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A battle scene from episode two of Heroes and Villains, a docu-drama about Hernán Cortés (Image BBC Photo Library).

Clash of civilisations

How the ancient and the modern collided in an historical epoch that still resonates today…

In a globalised post 9/11 world, riddled with fears of a clash of cultures and civilisations, religious fanaticism and killing in the name of religion, there are echoes through history for Leicester academic Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock.

Above: Dr Pennock with the great Aztec ‘Sun Stone’ at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City (Image © Caroline Dodds Pennock).

Research into an ancient civilisation by Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock, of the School of Historical Studies, provides remarkable parallels with contemporary issues.

Her study into the Aztecs of Central America has shed new light on a people infamous for their use of religious violence – and the effects of their bloody confrontation with European invaders.

Her work is to be published in a new book, Bonds of Blood, and Dr Pennock was also a consultant on an episode of a major BBC docu-drama series which focused on the conquest of the Aztecs by the Spanish conquistadors.

Perceptions of Aztec society are coloured by their history of human sacrifice and spectacular religious violence says Dr Pennock – at a cost to interpretations of their culture: “The distinctively bloody nature of their society has tempted history to place them beyond the norms of human social behaviour, accounting for their brutal rituals by removing them from the expectations of civilization.

“But although their acquiescence in such spectacular bloodshed is certainly unusual, the Aztecs were not dehumanized by the horrors of their culture. Pity, sorrow, love, grief, and joy were all deeply felt and powerfully expressed.

“This was a culture of contradictions and complications, dramatically violent and passionately religious, but in amongst the grand ritual we can find the personal and private, the minutiae of life which make the world of these extraordinary people instantly familiar.”

Above: Pre-Aztec temple complex at Teotihuacan: Pyramid of the Sun (background) seen from the Pyramid of the Moon. The middle road is known as the ‘Avenue of the Dead’. (Image © Caroline Dodds Pennock).

But looking back through the spectrum of time, it appears to be a world that is extraordinary – advanced yet savage – a view that is reinforced by popular cultural representations.

For example, Mel Gibson’s 2006 blockbuster film about the Maya, Apocalypto, provoked a storm of criticism from indigenous groups and scholars who claimed that it conveyed ‘one-sided and clearly exploitative messages about the indigenous peoples of the New World’.

Haunted by the spectre of human sacrifice, as bloody priests and brutal warriors, the Aztecs have peopled the pages of history, myth and fiction, their spectacular violence dominating perceptions of their culture and casting a veil over their unique way of life.

Dr Pennock said: “My work integrates a fresh interpretation of gender with an innovative study of the everyday life of the Aztecs. Despite their violent bloodshed, the Aztecs were a compassionate and expressive people who lived and worked in cooperative, gendered partnership.”

“My research is based principally in the early colonial-alphabetic sources (the great texts produced in the period immediately following the Spanish conquest). Due to fears of Eurocentrism and a belief that colonial sources give only a narrative of colonial concerns (whatever their apparent subject), these texts have increasingly fallen out of favour in recent years and my work takes them as a starting point for a new interpretation of Aztec life.

Her research has helped to reinvest the Aztecs with a humanity frequently denied to them. Her studies explore human sacrifice as a comprehensible element of life and existence and feed into her teaching at Leicester.

“I think that the research I am doing is particularly unusual in the British context, in which Mexican and Spanish American history rarely form part of mainstream academic programmes. I now teach a third-year option on the encounter between Europe and America, for example, and have incorporated greater consideration of the so-called ‘discovery’ of the New World more explicitly into the first-year core module which I am coordinating this year.

“The early modern Atlantic was the ground upon which our modern global society was created, and is highly relevant to understanding both our history and the modern multicultural world in which we live. In particular, the encounter between the Aztecs and the Spanish is one of the great cultural meetings of history. Both societies were highly civilized, but their outlooks on the world were strikingly different and their clash exemplifies the struggle over cultural values which we frequently see today in very different contexts.

“For an historian, although this encounter took place only five hundred years ago, it is also fascinating as a meeting between what people would probably – if debatably – consider an ‘ancient’ society and a ‘modern’ society.”

Spanish Legacy

Dr Pennock acted as an academic consultant on an episode of a BBC docu-drama series, Heroes and Villains, which recounted the life of one of the greatest warriors in history, Cortés.

The Spanish captain, who led the conquistadors against the might of the Aztec empire, was famed as a great warrior. But this fame often belied the truth of his conquering assault on the New World, said Dr Pennock.

In fact it was a combination of military might and strategy, disease, force of personality and luck that played a part in his victory in Mexico.

Dr Pennock said ‘germ warfare’ “profoundly impacted on the New World as a whole, as indigenous populations, lacking any natural resistance, were devastated by European diseases”.

Dr Pennock also highlights how conquests of another sort have left a legacy to this day in Mexico – Cortés fathered a child with his indigenous translator and she is seen alternately as the mother of the ‘mestizo’ (people of mixed blood) nation and the ultimate traitor to her people.

Dr Pennock concludes: “Colonialism cannot be justified by the doubtful measure of progress but, for better or worse, conquistadors helped to create the global world in which we live. Transatlantic links drove forward the exchange of goods, information and people, beginning the process of conquest and colonisation which created our modern multicultural world.”

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2008 Edition of LE1 magazine, which you can view online by clicking here .