Researchers have rethought the meaning of the pictograms that illustrate the famous Telleriano-Remensis Codex, created in the 16th century in Mexico. It turned out that this document is the first description of earthquakes on the territory of North and South America.
Scientists have studied the document from the point of view of seismology and anthropology. As a result, they concluded that mysterious ancient pictograms tell of twelve earthquakes that occurred between 1460 and 1542 AD.
Experts say that the pictograms carry little information about the exact location of the disasters, their scale and the extent of the damage they caused. But in any case, this is the first written record that describes the “seismic history” of America. And this is not surprising, because earthquakes were important for the indigenous people of modern Mexico from the point of view of cosmology.
The researchers explain that the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica viewed the Universe as a cyclical natural mechanism in which eras were successively replaced. Each of them possessed its own sun. The processes of changing eras were preceded by destructive floods, hurricanes, forest fires and other phenomena. Indigenous peoples believed that the current “fifth sun” would be destroyed by an earthquake.
Photo: Gerardo Suárez and Virginia García-Acosta
Used materials from The Daily Mail
