Aztec Eternals

Time is always playing hide and seek with people, it travels through the day like the wind, and blooms in the night like a flower. In the process of searching and searching, it passes away in the blink of an eye.

The next seven days were fast and slow.

Whenever Shulot is alone, it is a long and difficult night. Under the dim candlelight, he pondered over the murals in the snake house. The four walls are all descriptions of the feathered snake god, who has a human body and a snake body. He wanders through villages and towns, and is worshiped by mortals.

And on the roof, it is the farewell of Feathered Serpent being framed by the original sun Tezcatlipoca and self-expelled. It's just that the position of the original sun in the myth was replaced by the newly depicted patron saint. Also not far above, the patron saint prayer room where Avit is located was also the prayer room of the primordial sun. The change of Patronus is clear at a glance.

Thinking of the murals in the palace corridor and the message from his grandfather, Shulot understood the elder's unfinished meaning. He began to think long and hard, how to formulate the code?

At this time, the little green snake will crawl out of the underground waterway wet, and then wring its body dry on the straw. Then it walked freely on the boy, looking for a comfortable sleeping position. Usually a warm chest, sometimes a smooth back, and occasionally a strong arm or thigh, depending on its mood.

The boy's heart is peaceful and kind, just like the moon falling into the fourth house, he lets the little green snake run wild. He just rejected the gift brought back by the little green snake: a beautiful Mexican butterfly fish, killed and not poisonous.

Whenever the elder arrives, it means the beginning of the day, and the accompanying captain of the guard will also leave a new candle. The little green snake will avoid it in advance and go to the underground waterway to hunt for food. Xiulot took the wooden board with pictographic and Chinese characters and explained it to the elder one by one. The principles here are the pictographic, referring to things, understanding and pictophonic in the Six Books.

"Single body is text, and combined body is character." The first characters are all pictographic single characters, which are used to represent everything in this world, and can usually be observed by the naked eye. These texts should actually be simply called "text". The pictographs of Oracle and Mexica are at this stage.

For example, it is "mountains, rocks, fields, flowers, birds, fish and insects, sun, moon, fire, rivers, human eyes, siblings" and so on. These have already had corresponding references in the original graphic texts of the Mexica, and there is not much obstacle in simplifying them into more concise pictographic single characters.

The elder's understanding of pictographic single-style characters is very fast. These concepts have long been ingrained in his mind, and now they have only been transformed into more concise ones.

Of course, some words are interpreted differently by culture. For example, the pictogram of "husband" is an adult man with a hairpin, but in the understanding of the Mexica, it is an adult warrior with feathers. The pictogram of "female" is a woman kneeling with bent legs, representing the subordinate status of women. In the Mexica culture, where women generally have the right to inherit and even serve as tribal leaders, this discards the meaning of subordination and transforms it into the meaning of home.

And some pictographic things that have not appeared, such as "ox, horse, sheep and cart", cannot be explained for the time being. Shulot can only be generally described as a large quadruped animal that can be domesticated, as well as a vehicle drawn by quadruped animals. The elder was quite interested in the fast-running chariots and horses described by Xiulot.

In the eyes of the rulers of the empire, communication efficiency is the biggest limitation of the empire's territory. The time when the distance was generated is the most important factor restricting the expansion of the classical military empire, not the pure spatial distance. The efficiency of communication from the ruling center to the frontier determines the support of the local residents, and also determines the stability of the frontier rule.

The Mexica often captured rival city-states. At the farthest point in the south, even conquering nearly a thousand kilometers, came to the border of the Yucatan rainforest. However, due to the long communication time and extremely low transportation capacity, these surrendered city-states had to give up the direct control of Mexica, and instead became disloyal vassals who repeatedly rebelled.

And for every distant conquest, the troops that can be deployed are very limited, because the food delivery capacity carried by manpower is too low. The Otomi wars were thus defeated.

Before the invention of railway technology, water and sea transportation had the highest communication efficiency. Therefore, the Roman Empire controlled the fast-communicating Mediterranean Sea, while the Chinese Empire was obsessed with digging canals for efficient transportation.

"My child. In the boundless grasslands of the far north, there is a huge four-legged beast running fast. This is its horn. Do you think we can domesticate it?"

The elder looked at Shulot calmly. The sculpted warrior behind him handed over a curved horn. Xiulot carefully identified it, and then blew a low "woo" sound. This should be a North American bison.

"It's worth a try. But it should take several generations, decades." Xiulot pondered slightly, hesitating to speak.

If you want to tame bison, in fact, as long as you capture enough cubs, you will always succeed. But taming is just getting the bison used to living with people. And domestication is the ability to use bison to pull carts or plow fields, so that wild animals can get used to working for humans. This step requires extremely high time and labor costs.

Thirty years later, Spanish colonists would bring European cattle to Cuba for the first time. And if he wanted to domesticate the bison within thirty years, Schlott felt that he was not sure.

The elder nodded slightly. Soon, an envoy was summoned, the elder gave a few simple instructions, and the envoy left in a hurry. Beginning this year, the tributes of the northern Vasthecs have added "giant horned four-legged beast cubs", forty in number, and reduced or exempted feathered clothing tributes.

"You can know it by seeing it, and you can see it by observing it." After the pictographic single-body character, it refers to the word Shi. Referring to things is the first step from pictographic to ideographic, expressing a certain partial or relative concept by adding abstract signs to the corresponding parts of the pictographic characters to indicate the local scope represented.

It usually takes thousands of years to develop from pictograph to ideogram, and the original pictograph of Mexica just stood on the edge of ideography.

Zhishizi can be simply understood as a single abstract symbolic word, the most representative of which are the three characters "上", "中" and "下". Up, down a horizontal line and then up. It is a high place, and it is also a vertical action, and it also refers to noble. Down, up and down again. And in the middle, it means being impartial.

