image credit: Alchemy Mindworks Inc.

Aztec Time-keeping by Susan Boshoven

The Aztec Sun Stone is as giant carving in the form of a disk which is at this time is kept in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. It is a recorded history of the Aztec people. The legend told by the Sun stone describes an evolutionary process, change over time.

Objectives : to learn how a native American culture, the Mexica or Aztecs recorded history, and how scientists decipher records left by past cultures. Working as archeologists, you will piece together the history of the Aztec people as recorded in the sun stone, relate the Aztec legend to the study of evolution, or the patterns and processes that shape the world.

1) Construct the central disk and first ring of the sun stone from pieces, and decipher the contents.

2) Compare the Aztec legend to the geological time scale and find a resemblance between the two.

3) Formulate an explanation for the resemblance.

Materials: copies of the Aztec sun stone made into puzzle pieces, butcher paper, glue, scissors, colors, information about the central disk and the order of the Aztec calendar days, information on the geologic time scale.

1st: Put together pieces. Color.

2nd: Research Aztec history and decipher parts of the calendar.

3rd: Compare legend to geologic time scale.

Journal Questions:

1) Describe the four suns of the history. What caused each sun to end and what changes occurred as a result of the catastrophe?

2) What is the fifth sun and how is it predicted to end?

3) In what ways is the Aztec legend an evolutionary process?

4) Compare the Aztec legend to the geologic time scale. What similarities do you see?

5) What observations of the natural world did the Aztecs make to understand this process?

web reference: http://www.mexico-virtual.com/~nagual/calendar/

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