Time Surfing: Experience History Firsthand.
Historical Backdrop
In the spring of 1500, the Mexica (Aztec) capital of Tenochtitlan was the largest city in the Americas, home to more than 200,000 people. Every year, during the second month of their sacred calendar, the Mexica held Tlacaxipehualiztli—the “Feast of the Flaying of Men”—to honor Xipe Totec, god of renewal and springtime rain. The festival’s centerpiece was the tlahuahuanaliztli, or gladiatorial sacrifice, in which captive warriors were tied to a great stone disk and forced to fight fully-armed Mexica knights while wielding only feathered clubs. Our subject is Itzcuintli, a 25-year-old Tlaxcalan jaguar warrior captured six months earlier during a Flower War (xochiyaoyotl)—the ritualized battles the Mexica and their enemies fought largely to take prisoners for the gods. Tlaxcalans hated Mexica rule, but every warrior on both sides accepted that death on the stone was the most honorable exit a man could hope for. Itzcuintli has been fed, housed, and trained by his captor’s household for months. Today is the day he was born for.
Date/time and location: Pre-dawn, roughly 4:00 AM, 5 March 1500. A captives’ longhouse in the Tlatelolco district of Tenochtitlan.
You wake on a reed mat, the smell of copal smoke drifting through the doorway. A hand shakes your shoulder—your keeper. You do not need words. Today is the day. Outside, a conch shell moans across the lake. Your mouth is dry. You touch the small jade bead your mother gave you as a boy, tucked in the woven pouch at your waist. You have not slept much. You will not eat. You stand.
Date/time and location: Just before sunrise, roughly 5:45 AM, 5 March 1500. A stone-lined sacred bathing pool near the Templo Mayor precinct.
The lake wind is cold on your bare skin. Two priests, blackened with soot and dried blood, guide you down slick stone steps into the pool. The water bites. They pour clay bowls of it over your head while chanting the old words. You look up. The morning star hangs above the twin temples. You breathe out. Your breath makes a small white cloud in the dark air.
Date/time and location: Mid-morning, roughly 8:00 AM, 5 March 1500. An open-air platform inside the temple precinct.
You sit on a low stone bench. A young priest kneels and paints your body in vertical stripes—red on white, white on red. Chalk paste is smeared across your face until you feel like a carved mask. Small white bird-down feathers are pressed onto your skin with pine resin. They put a new white paper loincloth on you. Your keeper offers you a gourd of octli. It burns going down. Your legs feel warm. Your ears sing.
Date/time and location: Late morning, roughly 10:30 AM, 5 March 1500. The main causeway leading into the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan.
