Aztec Eternals

The sun rises from the mountains and forests in the east, and the dawn pushes away the night, releasing a brilliant golden color. The morning dew flickered among the grass and trees, the birds also woke up, and there were pleasant chirping everywhere.

Shulot was facing the rising sun, shirtless, with the most convenient white loincloth tied around his waist. In front of him was a tank of cold water and a clay pot. Bertard stood silently ahead, looking into his face.

He scooped up a basin of cold water and poured it over his head. The water flowed like a waterfall, flowing through the whole body, the morning wind was instantly cold, and the body was covered with goose bumps, but his face remained unchanged. According to the samurai's request, he must remain firm at all times, without the slightest chill or hesitation.

After a while, when the water droplets were dry, he poured another basin of cold water, and so on, until he finished pouring one basin of water. Bertard smiled.

"Yes, Shirot, you already have some warrior spirit. It's already April, the weather is starting to warm up, and the cold-resistant will training will stop soon. Then in the morning we will change to agility training, and wait until October, the warmer The rainy season has passed, and it will be restored as before.”

Shulot nodded resolutely, his face was frozen and he was temporarily unable to speak.

At this moment, a little red bird was attracted by Shulot, flying around the boy and calling. The bird has an obvious crown on its head, its face is black, it flies very fast, its calls are high-pitched and cheerful, and its tone varies. Sherlot looked familiar.

"Hey, the singing and courting birds are the blessing of the goddess of fertility, Tona Kasivatl. This is a good omen. It seems that the season for all things to multiply has come. Shirott, you have to suppress your desires. Of course, try it once, It is also necessary to complete the transformation from a boy to a man." Seeing the good omen, Bertard was in a good mood and made a rare joke of a man.

Shulot rolled his eyes, his face could finally move. "Bottard, you have been spoiled by Avit. You don't have to show your theological knowledge in front of the priests. Tona Kasivatl is also the **** of harvest, and seeing the song of the cardinals proves that the spring ploughing season has come. ."

This beautiful bird is the North American Cardinal, which is widely distributed in the mountains and forests of Central and North America. April is the season for mating and mating, and there will be extraordinarily beautiful singing. Sherlot is more familiar with its other well-known name, "Angry Birds".

While they were talking, the two of them saw the sky in the east. A thick smoke gradually rose in the distance, and the smoke column was scattered in the sky, not too dense. After a while, another thick smoke slowly rose. Bertard looked at the direction of the smoke column, and nodded relievedly: "It's all in the direction of the village. This is Mirpa's preparation. Set fire to the forest, and spring ploughing is about to begin."

Shulotte nodded. There are two kinds of agriculture in Mexico, chinampa and milpa. The former is a floating field with high yield and high yield in the river and lake terrain, and it is also the foundation of the strong city-state of Mexica. One hectare of chinampa can support at least twenty people, which is equivalent to one and a half people per mu. Xiulote remembered the Ming Dynasty classics he had read, "With Guo's plastered fields, no less than five or six stones can be harvested per acre", and Chinampa was equivalent to the best paddy field in the southern part of the Yangtze River.

In the capital of the empire, Tenochtitlan, the city of lakes, has more than 9,000 hectares of Chinampa gardens, supporting a magnificent city of more than 200,000 people. The giant city has more people than any city in Western Europe in this era, and it is like Kaifeng and Hangzhou in the Celestial Dynasty. On this expedition, Tenochtitlan directly provided five Hikipili, the 40,000-strong royal family directly under the samurai.

Sherlot once followed his father and visited the family's Chinampa garden. This fertile floating field was at the heart of every noble family. But he was not familiar with milpa, the most widespread form of farming in Mesoamerica.

Agriculture is the foundation of an empire, and population is the cornerstone of civilization. Only a civilization with a large core population can truly grow into an empire. Xiulott thought of the tens of millions of cores in the Celestial Empire, tens of millions of Ottoman cores, and tens of millions of French cores... Of course, except for the South Asian subcontinent.

Thinking of this, Shilot decided to go and see Milpa's farming for himself. A samurai never delays in action. He consulted with Bertard, who nodded and went to gather a hundred warrior followers.

Then, Shulot went to find Totec again and told the commander-in-chief that he wanted to go to the Otomi village occupied by the East to "hold a sacrificial ceremony for the spring ploughing". Totec frowned and said in a rough voice, "Be careful of the attack of the Otomi hyenas", and then gave it to the **** of a hundred samurai.

In this way, Shulot put on the coyote priest costume, brought two hundred warriors, and carried ten days' worth of food on his back, and set out for the mountain village in the east.

