Mayas - History, Native Mesoamerican Peoples - Language & Linguistics, Native American Languages - Mexico & Central America, Native American Tribes of Mexico - History, World History - General & Miscellaneous, Mexico - Politics & Government, Anthropology

Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations

Name: Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations
Author: Joyce Marcus
ISBN: 9780691094748

by Joyce Marcus

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Overview

This is an anthropological study of the role of hieroglyphic writing in the pre-hispanic Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Maya states. First, Joyce Marcus compares the four systems with regard to eight major themes: calendrics, the naming of nobles, the naming of places, royal marriages, accession to the throne, divine ancestors, warfare, and the rewriting of history. Then she establishes a new theoretical framework within which to conduct further analysis. Her basic contention is that ancient Mesoamerican writing was a tool used by an elite minority in their competition for positions of leadership, prestige, territory, tribute, and advantageous marriages. She convincingly demonstrates that while it may have been based on actual persons and events, this body of prehistoric writing is a deliberately created tangle of what we could call propaganda, myth, and fact, written for political purposes, and not (as many contemporary scholars have come to believe) reliable history in a modern sense.