The Mixtecs - S8 E2

Ed Barnhart (0:04)

You're listening to ArchaeoEd, a podcast about the ancient civilizations of the Americas. I'm your host, Ed Barnhart. I've been an archaeologist, an explorer, and a seeker of esoteric knowledge all over the Americas for 30 years and counting. This podcast is just me, no guests to help me fill the airtime. Sometimes I'll teach you about the many civilizations of the Americas long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Other times, I'll tell stories of my adventures in the field. It's just me, freed from the podium and talking like we're just having a beer together. If that sounds good to you, then sit back, relax, and let me tell you a tale.

Season 8, Episode 2, The Mixtecs. Hey friends! In my last episode, I talked about the Zapotecs. So for this episode, it's only fair to give their neighbors the Mixtecs some airtime too. The Mixtecs were Mesoamerica's best gold and silversmiths. The sophistication of their work is showcased in the treasures found in Monte Albán, Tomb VII. That's the richest tomb that's ever been found in Mexico. The Mixtecs are also famous for their well-preserved codices. There are six full-color Mixtec codices, featuring histories, genealogies, and mythological events.

They tell stories of heroes' adventures and political intrigue, much in the same way that the Greek mythic stories do. I'm going to talk more about those codices in a minute, but first let's set the Mixtecs in time and space.

The heartland of Mixtec civilization is western Oaxaca, bleeding into Guerrero to the west and Puebla to the north. At its full extents, starting around 900 CE, the Mixtec world spread across three geographically different territories. Number one is the Mixtec Alta in the mountains of western Oaxaca.

Number two was the Mixtec Baja, which was the lowlands but still high desert reaching into eastern Guerrero and southern Puebla. And number three is the Mixtec Acosta along the Pacific Slope and southwestern coast of Oaxaca. The Mixtecs have deep roots in all three of those areas, going back to Olmec times. But they were a quietly growing culture until the big shakeup around 800 CE. Cities across Mesoamerica were abandoned and the very fabric of civilization changed. We call that time the end of the Classic Period. Teotihuacan, dozens of Maya capitals, and the Zapotec capital of Monte Alban, all abandoned.

Mesoamerica entered what we call the Terminal Classic, a transition period of just a few centuries before Mesoamerica's post-classic period begins. In central Mexico, the Terminal Classic was a time of warring city-states and increased military activity. Places like Xochicalco and Cacachla built citadels on hilltops and glorified war in their public art programs. The Mixtecs also became more militaristic, dividing into competing independent city-states. Then in the 11th century, a culture hero named 8 Deer Jaguar Claw unifies the entire Mixtec civilization into a single empire ruled from his hometown, Tlantongo. The codices wonderfully explain his rise to power in great detail.

The art style of the Mixtec codices is a bit cartoonish, and that caused early scholars to see it as art rather than historical narrative. They were also mostly written in the 15th century, so it was surprising to discover that they spoke of histories that happened centuries earlier.

The archaeologist who discovered how to read the Mixtec codices was one of the grand old men of Mexican archaeology, Alfonso Caso. In 1949, he published his first paper on the subject. In it, he connected the dates in the Codex Vindobinensis to colonial documents noting dates in their Mixtec 52-year calendar system.

Over the next two decades, Caso and his colleagues mapped out a historical narrative stretching from the 7th century all the way to 1556, 30 years into the Spanish conquest. Each Codex was different and written in different places, but also have a lot of historical overlap. Especially when it comes to the story of 8 Deer, their narratives are almost identical.

Reading the Mixtec Codices isn't very hard because its information is very formulaic. It displays people's names, dates of events, and location indicators that we call toponyms.

The pages are dominated by depictions of those people and places, with glyphs floating small in the background. For example, a page could have 8 deer at the city of Titutipec. 8 deer's name would be next to him in glyphs, and Titutipec would be marked by its toponym, which is a vulture head next to a ball court. The year and day of each major event is marked somewhere in the scene. Meshtek years counted in 52-year cycles, each year named according to the year-bearer system. Year-bearers are the 260-day names that occur every 365 days. It's basically making the solar year fit into the much older, more sacred 260-day year.