Coahuila

[Juan Alvarez Cuauhtemoc]

Flying Serpent?  Anthony Appleyard's take on "Flying Serpent" may not be so
farfetched.  But I doubt that this notion of a "Flying Serpent" was a result
of the Sonora desert heat and hallucinations caused by dehydration.  Perhaps
it is more related to the Mesoamerican mythological matrix of the "Feathered
Serpent."  Would it be that a "Flying Serpent" may have been envisioned as
possessing "Feathers" that made it fly?  As to Herodotus, what prompted him
to ascribe "flying snakes" to the Arabian desert but nowhere else?  Surely
some other explanation is at work here.


----- Original Message -----
From: "ANTHONY APPLEYARD" <a.appleyard at BTINTERNET.COM>
To: <NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: Coahuila


> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, DARKHORSE wrote:
>> The way I gathered, Teca(s) means "People" Correct?
>> Thus "COAHUILTECANS" means "People of the Flying Serpent?"
>
> Coahuila is largely desert, like nearby Sonora. In the deserts of the
> Middle East, heat delirium hallucinations caused by dehydration,
> including seeing flying snakes, were so frequent down the millennia
> that some people believed that flying snakes existed: thus even the
> Greek historian Herodotus wrote "Snakes occur everywhere, but flying
> snakes in the desert of Arabia only.". Could travellers in Coahuila
> have hallucinated flying snakes for the same reason?
>