writing, wouldn't they write in Spanish? If Aztecs were writing, why would they care to record these things? I suppose the latter is plausible if they were absorbed into Spanish society.
- yorwba 3y agoThe Aztec Empire fell in 1521, but of course its people didn't disappear. If the codices date after 1603, that's plenty of time for the Spanish to influence their lives, even without full absorption. That San Andrés Tetepilco has a partly-Spanish name now doesn't necessarily imply that Spaniards had a role in its founding or lived there in significant numbers at the time the codices were written. The church might have been founded by a Spanish missionary, but it might also have been an Aztec convert instead. The history apparently also covers events that happened under Spanish rule, so it's not entirely about a non-Spanish topic either.
- jmopp 3y agoFun fact: the descendants of Moctezuma still live today as Spanish nobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo
- dragonwriter 3y ago> San Andrés Tetepilco must have been Spanish, of course. It is not. I mean, yes, the “San Andrés” part of the modern name of the settlement (from a church there built not long after the conquest) is, but its one of Itzapalapan settlements that was later conquered by the Aztecs, so an Aztec codex about its founding is Aztecs writing about pre-Aztec history. > “The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco …”: Churches would be Spanish. Yeah, unlike the colonization of the United States, the native peoples were still present in and often the bulk of communities after the conquest of Mexico, they weren’t simply displaced for the Europeans (not to say the Spanish were better, but the pattern of colonization was very different.) So, while the Church was built under the direction of the Spanish, it would have been built and attended largely by locals, who would record things for the same people anyone would record things about the community they live in.
- kristopolous 3y agoThere's so few surviving because guess what? European colonizers destroyed a bunch for religious reasons. On the Mayan side the destruction rate is well north of 99%. To quote one of the bishops that did a book burning party: "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." Yeah, because that was their literature, history, science, philosophy ... I'm glad we aren't currently so dedicated to destroying stuff. Hopefully some indigenous scholars managed to stash some in a cave or tomb somewhere 500 years ago and we simply haven't found them yet.
- YurgenJurgensen 3y ago>I'm glad we aren't currently so dedicated to destroying stuff. Well, about that...
- daliusd 3y agoDepends who are “we”: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/6/7388039/index.amp https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/6/7388039/index.a...
- Amezarak 3y ago> Details:The National Resistance Center has reported that the Russians are using the pretext of removing "Nazi literature" to explain their actions, while the list of such literature includes all books in Ukrainian. In doing so, the occupiers are repeating the practice typical of Nazi Germany. Ah, that's the justification. I've never understood the official Russian "denazification" position; it should be clear to them no one now or ever is going to take it seriously, why continue with this absurd pretense? That said, in this case it's more barbed than the article suggests. As part of denazification, the Allies did destroy books. To suggest book destruction is what typifies Nazis is absurd unless we also call the Allies Nazis. > As a consequence a list was drawn up of over 30,000 book titles, ranging from school textbooks to poetry, which were then banned. All copies of books on the list were confiscated and destroyed; the possession of a book on the list was made a punishable offense. All the millions of copies of these books were to be confiscated and destroyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#Censorship That said, Aztec culture was full of horrors we can now no longer even imagine, paling even before the Nazis. To the extent the destruction of codices was deliberate, much of what went on would have seemed to be a relatively necessary de-Aztecification.
- dash2 3y agoCan someone tell me what an Aztec codex is? I assumed Aztec writing was not on paper but on stone... these seem to be from the colonial period, so are they hybrid cultural forms or what?
- ako 3y agoThe link includes some pictures and a video, there it looks like paper, not stone.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoThey had a pre-colombian pictographic writing system with some phonetic elements that they wrote on animal hides. Priests did most of the writing and there was quite a lot recorded by them before it was mostly destroyed after contact with Europe.
- bawolff 3y agoCodex usually does not mean stone, but more like a book (albeit usually something like vellum instead of paper)
- Telemakhos 3y agoCodex means a book in the modern sense of bound leaves one can flip through for random access to any one page. The opposite is volume or scroll, which involves sequential reading or scrolling to arrive at a particular page (like tape storage).
- retrac 3y agoIt's a book. Paper bark or parchment. . The Aztecs didn't have full writing in the sense of a system to represent a spoken language. Aztec codices are more to the calendar and graphic end of things. (But I could be wrong, since so few examples, are truly from pre-exchange times.) The primacy of stone is a misconception. The following applies not just to the Aztecs, but also Sumer and Babylon, Egypt, the Maya, etc: the primary writing material for all of these civilizations was not stone. It was perishable materials, including parchment, wood bark, wax tablets, papyrus in Egypt, or just drawing in a pile of fine sand to do some arithmetic. (Babylon and its fired clay is a bit of an exception, maybe. But they also wrote on wood, bark paper and cloth, among other things.) That means we only get monumental inscriptions. I'm more familiar with the Maya, who did have a complete writing system for spoken language, and we strongly suspect the Maya had literature in the same way the Egyptians, Chinese or Sumerians did. Poetry anthologies, mythological anthologies, religious texts, and also textbooks on medicine and astronomy, etc. Obviously, they didn't carve those on monuments, they wrote them on the closest analogue to paper they had. Unfortunately, neither Mexico's meteorological climate nor Spain's religious climate at the time was conducive to preserving such fragile books.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoI'm sharing my admiration for the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, one of the best museums in the world. An absolutely astounding collection of history, archaeology, and art. Well presented. Worth a visit to CDMX just for itself. If you ever are in the area plan at least a half day at the MNA; you could spend two full days and not see everything. (Take another day to visit Teotihuacán!)
- paul 3y agoAgreed! Wonderful museum. They also have some original codices along with translations that are interesting to look at https://photos.app.goo.gl/zeo3Hn2Q8v81cidX9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/zeo3Hn2Q8v81cidX9
- brunorsini 3y ago+1. Been there 4 or 5 times and feel I'm only scratching the surface. So much that is still to be understood about all those incredible pieces.
- profeatur 3y agoIt will be interesting to find out why Cortes is depicted as a Roman. Considering the church inventory, it reminds me of the Holy Week processions in Spain where you often see people dressed as roman soldiers.