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. While searching, the blink of an eye passed.

The next seven days were fast and slow.

Whenever Shulot was alone, it was a long and difficult night. In the dim candlelight, he pondered over the frescoes in the Snake House. The four walls are all descriptions of the Feathered Serpent God, both human and snake. He wanders between villages and towns and is worshipped by mortals.

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 It's just that the position of the original sun in mythology has been replaced by a newly depicted Patronus.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

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

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

The young man's heart is peaceful and kind, just like when the moon falls into the fourth house, he allows the little green snake to move around indiscriminately. He just rejected the gift brought back by the little green snake: a beautiful Mexican butterflyfish, bitten to death, without poison.

Every time the elder arrives, it means the beginning of the day, and the accompanying captain of the guard will leave a new candle. The little green snake will escape in advance and go to the underground waterway to hunt for food. With the wooden board with pictographs and Chinese characters in hand, Xiulote explained to the elder word by word. The principles here are the pictograms, meanings, comprehensions, and phonograms in the Six Books.

"Single body is a text, and a combination is a word." The first characters are all pictographic single characters, which are used to represent all things in this world and can usually be observed by the naked eye. In fact, these characters should be simply called "wen". Oracle and Mexica's graphic texts are at this stage.

For example, it is "mountains, rocks and fields, flowers, birds, fish and insects, sun, moon and fire, human eyes, brothers and feet..." and so on. These have already been referred to in the original graphic texts of the Mexicans, and there are not many obstacles to simplifying them into more concise pictographic single characters.

The elder has a very fast understanding of pictographic single characters. These concepts have long been ingrained in his mind, and now they have only been transformed into a more concise form.

Of course, the understanding of some words will vary according to culture. For example, the pictogram of "husband" is an adult man with a hairpin, while in the Mexica's understanding, it is an adult warrior with feathers. The pictogram of "woman" is a woman kneeling with bent legs, representing a woman's subordinate position. In the Mexica culture where women generally have the right to inherit and even serve as tribal leaders, subordination is abandoned and transformed into the meaning of home.

And some pictographic things that did not appear, such as "cow, horse and sheep carriage", are temporarily impossible to explain. Shilot can only be generally described as a large quadruped that can be domesticated, and a vehicle pulled by quadrupeds. The elder was quite interested in the fast chariots and horses described by Shulot.

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 is generated is the most important factor restricting the expansion of the classical military empire, not just the spatial distance. The communication efficiency between the ruling center and the frontier determines the heart-to-heart of the local residents, and also determines the stability of the frontier rule.

The Mexicans often conquered rival city-states. In the farthest reaches of the south, they even conquered nearly a thousand kilometers and came to the border of the Yucatan rainforest. However, because of the long communication time and extremely low transportation capacity, these surrendered city-states had to give up the direct subordinates of Mexica, but became disloyal vassals who repeatedly rebelled.

And every distant expedition, the number of troops that can be deployed is very limited, because the food transportation capacity of manpower is too low. The Otomi war was thus lost.

Before the invention of railway technology, the most efficient communication was water transportation and sea transportation. So the Roman Empire controlled the perimeter of the Mediterranean with rapid communication, while the Celestial Empire was obsessed with digging canals for efficient transportation.

"My child. In the boundless grasslands of the far north, there is a huge quadruped beast galloping fast. Here are its horns. Do you think we can domesticate it?"

The elder looked at Shiloh calmly. The sculpted samurai behind him handed over a curved horn. Sherlot distinguished carefully, and then blew a low "woo" sound, which should be the North American bison.

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

If you want to tame the bison, in fact, as long as you catch enough young, you will always succeed. But taming just gets the bison accustomed to living with people. Domestication is the ability to use the bison to pull carts or plow fields, so that wild animals are accustomed to working for humans. This step requires extremely high time and labor costs.

Thirty years later, Spanish colonists will bring European cattle to Cuba for the first time. But if he wanted to domesticate the American bison within thirty years, Shirault felt that he was not very sure.

The elder nodded slightly. Soon, a messenger was called, the elder gave a few simple instructions, and the messenger hurried away. Beginning this year, "giant horned four-legged beast cubs" have been added to the tributes of the northern Vasteks, with a quantity of forty, and feather clothing tributes are reduced.

"Seeing and seeing, and seeing and seeing". After the pictographic monogram, it is the word for matter. Refers to things is the first step from the development of pictograms to ideograms, expressing a certain partial or relative concept. The method is to add abstract signs and symbols to the corresponding parts of the pictograph to indicate the local scope of the expression.

