One of the most famous and important remnants of the Aztec Empire shows how they expected the apocalypse to happen, as well as the rather intriguing method they came up with to avoid it.
When you talk about classic Mesoamerican apocalyptic myths, you probably first think of the Mayans predicting the end of the world in 2012. But this is certainly not the end. Also, as archaeologists have pointed out, the Maya didn’t even really have an end-of-the-world myth. But the Aztec civilization, living several thousand kilometers to the north, was definitely worried about the impending doom.
In fact, they were so worried that they regularly made human sacrifices in hopes of delaying this end for another year. At least, Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American art and archeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, thinks that the remnants of the Sunstone, a 24-ton, circular, basalt calendar stone that she believes we’ve misunderstood for centuries, point to this.
While experts have long thought the central image on the stone shows Tonatiuh, the Aztec sun god, Milbrath’s 2017 article on eclipse images suggests the depiction could be more elaborate. Rather than depicting the face of the heart-eating god, Milbrath interprets the image as showing his death during an eclipse. Civilization believed that such an event would lead to a global and earth-shaking apocalypse.
And this feared apocalypse was unexpected in a distant, hard-to-reach future. Claws holding human hearts surrounding Tonatiuh, modern scholars call a depiction of the eclipse monster; a circle of signs symbolizing the 260-day calendar used by priests to predict future events; Based on drawings such as fire snakes representing a constellation closely associated with the Sun during the dry season, he can predict exactly when the Aztecs thought the world would end: 4 Olin.
4 Olin refers to a normal day for us, such as May 25, that we encounter in every cycle. However, the most important difference is that the world is thought to end on this date. Not wanting this yearly date to be their last view of Earth, the Aztecs thought they had to do something to stop our impending doom.
It may not surprise you that this “something” that had to be done for the Aztecs was human sacrifice. The Sunstone was “almost … like a stage for a public ritual,” Milbrath says. With every 4 Olins, a high-valued prisoner would be sacrificed to the sun god in a desperate attempt to stop an eclipse and have the earth spin for another year.
While this scenario may sound scary, it may make sense to a frightened public. “Pregnant women stayed indoors [during eclipses] because they thought their children would be born with horrific disfigurements,” Milbrath says. “Many of the details of how the Aztecs dealt with solar eclipses are not well known, but they certainly tried to scare away the monster they thought had eaten the Sun. ”
While the Empire is mostly known today for its bloodthirsty reputation for human sacrifice rites, Milbrath believes the real lesson to be learned from the new interpretation of the Sunstone was scientific rather than savage: “Perhaps they looked to their futures with more foreboding than people in today’s societies. But the Aztecs were more advanced in astronomy than people thought.”
As proof of this, it may be enough to look at the sneaky little way out of apocalypse that they may have sneaked into their predictions. “When creating their mythology, they ensured that the 4 Olins would never coincide with an eclipse on their world,” Milbrath says.
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