Other referring characters include "Ben, Zhu, Mo", that is, add referring symbols at the root, trunk and tip of "wood". "Yue" is marked with a short horizontal line on the mouth, which represents the voice of the mouth. It is worth mentioning that the meaning of the king of Mexica is "the big talker", and its symbol is similar to it, which is a gust of wind or cloud drawn around the character's mouth.

Hearing this, the elder nodded slightly. "Yue" can be used as an iconic symbol on the king's clothing and a symbol of authority.

Next, is the most important ideographic character, composed of two or more individual characters, expressing a comprehensive meaning. Knowing characters can express many abstract meanings and have a strong character-making function. Knowing characters integrate the concepts of Chinese culture and are a unique understanding of the essence of things.

Xiulot first spoke the word "God" to the elder. On the left side is "Shi" which means the altar, and on the right side is "Shen" which means guidance. The gods lower the original Qi, interact with all things, and then lead out all things. "Shen" can also mean thunder and lightning. Connecting the altar to the natural force is the god that communicates with the heaven and the earth.

This is the meaning of the God of Huaxia. The gods are just some kind of existence that guides all things and possesses natural power. All things co-exist with God, in no particular order. And the gods in Europe are gods who created all things, and even the world was created by gods.

The elder was thinking silently, appreciating the culture in Chinese characters, and also considering the future direction.

Xiulot tentatively asked the elder for his opinion, what exactly does "God" mean?

The elder glanced at the young man lightly, simple and clear: "All things obey God, and God bestows all things on the Mexica."

Shulot nodded silently, with no doubt.

Then, Xiu Luote talked about "wu", starting from fighting and stopping. Zhi is a foot, Ge is a weapon, that is, people walk with weapons and conquer to show off. The elder nodded slightly, "Wu" is the foundation of Mexica society. The warrior with a weapon is the symbol of the Mexica.

"My child, what kind of weapon is this?" The elder asked, pointing to "Ge".

Xiuluote thought for a moment: "This is a simplified war stick. When we have enough copper ore, we can make a unified copper weapon. It is not easy to wear and tear, so it only needs a sharp copper blade to attack, and It’s not like many obsidian sharps that are easy to wear on the battle stick.”

The elder meditated quietly. The replacement of stone weapons with copper weapons is the general trend, and the Tarascos are also on the eve of military revolution.

Then there is the word "shot" for bow and arrow, the arrow fired with a bow, and the inch is the rewriting of the arrow. "Cut", a person who cuts down a tree with an axe. "Rong", a person who carries weapons and guards the frontier.

The elder stared at "Rong" for a moment. In the future, the word "Rong" could be engraved on the battle uniforms of jaguar and eagle warriors, and these noble warriors would be responsible for the collection of tribute from vassal city-states in various places.

Then there is "Two trees grow side by side to form a forest, three people gather together to form a crowd, and a bird falling on the riverside becomes a bird. The two follow each other, and the two hands separate things as a break, and the sun shines as a sway. The upper part is small and the lower part is pointed, and the eight The knife divides into divisions, the mountains and valleys form valleys. The sun and the moon shine together to make bright, the colors are rich and colorful, and the beneficial insects in the world are silkworms.”

"My child, what are silkworms?" The elder asked thoughtfully, but with his knowledge, he had no impression.

"Silkworms are leaf-eating insects in the far west that can produce silk cocoons. Silk can be spun into thin silk that is worth more than gold, no, the rarest quetzal bird feathers."

Xiulot explained. In Mexica, which is rich in gold and silver, exquisite feathers are much more precious and are regarded as gifts from the gods, while cheap gold is just excretion of the gods.

far west. The elder gave Xiulot a deep look, but didn't speak.

These ideographic Chinese characters are the most difficult for Xiulot's followers to grasp and understand, because their concepts are simple and their thinking has not yet risen to this level. The elder is the fastest person Xiu Luote has ever seen to learn Chinese characters, and the expressive Chinese characters do not bother him at all.

Finally, there is the largest number of pictophonetic characters. Pictophonetic characters are produced on the basis of pictograms, referring to things, and understanding. Chinese characters start from here, moving from ideographic to phonological. More than 80% of Chinese characters are pictophonetic characters, which actually have unlimited room for expansion.

Pictophonetic characters can be left-shaped, right-sound, money and materials melted; right-shaped and left-sound, ducks cut the neck; upper-shaped and lower-sound, Maojian empty room; Ask Min; the appearance and inner voice prevent bandits from crawling.

If you want to understand pictophonetic characters, you have to study and use them for a long time. After mastering the commonly used rules, you can take the initiative to create pictophonetic characters. It is conceivable that on different inheritance soils, the Mexica people will definitely create unique new phonetic Chinese characters in the future.

The elder finally stopped here. He looked at Shulot quietly, his eyes softened for a moment, and then returned to indifference.

"My child, rest well. Tomorrow is Avit's enthronement ceremony, and I will take you to see the great sacrifice and tribute. After that, it will be your answer."

The elder turned around and left without stopping. He is like the cold current of the Arctic Circle, moving forward all the way, never stagnant, only chill and loneliness.

There was no candle on the last night of the week, and Schlott spent a quiet night without light. The little green snake coiled quietly on his chest, preparing for tomorrow's farewell. That night, Shulot had a dream of making characters, and when the characters were written by the gods, they became the sun and blood.

In the early morning of the next day, melodious and joyful singing floated in the capital city in the lake, like the singing of gods, announcing the change of kings in the world. Shulot woke up from the singing. He shook his head vigorously, vaguely seeing the light and blood of the capital.

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