Tamoanchan

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Tamoanchan is a mythical location of origin known to the Mesoamerican cultures of the central Mexican region in the Late Postclassic period. In the mythological traditions and creation accounts of Late Postclassic peoples such as the Aztec, Tamoanchan was conceived as a paradise where the gods created the first of the present human race^[1] out of sacrificed blood and ground human bones which had been stolen from the Underworld of Mictlan.

When depicted in Aztec codices Tamoanchan is frequently associated with the trecena 1 Calli in the Aztec calendar. The deity Itzpapalotl, one of the main tzitzimime figures ("star demons"), commonly presides over this trecena, and by extension Tamoanchan is often considered as part of her dominion.^[2]

The word tamoanchan does not actually come from the Nahuatl languages, but is instead demonstrated to have its roots in Mayan etymology, with a meaning which could be glossed as "place of the misty sky", or similar. Descriptions of Tamoanchan appearing in the Florentine Codex indicate that the Postclassic Nahuas thought of it being located in the humid lowlands region of the Gulf Coast of Mexico, inhabited by the Huastec Maya people.^[3]

The toponymic glyph used for Tamoanchan in the codices depicts a cleft tree, flowering and emitting blood; the significance of these motifs is uncertain.

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^ Mesoamerican mythologies and creation accounts in general suppose that there had been worlds previous to this one, which the gods had made and destroyed. The number of such previous worlds varies from tradition to tradition; a common conception among Late Postclassic central Mexican peoples held that there had been four rounds of creation previous to the current one. See Miller and Taube (1993), pp.68–71.
^ See Miller and Taube (1993), pp.100, 160.
^ Miller and Taube (1993), p.160.