In our March issue, we introduced readers to the Sun Stone, a fantastic artifact, measuring twelve feet in diameter and bearing an intricate carving of the Aztec Calendar. Readers then learned about the Calendar’s two functions: the xíhuítl, or civil calendar, and the tonalpohualli, or ritual calendar. Both calendars demonstrate the complex system of religion, balance and cycles that the Aztecs lived by to explain and interpret their world. This article focuses on the Calendar’s most fundamental cycle: the prediction of the entire Aztec civilization... Although the xíhuítl and the tonalpohualli are both interesting and important facets of the Calendar, the Aztec Calendar is probably best-known for its centrally-located figures, which illustrate and prophesize the evolutionary cycle of the Aztec world: when the world began, how it endured and how it would end. In the center of the Calendar is a round face surrounded by four prominent squares. These are the five Suns, representing the five epochs, or five creations of the world. Each creation is called a “Sun” because the Aztecs believed that it was the movement of the sun that maintained human life. Inside the four squares surrounding the face in the center are representations of the four ways in which the previous Suns (worlds) had come to an end. The top right square is the Jaguar Sun, Ocelotonatjuh. During this age, jaguars or wild animals ended the world. Moving counter-clockwise, the next square is the Wind Sun, Ehacatonatiuh. During this age, the human race was destroyed by hurricanes. The third sun, the Fire Sun, or Quiauhtonatiuh (see Figure 1), destroyed everything in a rain of fire and lava (volcano eruption). The fourth sun is the Water Sun, Antonatiuh. During this fourth age, storms and rain covered the earth. These four epochs were the Aztecs’ explanation for the universe’s cosmology before the emergence of humans from the fifth world: pre-columbian peoples such as the Olmecs, Mayans, Toltecs and Aztecs. The Aztecs believed they were living in the fifth and final world. This final age is represented on the Calendar by Tonatiuh, the Aztec Sun God (see Figure 1). Tonatiuh’s face is depicted in the center of the calendar. His hair is blonde, illustrating the golden appearance of the sun. An obsidian knife protrudes from his mouth like a tongue and, on either side of his face, claws hold a human heart, indicating that this deity must be fed with blood from sacrificial victims. Not only was Tonatiuh the Aztec Sun God, but he was also the God of Warriors (also known as “He Who Goes Forth Shining.”) The Aztecs envisioned the Sun as a warrior and his rays as symbolic darts. (On the Calendar, four large rays protrude from the third concentric ring like four compass points, surrounded by four smaller, triangular rays.) Tonatiuh was also commonly depicted as an eagle. Like an eagle swoops down to capture its prey, so too does the sun swoop down at sunset. Therefore, the Sun’s journey through the sky was like an eagle’s flight. At sunset, the Aztec explanation of the Sun’s disappearance was that Tonatiuh was captured by the evening star and sacrificed, only

Figure 1 (Click to enlarge)

Figure 2 (Click to enlarge)