ATDDTA(10) Journey To Aztlan [277-278]

[Keith]

[277:5] "Aztlan"

Aztlan is the mythical place of origin of the Aztec peoples. In their  
language (Nahuatl), the roots of Aztlan are the two words:

aztatl - tlan(tli)

meaning "heron" and "place of," respectively. 'Tlantli' proper means  
tooth, and as a characteristic of a good tooth is that it is firmly  
rooted in place, and does not move, the prefix of this word is  
commonly used in Nahuatl to denote settlements, or place names, e.g.  
Mazatlan (place of deer), Papalotlan (place of butterflies) or  
Tepoztlan (place of metal). The Nahuatl language is often said to  
include three levels of meaning for its words or expressions:  
literal, syncretic and connotative. The connotative meaning of  
Aztlan, due to the plumage of herons, is "Place of Whiteness." The  
mythical descriptions of Aztlan would have it to be an island.

You would replace -tlan with -tecatl to identify a resident or person  
from the given place. So, for the examples above, we have that people  
from Mazatlan would be Mazatecatl, someone from Tepoztlan a  
Tepoztecatl, and someone from Aztlan an Aztecatl.

In the origin myths of the Aztecs, they emerged originally from the  
bowels of the earth through seven caves (Chicomostoc) and settled in  
Aztlan, from which they subsequently undertook a migration southward  
in search of a sign that would indicate that they should settle once  
more. This myth roughly coincides with the known history of the  
Aztecs as a barbarous horde that migrated from present-day  
northwestern Mexico into the central plateu sometime toward the end  
of the first millenium AD, when high civilizations of great antiquity  
were already well established in the region. It is known that the  
Aztecs had a sector ("barrio") in the Toltec city of Tollan, and the  
cultural influence of the Toltecs on the rough-edged Aztecs was  
subsequently to be very marked. On the view of some scholars (e.g.,  
Nigel Davies), all of Aztec cultural development was an effort to  
recreate the grandeur that they knew at Tollan.

http://www.indians.org/welker/mexmain1.htm

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[277:8-11] "the look of a trooper back off a long campaign in which  
more than once matters of life and death had arisen---her own, those  
of others, eventually a mingling of selves that had her insomniac  
and, to Frank at least, making no sense beyond occasionally scaring  
the shit out of him."

A trooper is a member of a cavalry unit, and Wren's symptoms sound  
like what we now call PTSD, with night terrors and dissociative,  
flashbacked states of irrationality. This book has insomnia. Reef was  
sleep deprived after Jeshimon.[214] Lake and Mayva had insomnia.[264]  
Deuce had no sleep, or too little after Sloat departed.[272]

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[277:12] "Mancos"

Ancestral Puebloans (also called the Anasazi Indians, meaning “the  
ancient ones”) were the first to live in the area where Mancos State  
Park now sits. They inhabited the four corners area in ancient times  
from A.D. 1 to A.D. 1300. In fact, the region supported a much larger  
population a thousand years ago then it does today. Eventually, the  
Spaniards entered the area and dominated from the 1600s to the 1800s.

The Spaniards attempted to create a path from the declining empire of  
Santa Fe to the Spanish presidio in Monterey, CA. The town of Mancos  
was named after a Spaniard who injured himself near the Rio de los  
Mancos, which literally means “river of the cripple” in Spanish.

Soon came the discovery of gold and silver 50 miles northeast of  
Silverton. The area’s then booming economy involved ranching, farming  
and lumber operations. After WWII, tourism and recreational  
development dominated the area.

