According to recent research, the Aztec civilization may have kept track of critical days for farming by using nearby natural features like mountains and ridges, and even the sun. Researchers have noted that prehistoric Mesoamerican civilizations exploited the rocky terrain to identify key times of the seasons that were best for planting or harvesting.
The agricultural calendar that occurs naturally, according to the experts, helped civilizations produce enough food to feed millions of people.
Exequiel Ezcurra, a plant ecologist from the University of California, Riverside, is the study's principal investigator. The data, according to the researchers, supports their hypotheses that Mount Tlaloc's jagged horizon peaks were utilized to keep track of the agricultural calendar so that it matched the seasons as each solar year passed.
circa 1950: Two Peruvians at Pisac, with terraced fields created by the Aztecs in Peru.
Aztecs Make Agricultural Calendar Through Sun and Mountains
According to ScienceAlert, it has long been known that the agriculture of the Valley of Mexico was distinguished for many centuries by irrigation systems and chinampas, which were raised-field types of farming and were wrongly referred to as "floating gardens," as The Archaeologist mentioned.
Rich dirt from a lake's bottom was heaped up to create ridges between rows of ditches or canals.
The spring months are very dry in the Mexico Valley. In contrast, the monsoon season begins in the summer and early fall. This calls for the creation of a system for recording the seasons to enable planting during wet seasons and harvesting during dry ones.
Crops must be seeded at specific times due to the seasonal cycle of dry and rainy weather. If not, the entire harvest may be at danger.
The California study team found that if the real rainy season does not last, planting too soon, on the cue of a first haphazard early rain, can be devastating.
Ezcurra and his coworkers contend that planting after the monsoon season has unquestionably begun exposes the milpa, or corn field, to an abnormally short growth season and exposes the crop to competition from weeds that have already sprouted.
ALSO READ: Mexican Archaeologists Rebury Aztec's Flood-Control System; Here's Why
How Agricultural Calendar Works
The scenery of Mexico made a great calendar. The location of the horizon where the Sun rises changes throughout the year due to the tilt of the Earth,
Only during the equinoxes does the Sun rise straight to the east. The Sun will rise north of due east on the celestial horizon in the Northern Hemisphere summer when the North Pole is inclined toward the Sun, reaching a compass bearing of approximately. 65 °F is the summer solstice temperature.
According to the study, having a precise calendar to anticipate the seasons was essential for effective farming in central and western Mesoamerica.
The fact that Mexica farmers scrupulously obeyed the elders' calendar-based instructions to develop and harvest their crops and refused to begin their agricultural output without their consent was even noted as "a very extraordinary phenomenon" by Dominican explorer Diego Durán in the 16th century.
According to Ezcurra and his team's calculations, there is only one day in spring and one day in fall when the Sun rises directly behind a well-known peak in the region, making it a precise technique of timekeeping.
RELATED ARTICLE: Growing Sinkhole Opens in Mexico Home; Scientists Explain What This Phenomenon Is
Check out more news and information on Archeology in Science Times.