At this time, the siege had been going on for half a year, and the Mexican army had already started under Ottopan. The siege is not about tens of thousands of troops piling up under the city, but to fully set up camps, deploy troops, control the surrounding points, and cut off the city's food and water sources.

Now the villages around the mountain city have been cleared within two days, and the nearest village to Shirot is two and a half days to the east. The samurai team then went along the grain road, winding eastward.

Xiulott marched all the way, and encountered a grain transport team in the middle. Hundreds of civilians were carrying high grain bags, and the heavy grain bent their spines. of samurai and militiamen. Xiulott shook his head, this kind of food transportation efficiency, at least half of the road was consumed.

After marching in the forest for two days, he did not see the Otomi warriors who attacked, but met the Otomi mountain people who walked out of the forest and surrendered. Today, the nearby villages are under the control of the Mexica warriors, and now the spring ploughing is about to begin. If there is no spring ploughing, there will be no harvest in one year, and then there will be no doubt of death. The mountain people had to give up hiding and come out of the mountain.

As for the villages that can be controlled, the Legion regards it as its own wealth, leaving enough mercy.

When Shilot came to the nearest Otomi mountain village, the smoke was extinguished in front of him, and a forest outside the village had been burnt out, and the peasants took out the stone scorpion from the mud wall of the thatched hut, that is, a simple digging method. Soil sticks, and corn seeds, are getting ready to start spring ploughing.

Seeing the Mexica warriors and the coyote priest in the lead coming, the mountain people of Otomi immediately bowed down, buried their heads deeply, and hid the fear and flames in their eyes. This is very different from the enthusiasm of farmers in the Mexican Valley. The chief of the Mexica militia who was stationed also hurried over and saluted Shulot.

Shulot took everything in his eyes: the empire's rule here is very weak, and only relying on force to maintain obedience. He didn't say much, just informed the militia leader that the purpose of the team was to carry out "the sacrificial ceremony of spring ploughing". The militia leader immediately shouted a few words, and the Otomi people who were lying on the ground raised their heads when they heard the words, finally showing a look of awe and joy.

The priesthood is powerful. The power of theocracy lies in the fact that it is rooted in the human heart, occupies every aspect of life, and is maintained through different rituals.

Shilot came to the center of the village and set up a small altar. He first placed a round stone and sprinkled dirt on it to symbolize the earth. Then put corn, kidney beans, squash, cocoa and chili peppers on the soil, which is a God-given food symbolizing the upcoming planting. Then put green grass around to symbolize growth. Finally, emerald green branches are placed on the periphery to symbolize the final harvest.

This is a sacrificial ceremony to pray for a good harvest. It is the simplest and most accessible to the people. It is widely spread in the villages of Central America.

Then the young priest ascended the altar, and the audience immediately fell silent. The people fell down and waited, and the priest danced and sang.

"I slept under the earth,

I dreamed that there were seven snakes around.

They feast on my old flesh,

Hissing shouted for me to go home.

That's Tona Kacihuatl,

The goddess of fertility and harvest.

"

"The goddess chose me in the flowery garden,

Sunflowers and corn are my ignorant childhood,

Beans and pumpkins are my comfortable youth,

Cocoa is my bitter middle age,

Red peppers are my ripe old age.

Then the flowers bloom and tear my throat,

Then the fruit was huge and solidified my flesh.

"

"The goddess dyes the fruit of me,

Give me old skin,

Life is gone from me,

Come on, eat my sacrifice of flesh and blood.

I will be rooted again in the middle of the earth,

deeply planted,

Have long sleep.

"

"I am the grain of the goddess,

Seeds buried in the soil.

sprout after planting,

grow after germination,

mature after growth,

Sacrifice after maturity,

return after sacrifice,

become seeds again.

"

"This is the endless circle,

I will always emerge for the goddess.

She guards me with the sun,

She kissed me with dew,

Bringing harvest to the earth,

And I'm never alone.

That is the great goddess,

Tona Kacihuatl!

"

Afterwards, the samurai performed solemn etiquette and shouted the god's name "Tona Kasivatl" neatly, while the mountain people lay directly on the ground and kissed the ground below them.

In Shilot's view, this sacrificial poem is very straightforward, treating crops as human beings, which at first sounded very weird.

And after listening to it several times, you will understand that this is actually an easy-to-understand agricultural poem, which is used to guide agricultural production.

The first paragraph is nonsense.

In the second paragraph, the order of planting of crops is sunflower, corn, kidney bean, pumpkin, cocoa and red pepper.