It usually takes thousands of years to develop from pictograph to ideogram, and the original graphic text of Mexica is only on the edge of ideogram.

Refers to the word can be simply understood as a single abstract symbolic word, the most representative of the three words "上", "中", "下". Up, down and up. It is a height, and it is also a vertical action, and it refers to the noble. Down, up and down. In the middle, it is impartiality.

Other zhishi characters include "ben, zhu, and mo", that is, adding zhishi symbols to the root, trunk and top of the "wood". "Yue" is marked with dashes on the mouth, representing the spoken voice. It is worth mentioning that the meaning of the King of Mexica is "talking about people", and its symbol is similar to that, which is a gust of wind or cloud drawn on the mouth of the character.

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 comprehension character, which is composed of two or more single characters to express a comprehensive meaning. Knowing words can express many abstract meanings and have a strong function of character creation. Knowing Chinese characters integrates the concept of Chinese culture and is a unique understanding of the essence of things.

Shilot first spoke the word "God" to the elder. The left side is the "Show" representing the altar, and the right side is the "Shen" that guides. The gods send down the original Qi, which is related to all things, and then guides them out. "Shen" can also mean thunder and lightning. Connecting the altar with natural forces is the **** who communicates with heaven and earth.

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

The elder pondered silently, experienced the culture in Chinese characters, and also considered the future direction.

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

The elder gave the young man a light glance, simple and clear: "All things obey God, and God bestows all things on the Mexicans."

Shulot nodded silently, sure.

Then, when Scholot talked about "wu", he started from Ge and stopped. Zhi is the foot, Ge is the weapon, that is, people walk with weapons, conquer and show off. The elder nodded slightly, "Wu" is the foundation of Mexica society. The warrior with arms is the symbol of the Mexica.

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

Shilote thought for a moment: "This is a simplified battle stick. When we have enough copper ore, we can make a unified copper weapon. It is not easy to wear, so only a sharp copper blade is needed to attack, and Unlike the many obsidian sharps that wear and tear on the stick."

The old man pondered quietly. The general trend is that bronze weapons will replace stone weapons, and the Tarrascos are also on the eve of military change.

Then there is the word "shooting" for bows and arrows, and the arrows fired by bows are rewritten from inch to arrow. "Chopping", someone who chops down a tree with an axe. "Rong", a person who guards the frontier with weapons.

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

Then there is "Two trees grow together to form a forest, three people gather together to form a crowd, and birds that fall by the river become a giant. The two follow each other as followers, divide things with both hands, and the sun shines. The knife is divided into parts, the valleys in the mountains are the valleys. The sun and the moon are bright, the colors are rich, and the beneficial insects in the world are silkworms..."

"My child, what is a silkworm?" The elder asked thoughtfully. With his knowledge, he had no impression.

"Silkworms are leaf-eating insects in the far west. They can grow silk cocoons. Silk can be spun into light and thin silk, which is cheaper than gold, no, the rarest quetzal feather."

Sherlot explained. In Mexica, which is rich in gold and silver, fine feathers are much more precious and are regarded as a gift from the gods, while cheap gold is just the excretion of the gods.

Far West. The elder took a deep look at Shulot and said nothing.

These ideographic Chinese characters are the most difficult for the samurai to grasp and understand, because their concepts are simple, and their thinking has not yet risen to this level. The elder was the fastest person who learned Chinese characters in the world, and the ideographic Chinese characters did not bother him.

Finally, there are the most numerous phonetic characters. Pictophonetic characters are produced on the basis of pictographic, referring to things, and understanding, and Chinese characters start from here, moving from ideographic to phonetic. More than 80% of Chinese characters are phonetic characters, which actually have infinite room for expansion.

The phonetic characters can be left-shaped and right-sound, and the money material melts; Ask Fujian; external appearance and internal sound, warding off bandits and persevering.

If you want to understand phonetic 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 phonetic characters. It is conceivable that on different inheritance soils, the Mexicans will definitely create unique new phonetic Chinese characters in the future.

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

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

The elder turned and walked away, still without pausing. He is like the cold current of the Arctic Circle, moving all the way, never stagnant, only chills and loneliness.

On the last night of the seven days, there were no candles, and Sherlot spent a dark and quiet night. The little green snake was quietly coiled on his chest, preparing to say goodbye tomorrow. That night, Shilot had a dream of creating a character, and when the divine character was written, it became the sun and blood.

Early the next morning, the melodious and joyful singing fluttered in the capital city in the middle of the lake, like the chanting of a god, announcing the replacement of the human king. Sherlot woke up from the singing. He shook his head laboriously, and vaguely saw the bright and **** capital.