Photo era
Forty thousand years ago
Forty thousand years ago, there were no people or mammoths in America. However, there were: hundreds of varieties of cactus, turkeys, parrots, agaves, snakes, wild, almost inedible maize, dwarf wild corn, crocodiles (not dwarf at all and very wild). But not a single person or mammoth.
When the Bering Strait suddenly froze over for several thousand years, Siberian mammoths were the first to go to America across it. They passed through Alaska, future Canada and the USA, which apparently did not please them much, and settled in Mexico, in the blessed, albeit brackish, swamps and lagoons of Lake Texcoco (near Mexico City). Together with the mammoths, other warm-blooded animals also migrated here, followed by our Eurasian people. Some were too lazy to cross the strait and remained Chukchi forever. Some settled in Alaska, some lazily spread across the North, and the most restless reached Mexico. Because it is warm there and there are cacti.
A little later, when the Bering Strait suddenly thawed, Polynesians (or Ainu from the Japanese islands? unclear) got into boats and sailed to South America. Thus, the future South American Indians appeared there, either Mongoloids or Australoids. And they created the great Inca Empire, which was still inferior in scale to the Mesoamerican ("Maya-Aztec") one.
The ex-Eurasians of Mesoamerica, with an undying passionate spark in their Mongoloid gaze, became Mexican Indians. They also took a liking to the heavenly swamps of Texcoco and immediately began to eagerly eat mammoths. When the mammoths ran out, the Mexicans sat under the cacti and thought hard about what to eat now. As they say, thunder will not strike, a Mexican will not cross himself.
And it was then, out of hunger, that the Indians got down to business. And how! Since the population was growing rapidly, they had to master plant food as well. The Indians had two gods - the God of Corn and the God of Rain. Corn was thoroughly cultivated, and its cob grew more than six times in size. Imagine, for example, raspberries the size of an apple. That is, the Mexicans managed to do what Khrushchev failed to do. The Indians also began to eat tomatoes, beans, maize (more than one and a half thousand varieties), agave and cactus grains. From agave (maguey) they learned to distill a very strong vodka - pulque. This is the great-great-grandmother of tequila. True, they did not drink pulque from infancy, as here - only an elder who had reached the age of seventy had the right to drink vodka, and even then only on major holidays. So the Mexicans always had a reason to live long.
What the Mexicans did and do with cactus and agave is an example of brilliant ingenuity and zero-waste production.
Firstly, they eat it; secondly, they distill pulque-tequila from it; thirdly, they weave clothes and hammocks from it. And many other things: the extract is used for medicine and ointments, the needles for needles, etc.
If you are in Mexico, be sure to buy yourself a hammock (in Spanish - hamaca). For a dacha or a loggia. I bought one. It can easily fit five or six people. Indians sleep in one hammock with entire families. It brings them very close together.
Having eaten their fill of cacti and become close in hammocks, the Mexicans multiplied greatly. The cactus, by the way, greatly contributes to this. Experts believe that at the beginning of our era, the population of Mexico exceeded the population of the Roman Empire by ten times. Hegemonies of tribes changed: Zapotecs, Olmecs, Teotihuacans, Toltecs, Maya, Aztecs...
Aztec idea, or "Chicano culture"
In the 14th century AD (1325), when Europe was in turmoil and confusion, the Aztecs, on the same salty swamps of Texcoco, built the main city of America and the capital of the grand Aztec Empire (and then - perhaps one of the largest, if not the largest, city in the world) - Tenochtitlan. A city with a population of a million (for comparison: in the praised Paris five hundred years later, in the 19th century, there were only 500-600 thousand).
Tenochtitlan - a mystical swamp city, an island or a system of small islands on the lake, to which causeways led. It was something like Venice and St. Petersburg. Tenochtitlan was the pearl of all America. Goods were brought here from California and from the Andes, from Yucatan and from Panama. Tenochtitlan - a model of civilization. At the entrances to the causeways leading to the islands, toilets were carefully placed. In the city, however, one had to endure. The one who could not endure faced severe punishment. But Mexicans are patient.
In the USA, there is a whole direction in Spanish-speaking culture - "Chicano culture". Chicanos are Mexican-Aztecs who, by fate, ended up in the USA. Chicano literature is dozens and even hundreds of authors popular in the Indian environment, so-called "Aztecophiles", who persistently "push" the idea of "Pan-Aztecism". And in general, the idea of "Indian revival" is now brewing like a storm - both in the USA (there, Indians in reservations are urgently quitting their exercises with firewater and taking up, on the one hand, their history and languages, and on the other, jurisprudence) and in South America (there it is called "indigenism"), and in Mexico, and in Mesoamerica as a whole. The first swallows of the brewing storm are mass desecrations of monuments (Columbus, Cortes, and other conquistador-marauders). However, the Indians love us. But towards Europeans and North Americans, their attitude is ambiguous.
