Illustrations are the first written accounts of earthquakes in pre-Hispanic Mexico – ScienceDaily

The Codex Telleriano Remensis, created in 16th century Mexico, depicts earthquakes in pictograms that are the first written evidence of earthquakes in the Americas in pre-Hispanic times, according to a pair of researchers who have systematically studied the country’s historical earthquakes.

Gerardo Suárez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Virginia García-Acosta of the Graduate Center for Social Anthropology studied pictograms that reported 12 earthquakes in Teleriano-Remenses, occurring between 1460 and 1542.

Writing in the journal Seismological Research Letters, the authors note that the pictograms provide little information about the location, magnitude, or damage caused by earthquakes. But along with other historical accounts found in written records after the Spanish conquest, they extend from the seismic history of the area to the 15th century.

“It is not surprising that there are earlier Latin records describing earthquakes for two reasons,” Suarez said. “Earthquakes are frequent in this country, and secondly, earthquakes have had a profound meaning in the indigenous cosmology of what is now Mexico.”

Mesoamerican civilizations viewed the universe as cyclical, with successive eras or “suns” destroyed by floods, winds, fire, and other phenomena before the advent of the new sun. According to this view, the current and fifth “sun” will be destroyed by earthquakes.

Suárez and García-Acosta began studying historical earthquakes in Mexico after the devastating 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Mexico City in 1985, eventually publishing their findings in Los sismos en la historyia de México. “However, we did not touch upon the pictorial representation of earthquakes,” Suarez said. “We have recently embarked on a more detailed study of this pictorial representation and other texts written immediately after the Spanish conquest.”

Codic writing, a pre-Hispanic system of symbols and colours, was done by trained professionals called tlacuilos (in the original Nahuatl language, “those who write drawing”). While many manuscripts were burned as pagan objects after the Spanish conquest, some survived and the pictorial style was used in new manuscripts until the 18th century.

The Codex Telleriano-Remensis was written on European paper, with illustrations or “glossaries” written in Latin, Spanish, and sometimes Italian by later commentators alongside the symbols.

Earthquakes, called tlalollin in Nahuatl, are represented by two signs: ollin (movement) and tlalli (ground). Olin is a glyph consisting of four spirals and an eye or center circle. Hilly is a glyph consisting of one or several layers filled with dots and different colors.

In Telleriano-Remensis there are other modifications of the earthquake glyphs, but their meanings are unclear to scientists. “However, the consensus is that perhaps the different representations make sense,” Suarez said. “Manuscript drawing was a strict discipline not open to the artistic whims of people trained to do so, and we hope that in the future an unknown manuscript or document will appear which may enlighten us in this respect.”

Suárez and García-Acosta note that other records provide information that complements the manuscript earthquake drawings, possibly filling in more details about the impacts and locations of specific earthquakes. For example, the historical account of the Franciscan friar Juan de Torquemada describes the 1496 earthquake that shook three mountains in the “province of Xochitepec along the coast” and caused landslides in an area inhabited by the Yope people.

The site is located within the Guerrero seismic gap, an area of ​​relative seismic calm along the subduction zone in southern Mexico. Historical descriptions indicate that the 1496 earthquake was probably a very large earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 or greater within the gap. There have been no recorded earthquakes of this size in the gap since 1845.

The historical evidence “doesn’t really change our view about the possibility of earthquakes in that area of ​​southern Mexico,” Suarez explained. “It simply adds further evidence that major earthquakes have occurred in this part of the subduction zone before, and the absence of these major earthquakes for several years should not be considered as if this region is non-seismic.”

The researchers plan to study other unknown manuscripts such as Telleriano-Remensis, but have so far been unable to access the libraries they hold due to COVID-19 restrictions.

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