In the third and fourth paragraphs, the growth sequence of crops is: after planting the seeds, wait for a period of time before they germinate. When they sprout and grow up, they will flower, and after flowering, they will bear fruit. After the results, you should eat them immediately, and remember to plant them after eating.

In the last paragraph, the conditions for crops to grow are sunlight and water.

After the sacrifice was over, the attitude of the Otomi people towards Shilot changed visible to the naked eye. The juvenile unlovable was surrounded by hundreds of villagers, and all the corners of the priest's clothes were kissed passionately until he was rescued from the crowd by his personal guard, Bertard.

After the sacrifice is completed, the next step is to plant the seeds. Shilot followed and stepped forward to watch it carefully.

The villagers dug a finger-deep hole in the burned-out land, put a few corn kernels in it, then gathered grass and ash fertilizer around the hole, and buried the planting pit. The spacing of the planting pits is about half a meter horizontally and vertically, and it cannot be planted as densely as later generations of agriculture. The main reason is that the soil fertility is not enough.

This is the eldest sister of the three American staple food sisters, corn.

The subsequent planting process was entirely dependent on the village elders talking and gesturing, while Shulot asked while listening.

After a few weeks, when the corn has grown to a dozen centimeters, you can plant kidney beans. This is the second of the three sisters. The beans must be planted next to the corn, and several beans surround a corn.

Then in a week, you can plant pumpkins. This is the youngest of three sisters. Plant one every two or three meters, because the pumpkin will spread out on the ground.

Shirout thought carefully and recalled the common sense of the past. In the process, the corn goes straight up, providing the stalks on which the soybeans climb. Beans surround the corn, fixing nitrogen to make up for soil fertility. And the squash is spread among the corn and beans to remove weeds from the field.

The three formed a perfect symbiotic and mutual aid relationship, which did not require much human management, and also dealt with the current situation in Central America where there were only simple stone tools.

It's April, and it takes four months for the corn to ripen and harvest in August. The kidney beans are planted later and mature in four months, and are harvested in September. Pumpkins only take more than two months and are harvested in July. After the harvest in July, depending on the situation, another season of kidney beans will be planted at the end of the year, not for yield, but to supplement soil fertility.

From a nutritional point of view, corn is carbohydrates, kidney beans are protein, and pumpkin has both, just to maintain the daily survival of civilians. As for sunflowers, cocoa, and chili peppers, the village elders said that these are things that city-state people like, and that they are not used in the village.

Xiulote calculated it, that is, sowing in April and May, and harvesting in July, August, and September. It is difficult for each city-state to mobilize militia from April to September, and it will not be easy to fight. And the Mexican city-state alliance, which has enough Chinampa, can make a big move at this time, catch the enemy by surprise, and destroy the opponent's agricultural production by the way.

In general, Milpa started by setting fire to the forest, planted corn, kidney beans, and pumpkin sisters in turn, and ended with one to three years of fallow. Yields range from one-fifth to one-seventh that of chinampa. UU Reading www.uukanshu.com

According to the water and fertilizer, Shilote calculated that each hectare of Milpa can support three to five people, that is, three to five acres of land can support one person. Slightly lower than the output of dry fields in the north of the Ming Dynasty at this time, there was no advanced agricultural technology in China, and it only relied on the high yield of corn and pumpkin. In the barren mountains, the mountain people also plant some sweet potatoes as supplementary food.

Looking at the Otomi villagers who were busy in the fields, and pondering the data just calculated, Shilot suddenly realized that the total population of Central America might far exceed his expectations.

Even if the two-year fallow is calculated, according to the supply of food, the density of most of the Central American population clusters will not be lower than one-third of the population density in the northern part of the Celestial Dynasty in this era. In the Mexican Valley, which has countless chinampas and does not need to be fallow, the population density will be close to the Jiangnan of the Celestial Dynasty, that is, the "Nanzhili" in Central America.

Agriculture determines population, and population determines the potential of a country. This is the reason why the Mexican states can easily pull out hundreds of thousands of troops to fight.

And in the whole of Mexico, from the northernmost Chichimec to the southernmost Zapotec, from the westernmost Tsk to the easternmost Nahua, and the most central Mexica, This is a civilized area with a population of at least 15 million identified by later generations, and Shilot believes that it has a population of more than 20 million. It has the world's most productive corn, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and potatoes that are gradually spreading.

Shulot looked at the fields in the distance, and there was golden hope in the fields. He looked at the seeds that had not yet sprouted, and that was the civilization that was bred.

"What does the tens of millions of people in the Stone Age mean?" Shilot thought, then he smiled.

"This will be another Celestial Dynasty, a Celestial Empire with a core population of tens of millions!"

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