Michael D. Coe | Rex Koontz
1 Mexico: a civilization that predates Israel & Western Europe
This book makes it clear that the bulk of Mexican history (and Central America) has NOTHING at all to do with Europeans or anything "Latin American."
In fact, only 5 centuries of Mexico's archeological history has any European trace, vs. 28,000 years of indigenous Mexican occupation.
Michael Coe tells the story of Mexico through it's common denominator: the indigenous people, the "Indians. "
Dr. Coe shows that Mexico is more than just the Aztecs with whom we are most familiar. He presents a breath-taking parade of pyramid-civilizations going back 4,000 YEARS:
Olmec, Tlatilco, Cuicuilco, Izapan, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Mixtec, Tarasco, Toltec, Huaxtec, El Tajin, Pipil, Western Mexico, Zacatecas, Chalchihuites, Cacaxtla, Xochicalco, Chichen Itza, Nicarao and the multi-layered "Maya".
He even includes the Casas Grandes civilization near the Texas border.
Prof. Coe presents recent archeology showing that Mexico had developed the elements of a true civilization between 2300 B.C. - 1800 B.C. This Olmec Civilization predates the Jewish presence in Israel and occurred before there was a single town or city in all of Western Europe.
(By the time Solomon built the First Temple in Isreal in 960 B.C., the Olmec capital at San Lorenzo was already over 400 years old.)
Coe's book is unique in that it presents Mexico's history through an objective long view, and not merely through the ethnocentric cultural lens of Europeans. He presents a refreshing analysis of Mexico that does not use the Spanish Invasion as the starting point (he hardly mentions the Spanish all until the very end). European divisions are not the way to understand Mexico's history, just as British imperial definitions do not do justice to the understanding of the Irish people.
Coe delves deeply into the incredible creation of corn domestication 9,000 years ago in Mexico. The corn plant requires human intervention, and the ingenuity of ancient Mexican farmers gave rise to one of the world's most unique and vigorous civilizations, just as wheat did for Iraq, and rice did for China.
Coe demonstrates, that unlike Europe, Mexico did not "borrow" new technologies and ideas from established foreign cultures (i.e. writing, agriculture, mathematics, religion, gunpowder, architecture, political structures, etc). This isolation makes Mexico's achievements all the more impressive, Dr. Coe asserts, making it one of the 3 or 4 "pristine civilizations" in the world (i.e. Iraq & China)
Modern Mexico is really an artificial political concept, historically speaking. The modern boundaries have only existed for 150 years and as late as 1823, Central America was part of Mexican territory. And until 1848, Mexico included everything from Texas to California.
This book shows that this history is not confined to the Rio Grande nor to Mexico's border with Guatemala. He includes "The Turquoise Road" trade relations with the U.S. Southwest and discusses the "transmission of Mesoamerican traits" into that area, using the Hopi as an example.
Coe does a great job of presenting several satellite states of these great civilizations as well, such as the incredible influence of Mexico's mightiest civilization: Teotihuacan, whose pyramid city (larger than the city of Rome at its height) is today Mexico's #1 tourist attraction.
Considering that Mexico lacked metallurgy until after 800 AD, it is astonishing to behold the thousands of temple-pyramids, hundreds of ceremonial centers, and hundreds of towns and cities that indigenous Mexicans created across the land-- WITHOUT METAL TOOLS or draft animals. Europeans had animals like oxen and horses to do work for them, but Mexicans had only human muscle and no oxen, hence the lack of use for the wheel.
Our indigenous people call the land An‡huac, meaning "the land between the waters" in the still-living Nahuatl language. Just as there is something historically known as "Christendom" or "Western Civilization"
(oddly enough, both are based upon non-Western achievements in Sumeria and Egypt).
As the reader of both of the recent editions of "Mexico" and "The Maya" will also learn, there was a unitary and common cultural matrix which connected and sustained all the cultures of Mexico and Central America down to Costa Rica. The divisions were far more political than cultural, just as in "Christendom" or the the modern European world.
I wish that Dr Coe would have addressed the similarities of the "Moundbuilder" civilization across the Eastern United States which built flat-topped pyramid structures with a temple at the top, astronomically aligned. These "Pyramids of the Mississippi" are so similar to Mexican pyramids that it warrants an investigation into cross-cultural contact.
(In fact, the Natchez people of Mississippi to this day maintain the story of ancient Mexicans passing through their lands, and is recorded by a French explorer a few centuries ago.)
Another small gripe I have with this the book is Coe's insistence on the "gods" school of thought, when we know from Spanish and Nahuatl records that there existed the Toltec concept of One Single God, Ometeotl, of which all the other "gods" are really manifestations/emanations. I thought a little more time could have been spent connecting those theological dots.
Coe acknowledges the existence of their Supreme Duality named OMETEOTL. But he continues to use the Spanish interpretation of "deities" instead of the notion of Manifestions of OMETEOTL, according to the High Priest tradition of the Aztec/Texcoco state alliance.
(and for the Maya this One God who is the Many is called HUNAB-KU.)
Christians are able to accept the concept of a Three-In-One God (Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit), along with deified Saints, a multitude of demons, Mary the Mother, and Satan the Lord of Hell...and yet Christians still consider themselves to be Monotheists who don't believe in different gods.
But hey, the "gods angle" sells a lot more books to a Western audience who seems to delight in the notion of "Aztec polytheism" while ignoring blatant Christian polytheism (The Trinity, the Saints, demons, angels, The Devil).
A lot of this rich and impressive history has only recently been gleaned from what are it's "leftovers".
95% of the astronomical almanacs and encyclopedias were burned by the Spaniards, by their own admission and only 40 years ago did serious archeological finds occur.
What other wonders went up in those flames?! What else lies beneath the surface?
This is a fascinating history that reads like a real-life detective story. Buy the book!
I love how Dr. Coe ends the book showing that modern indigenous culture still lives on in Mexico today. He didn't assign them a "dead" status like other books.
Well done, Dr. Coe.
2 Couldn't have said it better myself...
Great post by Manuel. He said everything I was thinking. It's about time our true history is exposed for the world to see. Perhaps if all of our literature was not burned by Spaniards (took 3 days straight to burn 99% of the Mexica's books) it would be easier to prove that our civilizations were far greater than any in europe prior to the "American" holocaust/European invasion of the leeches.
