dark/light skin color differences in pre- and post-conquest Mexico

[David Becraft]

Hello Listeros,

Didn't Priests commonly and ritually bathe twice a day?  My understanding is that bathing was not only a sanitary practice, it was also a ritual one.  Also, Tenoch is depicted as a very dark man in contrast to the other founders of Mexico-Tenochtitlan; is there any evidence that Tenoch was a Priest?  I don't recall the source, so I apologize beforehand, but I remember that possibly status was given to darker skinned people.

Pancho

----------------------------------------
> From: ced22 at leicester.ac.uk
> To: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:18:09 +0100
> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] dark/light skin color differences in pre-	and	post-conquest Mexico
> 
> Further to Kier's email, Diaz also talks about the hair being matted. He says 'Their hair was very long and so tangled that it could not have been parted unless they had cut it first. Moreover, it was all clotted with the blood which oozed from their ears, for they had offered them as a sacrifice that day.' (p.173 in the Penguin edition) I have never seen any mention of the black of the priests being related to blood on the skin, however. And if I remember rightly there are a number of mentions of them specifically being 'painted' black. (With soot I think?) It is true that blood goes blackish when dry and as the priests didn't wash then it's not impossible. I don't remember ever having seen a reference to this, however.
> 
> Caroline
> --------------
> Dr. Caroline Dodds
> Lecturer in Early Modern History
> School of Historical Studies
> University of Leicester
> University Road
> Leicester
> LE1 7RH
> 
> email: ced22 at le.ac.uk
> http://www.le.ac.uk/history/people/ced22.html
> 
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