Exceedingly Rare Aztec Map

Thanks to National Geographic, I came across this story about a map that is as much archaeology as it is geography.

The map is called the Codex Quetzalecatzin, was recently acquired by the U.S. Library of congress and is one of fewer than 100 Mezoamerican maps that predate the year 1600. In other words, it's an extremely rare, Aztec map from sometime between 1570 and 1595. 

Image of the Codex Quetzalecatzin frm the U.S. Library of Congress

The map shows the family tree and land holdings of an Aztec family and "...covers an area that runs from just north of Mexico City to just below Puebla, roughly 100 miles away to the southeast". 

It contains both Aztec imagery as well as clear Spanish influences, not least the Spanish writing on the map. It appears to represent some of the earliest contact between the indigenous people of Mexico and Europeans. 

From looking at it, what strikes me is that it barely looks like a map at all. It looks more like a drawing of a landscape, or what we may call a "view", than a map. To the layperson like me, it also seems to have a strange scale and it is not immediately clear that it represents such a vast area. 

It is beautiful though, with vibrant colours and images such as this snippet: 

The U.S. Library of Congress has at least one other map like the Codex Quetzalecatzin. It's called the The Oztoticpac lands map, and though it has no doubt been the subject of extensive study, I cannot find very much about it online.

This one is even older than the Codex Quetzalecatzin and dates to around 1540. It's described as a "litigation map", relating to a property dispute. Some detail on it from The Library of Congress reads:

 The Oztoticpac Lands Map is an Aztec pictorial document with Nahuatl writing drawn for a court case surrounding the Oztoticpac estate within the city of Texcoco around 1540. The document, written on amatl paper, involves the land ownership of the Aztec ruler Chichimecatecotl, who was executed by Spanish officials in 1539. It is not clear from surviving information who won the case. Most of the document consists of black-and-red line drawings showing fields, houses, palaces, trees, and measured plots of land. In the lower left, twenty trees that have been grafted with European fruit stock in a local orchard are shown. These include apples, quinces, pears, grapes, and pomegranates.

Here's an image with a better look:

There are some fascinating details on this map, some of which probably require a better historical and cultural knowledge to understand, but which to the layperson, are interesting and fun to look at.

For example, the map contains images of various plants. The quote above explains what they are, but some of the images are so curious. For example, in the image of the plant below, whose disembodied hands are those, and why are they there at all? Whose disembodied heads are these and, what's this man doing all alone on this plot of land? These seem to be more than just decorative, and when considering that this map was used in a court case, one has to imagine that they are meant to reflect a certain ownership of a particular area shown on the map.

One reason I love antique maps is because they represent a snapshot of what a place was like at a specific moment in time. These maps do that, and then some. There are not just about what places looked like, but they tell us about who lived there and how they lived. This is more than you would get from your average antique map. It's why, as I wrote above, that maps like this fall into the category of archaeology. They help us understand how people who are long gone structured their lives and societies. They're windows into history and a pleasure to look at.