Fifth Sun
In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story--and the story of what happened afterwards--has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially translated, and rarely consulted by scholars. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The Mexica people had a history of their own long before the Europeans arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and colonization. Instead, they realigned their political allegiances, accommodated new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured.
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What Hacker News says
- Camilla Townsend's "Fifth Sun" was a really interesting read in that it brought together a lot of sources of the conquest to tell a more detailed story than I had probably heard before.
When the Spanish showed up, the Aztec's enemies didn't immediately line up to join the anti-Mexica alliance, as some people tend to think. The Spanish weren't seen as gods and worshipped. Pestilence would be a factor later on, but in early days the natives they met were quite healthy. The Spanish weren't seen as foreigners from across the sea or anything special because that wasn't really a concept for the natives. The Spanish were just another funny looking tribe from over the horizon that had showed up to fight for space, much like the Aztec's once had.
The Spanish initially had to fight hostile tribes on their own. There were battles where they had to fight through the night, while they were injured, and against incredible odds. The Spanish, especially the ones from Extremadura, were widely regarded by contemporary Europeans as some of the very best soldiers on the continent. Only after they'd done some hard fighting were they seen as having a chance against the Mexica and worth making alliances with.
So, yes, the Spanish won allies who helped them fight the Mexica, but they needed their guns, steel, and horses to win those allies.
- Actually better is the book "The Fifth Sun: A new history of the Aztecs" written in Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and translated by Camille Townsend. It is an account of how the Aztecs viewed conquest, which they didn't see as a conquest initially. Also the descriptions of the city of Tenochitlan indicate that it was just as sophisticated, and cosmopolitan as it is today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Sun:_A_New_History_of_th...
- Good podcast! The Aztecs (or Mexica) also have a written history from before the Europeans came. See great summaries in the two books below:
A Rain of Darts: The Mexica Aztecs by Burr Cartwright Brundage
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
- I'm reading a book about the Aztecs now (Fifth Sun). The meeting of the Spanish with the Mexica has to be the most epic event in human history. Tragic what was lost. Kudos to the artist for this.
- I have this book in my to read stack and another American history in there is “Fifth Sun” by Camilla Townsend. It is a history of the Aztecs, referenced from Aztec historians. It sounds like a wonderful book.
- > Were they really?
I'm no linguist, but every time I've looked into this the answer has been yes. Though there is this weird trend to heavily suggest otherwise even in supposed serious sources, which has given me a major chip on my shoulder on this issue.
What they have is proto-writing. The Mayans have full writing, supposedly, and Aztec "script" seems to look like the Mayan's so many assume it must be the same, when it is not at all. Proto-writing pictograms are not at all like cuneiform or Chinese characters. There's no word, for example, for the to be verb in any Aztec script/pictogram. What nouns you can say exist are only what any picture anywhere would have. You can't say "Tototl was feeling despondent on the rainy day of 5th reed" and have someone else read that thought a century later because there are no words to construct a spoken sentence like such. The best you could do is draw a mural with a guy, with rebus device to suggest his name, surrounded by rain, hoping to convey such a sentence. But at that point you're just guessing.
It changes things a lot. I was reading the blurb on that Fifth Sun book and they were getting quite romantic suggesting a narrative of the true forgotten story of the Aztec in their own words the Spanish conquerors didn't want you to know! That's so dishonest to a naive audience. Whatever scholarship they are doing it has to be a combination of post-colonial recordings of oral history, post-colonial Spanish or Spanish influenced contemporary writings, and archeology. There is no other way.
