Tonatiuh

For those of you too frightened or lazy to check out the random Wikipedia article function yourself, I have good news. I am going to make the "Random Wikipedia Article" a semi-regular feature of this blog. Today's entry is Tonatiuh:

In Aztec mythology, Tonatiuh was the sun god. The Aztec people considered him the leader of Tollan, their heaven. He was also known as the fifth sun, because the Aztecs believed that he was the sun that took over when the fourth sun was expelled from the sky. According to their cosmology, each sun was a god with its own cosmic era. According to the Aztecs, they were still in Tonatiuh's era. According to the Aztec creation myth, the god demanded human sacrifice as tribute and without it would refuse to move through the sky. It is said that 20,000 people were sacrificed each year to Tonatiuh and other gods, though this number is thought to be inflated either by the Aztecs, who wanted to inspire fear in their enemies, or the Spaniards, who wanted to vilify the Aztecs. The Aztecs were fascinated by the sun and carefully observed it, and had a solar calendar second only in accuracy to the Mayans'. Many of today's remaining Aztec monuments have structures aligned with the sun.

A while back I started reading Chester Starr's A History of the Ancient World, and while that text (or at least the early chapters I've finished) is focused on Near Eastern civilization, it makes some effort to demonstrate interesting contrasts and similarities between separately evolving civilizations. That is to say, questions arise about whether certain social or technological advances (say banking or masony, to throw out a couple of Civilization references) were created independently within different civilizations, like Egypt and China, or whether knowledge of the advance was transmitted from a single inventing civilization to the others.

I am reminded of that text by this discussion of the Aztec sun god because the interconnectedness of religious belief is an area of great interest to me, though I've failed to follow up on that interest with any real study. Chester Starr's text provided some insights into how Judaism was influenced by the myths of older civilzations. And I have a high school level awareness of the symmetries between the Greek and Roman gods.

The text about Tonatiuh demonstrates, I think, that eerily similar creation myths and god systems have developed in rather disconnected parts of the world. It's not surprising that the Aztecs should worship a sun god, just as the Egyptians did, but it seems notable and worthy of some attention. I am going to go browse Amazon for a book or two that might be on point.

UPDATE: Alright, my browsing at Amazon has led me to a Joseph Cambell tetralogy called "The Mask of Gods." In particular, it seems that the first volume in the series, Primitive Mythology, is most relevant to the questions of origin that most interest me. It is also good to know that there are three sequels should my curiosity in the area continue.