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Sacrifice, Death, and the Origins of Agriculture in the Codex Vienna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

John Monaghan
John Monaghan*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235
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Abstract

This paper examines a poorly understood scene in the Codex Vienna and is based on linguistic and ethnographic studies carried out in Oaxaca, Mexico. The Vienna is one of the few Precolumbian manuscripts to survive the conquest, and its extensive treatment of ritual and religious subjects makes it unique among the Mixtec codices. The scene in question is interpreted in terms of a myth current among present-day Mixtec speakers, which recounts the first sacrifice made by humans, and which links this sacrifice, and all subsequent ones, to agriculture and human death.

Résumé

Résumé

Este trabajo examina una escena pobremente comprendida en el Códice de Vienna y se basa en estudios linguísticos y etnográficos llevados a cabo en Oaxaca, México. Este códice es uno de los pocos manuscritos precolombinos que sobrevieron a la conquista, y su extenso tratamiento de temas rituals y religiosos lo hace único entre los códices mixtecas. La escena en referenda ha sido interpretada según un mito actual entre los mixteco hablantes de hoy, el cual relata el primer sacrificio llevado a cabo por humanos y a la vez une este sacrificio, y todos los subsiguientes, a ambas la agricultura y la muerte humana.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 1990 , pp. 559 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1990 

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References

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