“History of Mexico” by Juan de Tovar, 17th Century

God Quetzalcoatl

Juan de Tovar, also known as the “Mexican Ciceron”, was the son of a Spaniard conqueror, arrived to Americas with the expedition of Pánfilo de Narvaez to explore and conquer the territories of gulf of Mexico, taking lands between actual Tampa (Florida) to Mississippi river for Carlos V of Spain.

Juan de Tovar entered the Jesuit order in 1573 and spent his life doing missionary work in Mexico, learning local languages like náhuatl, otomí and mazahua. After collecting all pre-Columbian Aztec codexes he could, he started their transcription, helped by natives.

This spectacular codex, “History of Mexico”, contains detailed information about the rites and ceremonies of the Aztecs; painted illustrations of mexican scenes, indian dances, and history. As main characteristic, this codex includes an elaborate comparison of the Aztec year with the Christian calendar. There's another codex from Juan de Tovar, known as "Codex Ramirez" or "Tovar manuscript", very similar to his "History of Mexico", hosted at John Carter Library, Brown University (Rhode Island, US).

Image below represents the xocotl huetzi (xocotlhuetzi) ceremony, related to the collection of the fruits of the earth and the ritual death of plants. It involved cutting a tree and placing an image of the god on the top. Copal and food were then offered to the tree. Young men were encouraged to climb the tree to get the image and gain a reward. Four captives were sacrificed by being thrown into a fire and by having their hearts extracted.

xocotl huetzi (xocotlhuetzi) ceremony, that included human sacrifice

Aztec calendar (month of June)

Maxcala Idol

Aztec Calendar representation

German Treatise on munitions and explosives (16th Century)

This manuscript is similar to the "Bombs and Explosives handbook" I published last October, link here. There're some big differences, as this codex has intensification on "rockets". Officially, the rocket artillery started in India, when Tipu Sultan introduced the first iron cased metal cylinder rocket. But this kind of artifacts were used also in China, without metal casing, as fire arrows.

This treatise has also an amazing proposal for the "new" war concept during 16th Century: the incredible use of trained dogs and even birds as moving bombs, see first image above. In our days, dolphins and orcas are still trained for military purposes (known as "dolphins of war") but governments only recognize these programs in relation to defense techniques like mine detection and equipment recovery. Anyway, returning to the manuscript, I couldn't find references about author. Has around 30 detailed illustrations, 240 leaves, and was written in 20-22 cursive lines format, with the frame ruled in red ink. Investigations revealed that was written in Germany in 1580.