Aztec Calendar History

The Aztecs were a very advanced race of people for their time and left behind many artifacts. One of the most famous artifacts left by these people was the Aztec calendar. There has been much speculation as to what the symbols mean and how they created it. The calendar can unlock many secrets about the Aztecs and their way of life, before the Spanish conquests in Mexico. There is a lot of culture to be found in the calendar stone and sacrifice stones. There are three stones come together with many of the same myths, predictions, and ways of looking at universe. The Aztec Calendar stone was first thought to work in relation to the different phases of the moon. This theory was later turned down when researchers found that the calendar was dated …show more content…
It was supposedly used as a sacrifice stone and is now being held at Yale University. There are three of these stones in existence. The sacrifice stone and the calendar stone were examined and compared to each other. Both stones have different faces, and similar faces. Most of the visible faces were faces of relief. There are five faces total. The top face with the sun’s disk is the most interesting of the faces. The stones have many different hieroglyphs and faces connect all the stones together. Once researches found these similarities and connections they started to compare the Yale University sacrifice stone and the Calendar stone in Mexico City more closely. Once symbol, or animal that sticks out greatly is the Jaguar. The Jaguar was a major character in Aztec history and mythology. The Aztecs believed in four prehistoric suns that each had a cosmic ending. In one ending, the people believed that as heaven fell people were being devoured by the jaguars. The Jaguar caused the sun to collapse by devouring it. The Aztecs had many gods and beliefs that they left behind in the art of their …show more content…
The stones are considered national symbols and keys to understanding postclassical art. The calendar stone was first thought to be a concept to understand space and time. Now, after years of research, we know that the Aztecs believed that the universe passed through four different cycles. These four cycles each had a sun, which is in each corner of the stone. They believed that as a cycle ended the suns would be violently destroyed and that they were coming to an end on the fifth cycle. They were predicting the end of their culture, because soon after the Spanish conquest began. To postpone the end they would do many sacrifices to please the gods and keep peace. Whenever the end was predicted, it would also be represented at night when the sun disappeared. Midnight is when it was expected and was associated with death. The fifth ritual was an interesting one because it was predicted in the middle of the world with a deities face. Researchers could not properly decipher which deity it was though. There was speculation that it could be xochipilli-piltzintcuhtli. Many of the deities look alike in old pictures and are not labeled specifically making identification a challenge. The confirmed god on the Calendar stone was Yohualtecuhtli the lord of the night in Aztec