![]() Based on the literature review and ethnological information, a descriptive analysis of the pictograms that appear on pages 24 and 25 of the Yuta Tnoho codex is presented, for which a careful review of the facsimile version of said codex published by Adelhofer (1963) was also conducted.Īmong the few surviving stories related to the creation of the universe that were conceived in the pre-Hispanic era is the Mixtec story in the so-called Codex Yuta Tnoho ( Figure 1) or Vindobonensis Mexicanus I ( Table 1). This activity was facilitated by the fact that the first author is a native speaker of Mixtec language. Unstructured interviews were conducted in Mixtec communities of Oaxaca, Mexico, which allowed us to clarify various concepts related to the conception that still survives in this ethnic group. This review was conducted in several digital databases at the University of Sheffield, England, and Colegio de Postgraduados, Mexico, which included, among others, the Web of Science, Scopus and the University of Sheffield library as well as the British Library in London, England. In this article, we describe one of the most fascinating Mesoamerican stories, which survived countless vicissitudes over the centuries and which relates to the conception of the birth of the sun among the “na savi” (literally "the people of the rain"), also known as Mixtecs, and its relationship with entheogenic fungi.Īn exhaustive bibliographic review of the publications related to studies of the pre-Hispanic Mixtec codex “Yuta Tnoho” or “Vindobonensis Mexicanus I” was carried out. Florescano (1997) mentioned that both in the Náhuatl myth and in the Popol Vuh, the supreme act of creation is not the appearance of human beings or cultivated plants but the birth of the Sun, the creative power that sets in motion the universe, which provides movement and warmth in the cosmos, initiates the passing of time and illuminates a new era in the world. In both accounts, the creation of human beings is preceded by a battle between celestial deities - the divine twins in the Mayan story, and the god Quetzalcoatl and the gods of the underworld in the Nahua tale. Similarly to the Popol Vuh, which recounts that the corn god was the progenitor of the cosmos and of human beings, the Nahua texts relate that the god Quetzalcoatl descended to the underworld, rescued the bones of ancient humanity and created new human beings from them. In the Mesoamerican area, the following stand out: i) the story of the creation of the world according to the Maya written in the Popol Vuh ( Scherzer, 1857 Recinos, 1960 Christenson, 2003 Krickeberg, 2012) and ii) the story of the fifth Sun, relating the creation of the universe according to the Nahuas ( Leyenda de los Soles, 1558 Jonghe, 1905 Moreno de los Arcos, 1967 Garza, 1983 León-Portilla, 2006). Throughout the history of humanity there have been multiple symbolic narratives of how the world began and how the first human beings inhabited it. ![]() Paradoxically, one of the most interesting attributes of mushrooms, namely its sacred link with the creation of the universe, has been poorly studied. Mushrooms are also of enormous importance ceremonially ( Schultes and Hoffman, 2000 Guzmán, 2008) as well as in the creation of artisanal goods and for ludic use ( Garibay Orijel et al., 2006 Ruan-Soto et al., 2009, Hernández-Santiago et al., 2016). In Mexico, more than 200 species of mushrooms used as medicine have been reported ( Bautista-González, 2013). A significant number of these fungi have bioactive compounds, which include antioxidant, anticancer, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antiviral metabolites ( Pérez-Moreno and Martínez-Reyes, 2014). Additionally, Mexico is currently one of the most important reservoirs of edible wild mushrooms internationally with over 450 species consumed, of which around half are sold in the markets in the centre and southeast of the country ( Pérez-Moreno et al., 2008 Pérez-Moreno et al., 2010 Pérez-Moreno and Martínez-Reyes, 2014). For example, over five thousand common names are known for edible wild fungi in different Mexican languages ( Guzmán, 1997). This can be verified through archaeological and linguistic evidences, pre-Hispanic codices and Mesoamerican colonial writings. What is known with certainty is that at the beginning of the 16th century, when the Spaniards arrived, the knowledge of wild mushrooms was widespread, diverse and extremely detailed. Although we do not known when they first started to be consumed, it is possible to conjecture that it began with the first groups of hunter-gatherers that inhabited the country, arriving at least 13,000 years ago from the Beringia region in Northeast Asia ( Balter, 2014 Chatters et al., 2014). ![]() Mushrooms are a characteristic element of Mexican culture. ![]()
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