Timetable on the horizon
- The Mexican Valley, 15th century. Before the arrival of the European conquerors, about 3 million people lived in depression. Premature or late planting of crops could cause deterioration in such a populated environment, and it was therefore essential for them to use an absolutely precise timetable at all times.
To do so, they chose a specific point as a solar observatory and, looking towards the skies of Sierra Nevada, they received from where the sun was coming from every day. Thus, they analyzed all the nuances of the seasons, predicting when the driest and rainy seasons came, choosing the most suitable moments for planting… And so, among other things, they brought the updated visenios, while in Europe they accumulated and somehow repaired the mismatches.
In recent years, several studies have been carried out on the horizon calendars. In 2020, Juan Rafael Zimbrone published an article on the Santa Cruz Acalpixca Long Stone site calendar. In 2021, Francisco Salvador Granados completed work on the calendar used by astronomers of the Cuauhnahuac temple. And recently, the ecologist Exequiel Ezcurra of the University of California has published in the PNAS journal the most detailed study of the subject.
In order to know the exact location of the observatory, the Ezcurra team has not only taken into account the Aztec documents of the time, but has used computerized astronomical systems and has concluded that its location was on a road in the temple of Mount Tlaloc. But from this point on, the researcher’s hypothesis is that “they used the entire Mexican valley, that depression itself was their work instrument”. The well-known Stone of the Sun has often been called the “Aztec calendar”, but Ezcurra thinks this is not right. This sculpture was used in rituals, but not as a calendar, “it had no practical use”.
Today, although Mount Tlaloc has lost its old function, Ezcurra wants to give it a new value, since since the 1940s he has observed that over the years the vegetation grows on the slopes. “What was once a time observatory in the 21st century can also be an observatory to understand climate change.”
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