Coahuila

[Joanna M. Sanchez]

I wonder why such flight phenomena would be limited to serpents if an
hallucination?  Might it be true that desert snakes develop means of
traversing the hot landscape with a minimum of bodily contact-  seeming to
'fly' as they hurl themselves along?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Juan Alvarez Cuauhtemoc" <tonantzn at CHORUS.NET>
To: <NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 10:08 AM
Subject: Re: Coahuila


> 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?
> >
>

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