Mexican character
Reading about Mexicans and communicating with Mexicans, you marvel at this nation. On one hand, they are a more than practical people. For example, the Maya Indian hut. (I know what I'm talking about because out of curiosity I spent a night in one. In a hammock. Alone, without family.) A Maya hut is a light structure, blown through by all four (even eight) drafts. Outside, in the Yucatan jungle, it's +35°C; in the hut, it feels like 20°C. Dry. Flies don't bite because they're swept away by drafts. The funniest thing is that you don't get a draft because it only drafts when wind blows from one side. If you, say, sit for one minute with your fully jeans-clad butt on the newest model of air conditioner, you'll get sciatica. But if you lie naked all night in a Maya hut, no sciatica.
Or: how Indians split hard stone. We pound it with a hammer, like woodpeckers. Or we saw it with a jigsaw, displaying wonders of industrious stupidity. Also, we use a Makita hammer drill. The Indians take a different path. They take a huge stone, make a small groove in the middle. They put a piece of wood in the groove. They pour water on the wood. The water swells the wood and the boulder cracks neatly and perfectly evenly in the middle.
Or: the ingenious numbers of the Maya Indians. A base-5 system. A bar is five. A dot is one. And then count for yourself. How much is two bars and three dots? Right, thirteen. And three bars and two dots? Correct, seventeen. By the way, the Maya Indians still tend to count in fives and reduce to five. Because it's convenient, given the number of fingers on hands and feet.
But on the other hand, they are completely impractical in some matters. For example, both the Aztecs and the Maya, and all other Indians of Mexico knew perfectly well what a circle was. But they never invented the wheel. Or rather, they invented it but didn't use it. Ancient children's toys were found. Many toys are on wheels (!). But the Indians did not make 'big wheels.' They probably decided they didn't need them.
Hard work and patience came to them due to the lack of iron in antiquity. Thanks to Jack London and modern sports broadcasts, we all know about the incredible endurance of Mexican boxers. Mexicans are very calm, balanced, and friendly. A true Indian, as is known, 'always feels fine everywhere.' Everyone knows well that a true Indian, when visiting his Indian friend, does not say a word. They silently smoke a pipe each, and he silently leaves. Because 'silence is golden,' and words hinder the true spiritual-energetic exchange.
On the other hand, Mexicans are a very 'wild' people. Just look at how they 'down' tequila. Tequila tastes like pure firewater, but not very harmful. So it's better not to drink it without lemon and juice. And without tomato sangrita, which is often forgotten. Otherwise, you'll be hiccupping cactus for a week. There are people who like tequila. That's normal. There are even more people who like moonshine.
In Mexico, you'll definitely be taken to some tequila factory, where a professional muchacho will show you how to drink tequila. He demonstrates how to do it all day long.
And the 'wildness' of Mexicans is also shown in their passion for games. I think the discovery of Yucatan rubber led the ancient Indians to the idea of games. A rubber ball is heavy and bounces very well. Thus the ancient game of tlachtli appeared. (As a child, I remember we loved throwing balls from the 14th floor - they bounced up to the tenth.)
Tlachtli consists of needing to hit with a rubber ball (weighing half a kilo or more) a vertical small ring at a height of about two human heights (generally the 'parameters' of the game apparently varied). The ball can be hit with elbows, knees, and hips, and for the especially brainless, with the head. Catching is not allowed. Sometimes players wore copper or bronze shields, sometimes not. The winners... were killed: their bodies were cut into small pieces and distributed to the city's residents, thus offering them as a sacrifice to the gods. To be sacrificed as a result of winning in tlachtli was every Indian's dream, because in that case you immediately and unconditionally end up in heaven.
P. S.
Mexico is a country you want to remember and return to. I have a ritual of remembering Mexico. I usually have a nostalgia session for this country in the summer at my dacha.
I make myself the royal sauce 'mole poblano', or shorter - 'puebla' (raisins, cinnamon, garlic, pepper, cumin, onion, peanuts, sesame, almonds, cloves, coriander – all in dark chocolate), pour myself a shot of tequila and a glass of sangrita. 'Ole!' I say, down the shot, drink the sangrita, lick, as required, salt with lemon, and eat the divine puebla.
Then I lie down in a hammock. That's how it must be. And the nostalgia for Mexico begins.
And in the hammock, I dream of cacti. They laugh and wave at me cheerfully with their kind spines. And that's right.
Vladimir YELISTRATOV,
columnist for the magazine 'Voyage and Leisure'.