Aztec music: Did you mean...?

A page of sheet music for the Christmas carol The Holly and the Ivy. From a 1926 issue of the Radio Times magazine.

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...

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...

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...

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)

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...

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...

The lighting of fires during the Aztec New Fire Ceremony of 1507, a ritual held every 52 years to ensure the continuation of the Sun. The priests carry fire bundles and wear turquoise masks in imitation of the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli...