The civilization of ancient Mexico / by Lewis Spence.

  • Lewis Spence
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The civilization of ancient Mexico / by Lewis Spence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/148 page 5
    Mexico, while the Nonohualco dwelt at the southern end of the Lake of Chaleo. The Nahua peoples included all those tribes and confederacies speaking the Mexican language or Nahuatlatolli, and designated themselves “Nahuat- lac&,” a term signifying “those who live in accord- ance with a settled rule of life.” They appear to have extended in their geographical distribution, at various periods, from British Columbia on the north to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec on the south. The Nahuan tongue, or Nalmatlatolli, was the language of a barbarism little removed from savagery, representing a low state of mental culture. It must be borne in mind that the Aztech, from whom we get our ideas of the Nahuan tongue, on their en- trance to Anahuac (as they designated the Mexican plateau), were in a condition akin to mere savagery, and that they were simply the heirs of an older civilisation. The people who possessed this older culture were much more polished, and probably spoke a more cultivated dialect of the same tongue. If they did so, it is for ever lost to us. Like most other American languages Mexican belongs to the incorporative type. In all languages, every grammatical sentence conveys one leading idea, and “ incorporative’’ language “seeks to unite in the most intimate manner all relations and modifications with the leading idea, to merge one in the other by altering
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