http://parks.state.co.us/Parks/Mancos/Publications/MancosHistory.htm

El Rio Mancos was named by Spanish explorers in the eighteenth  
century. Mancos means "Crippled One" and local legend has it that a  
member of an exploration party suffered an injury here, thus the name  
El Rio Mancos. Dominating the Mancos Valley on the west is the sheer  
face of Mesa Verde, meaning "Green Table". The spectacular cliff  
dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park are on Mesa Verde.
The ancient Indian trail through the Mancos Valley and skirting Mesa  
Verde was the route followed by the earliest Spaniards and eventually  
became the Spanish Trail leading west from Santa Fe and veering north  
through Ute Territory to avoid the Navajos south of the San Juan  
River. Though Spain lost the San Juan Country to Mexico in 1821 and  
Mexico ceded it to the United States in 1848, the Spanish placenames  
are a reminder of the centuries-old Hispanic influence on the region.  
That influence, and the contribution of Hispanics, continues today.

http://www.mountainstudies.org/databank/history/Towns/Mancos.htm

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[277:14-278:26] The Disappearance of the Anasazi

In this section, Wren is telling Frank about her research into the  
13th Century history of the Four Corners area and the sudden  
disappearance of the Anasazi people. She is confused about her  
findings, but isn't so sure about the theory that the Anasazis  
cannibalized themselves. She sees something beyond a human  
explanation in the petroglyphs in the area:

http://raysweb.net/rockart/

http://www.jqjacobs.net/rock_art/barrier1.html

"Information from Robert Morning Sky is included, along with a  
chapter on "The Star Elder", which describes a Native American belief  
in, what would be described in more modern terms as, extraterrestrial  
visitation. For the Native Americans this apparently has become a  
part of their religion. It is also interesting to note that there are  
many Anasazi petroglyphs at Canyonland of Utah that show six-digit  
footprints. These markings date back to some 1,400 years BC and it  
appears that the Native American belief in beings from the stars goes  
back to long before Europeans crossed the Atlantic and changed the  
culture of Native Americans for all time."

http://www.theallseeingeye.us/autopsy.html

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(ASIDE)

More eye references:

As Wren speaks of these matters, Frank /again/ wishes he'd been  
paying closer attention to her eyes. [277:35-36]
Later the moisture in her eyes is shining like steel. [278:15]

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The possibility of cannibalism is an increasingly considered theory:

"What happened? Why did the Anasazi clear out as though vaporized,  
leaving a treasure trove of worldly goods behind? Christy G. Turner  
II, bioarchaeologist at Arizona State University and author of the  
controversial book _Man Corn_, has been on the case for more than 30  
years. After looking at some 15,000 sets of butchered, broken and  
burned bones, his verdict: cannibalism.

Turner theorizes that the American Southwest in the centuries around  
the turn of the first millennium was the stomping ground of a band of  
Charles Manson-type cannibals: Toltec thugs from Mexico who ate their  
way through the local population. This sensational scenario has  
brought him enormous publicity; his claims have been examined by  
National Geographic, Discover, the New Yorker and the Los Angeles  
Times, to name a few popular forums. In his book Turner states point- 
blank that "cannibalism was practiced intensively for almost four  
centuries" in the region inhabited by the Anasazi. The public, shall  
we say, seems to be eating it up."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_28_15/ai_55410554

The special feature of this massively documented study is its multi- 
regional assessment of episodic human bone assemblages (scattered  
floor deposits or charnel pits) by taphonomic analysis, which  
considers what happens to bones from the time of death to the time of  
recovery. During the past thirty years, the authors and other  
analysts have identified a minimal perimortem taphonomic signature of  
burning, pot polishing, anvil abrasions, bone breakage, cut marks,  
and missing vertebrae that closely matches the signature of animal  
butchering and is frequently associated with additional evidence of  
violence. More than seventy-five archaeological sites containing  
several hundred individuals are carefully examined for the  
cannibalism signature. Because this signature has not been reported  
for any sites north of Mexico, other than those in the Southwest, the  
authors also present detailed comparisons with Mesoamerican skeletal  
collections where human sacrifice and cannibalism were known to have  
been practiced.

The authors review several hypotheses for Southwest cannibalism:  
starvation, social pathology, and institutionalized violence and  
cannibalism. In the latter case, they present evidence for a  
potential Mexican connection and demonstrate that most of the known  
cannibalized series are located temporally and spatially "near" Chaco  
great houses.
http://tinyurl.com/2guf2y

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