Aztec music: Did you mean...?

The Sun Stone (or The Calendar Stone), Aztec, reign of Moctezuma II (1502-20), discovered in 1790 at the southeastern edge of the Plaza Mayor (Zocalo) in Mexico City, stone (unfinished), 358 cm diameter x 98 cm depth (Museo Nacional de...

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was an Italian composer best known for his operas La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. Puccini drew inspiration from a wide range of literary sources, and his late Romantic music with its immortal...

An illustration from the Florentine Codex depicting Aztecs storing maize.

Atlalli, ink on parchment, unknown artist, included in the Florentine Codex by Bernardino de Sahagún, Mexico, 1577. A farmer in Mexico cultivates irrigated land. Water has a swirling texture while the land is sparsely decorated with wisps...

Turquoise was a highly-prized material in ancient Mesoamerica, perhaps the most valued of all materials for sacred and decorative art objects such as masks, jewellery, and the costumes of rulers and high priests. Turquoise was acquired through...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/music-and-creativity-in-ancient-greece-tim-hansen You think you love music? You have nothing on the Ancient Greek obsession. Every aspect of Greek life was punctuated by song: history, poetry...

Stone skulls from the Templo Mayor in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. They represent the tzompantli or skull racks where the heads of sacrificial victims were placed.

An Aztec spouted jug. Mexico, 1450-1521 CE. (St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri)

Professor Stefan Hagel performing Ancient Greek Music at palaestra et odeum - Lund - Sweden. Instruments: Greek Kithara & Aulos

The Tarascan civilization (aka the Purépecha, after their language) dominated western Mexico and built an empire that would bring it into direct conflict with that other great Mesoamerican civilization of the Post-classic period, the Aztecs...