The warm monsoon carries moist water vapor and rises from the tranquil Caribbean Sea.
It passes through the still wild islands, through the ferocious rainforests, through the Huastec plains, and then rises along the Mexican plateau, caressing the prosperous Mexica Valley, and then turns into a gentle drizzle.
The drizzle floated across the sky and fields, over the mountains and forests, past the fortified mountain city of the Otomi people, and to the camp of the Mexica warriors in the mountains.
Then it fell gently and wet the curtains of a wooden house. The water droplets traced soft arcs and caught the eyes of a young man.
The young man raised his pen and meditated, then drew a water icon, which was five curved blue lines, and then wrote the word "water" below.
Young Shulot looked at the wooden board in front of him, which was covered with blue graphics and text. The graphics and text were divided into two lines. The first line was various pictograms similar to oracle bone inscriptions, and the second line was traditional Chinese characters.
Seeing that the wooden board was full of writing, he took the wooden board off the earthen platform in front of him and placed it in the neatly arranged pile of wooden boards next to it.
Then, he picked up the hair brush and dipped it in indigo Mayan blue ink. Before he started thinking hard, he saw that there was not much ink left.
He summoned Bertard and asked him to go to the priests' room and get some more Mayan blue dye. If it was not enough, he would mix some on the spot using wild green tree leaves and palygorskite clay.
After Bertard left, Shulot sighed leisurely. He felt that all his wisdom had been exhausted and he needed to take a break and regain his energy.
It had been two weeks since the siege of the city, and he finally had some free time. Shulot began to do a long-planned and extremely important task: "creating characters."
In Xiulote's eyes, the Aztecs, and even Mesoamerica as a whole, were still in the age of inheritance of pictographic records, and the germination of hieroglyphs had just emerged. Just like the pictographic "war" he had learned from his father, a shield and
A stick, and "death", a corpse wrapped in a white cloth.
These graphic characters are still in the bud of hieroglyphics, and are much more primitive than the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin and Shang Dynasties that are complete with the "Six Books". They are estimated to be on the same level as the legendary Xia seal scripts of the Xia Dynasty. From this, it can also be speculated that the ancestors of the Americas learned from Europe
When the subcontinent separated, it should have been in a prehistoric era without the germ of writing.
According to Xiulote's experience, the Aztec pictorial "words" were too random at this time, and the writing and interpretation changed according to the user's wishes. The power of culture was firmly locked in the hands of the priests.
Writing is the cornerstone of a country, and culture is the foundation of a country.
As for the ambitious Shulot, he could not tolerate the status quo of the empire without writing, so he was ready to make up for this flaw himself.
At first, Shulot was ambitious and planned to create his own text system by imitating myths and legends. However, this idea only appeared for ten minutes before he got stuck on the first text.
Later, Shulot turned to the writing system he was most familiar with and loved: Chinese.
He thought for a long time in a divergent way, and thought that a Mexica empire using Chinese characters would also be very good. "The Chinese Aztec dynasty unified the Americas." Just thinking about it made him feel excited.
Next, he encountered a problem: "The development of writing does not happen overnight."
For the Mexica people who were in the early stages of civilization, it was impossible to use simplified Chinese characters right away. A Mexica warrior could understand the "yellow sky and earth", but he had not yet learned the "primordial universe" and could not see the "sun".
"Yue Ying Zang" does not understand "Chen Su Lie Zhang". For him, abstract words such as "science", "economy" and "culture" have no basis for establishing concepts.
Chinese characters themselves represent a kind of understanding of the world and society. It comes from pictograms and the simplest perception of the world. After different eras, with the integration of ideas and the evolution of culture, it has evolved from
The image becomes abstract. Every interpretation of Shuowen Jiezi is a kind of understanding of the world by the ancestors.
Xiulote did not want to simply introduce Chinese characters as a tool, like Spanish in Mexico in later generations. What he wanted to integrate was the mature Chinese culture that relied on characters. In this way, on the one hand, it would accelerate the development of the entire Aztec civilization, and on the other hand, it would
On the one hand, it can also neutralize the overly bloody culture of human sacrifice.
Of course, this kind of character creation does not mean completely abandoning the native graphics and the native Nahua language. In fact, this is impossible to happen. Xiulote's character creation is just a way to speed up the formation of characters.
, and it is impossible to change the habits of an ethnic group. Because, after all, those who use words are the original people!
Even New Spain, which was bloody conquered by the colonists and forcibly assimilated into Spanish for hundreds of years, used Spanish with a large number of Nahua spellings. Now that hieroglyphics are used, the priests of the Alliance will also introduce native words.
Graphic and text symbols are localized to suit customs.
What he did was to introduce the complete structure of Chinese characters as bones, plus the simplified kana of local graphics, and then introduce the pictophonetic characters of Nahuatl, thus saving thousands of years of evolutionary time. This move is similar to Goryeo's
Proverbs, Fusang's kana, Vietnam's Nom, and Xixia's Tibetan scripts are all the same. They are all a blend of Chinese and localization. After the mature writing is established, you can rely on it to carry out political, religious, and political alliances as soon as possible.
cultural reform.
"In King Wen's education office, the wandering girl looks like a prince. She doesn't dare to be too hasty, and stands there with her crown and tassel straightened."
Shulot recited a few lines of poetry, and then he felt that it was too shameful to compare himself to King Wen and the warriors to wandering girls, so he smiled and continued to meditate.
Now, Shulot already has a specific text template in his hands: traditional Chinese characters.
What he wants to do is to use the semi-image traditional Chinese characters as a basis, and then infer the more vivid oracle bone inscriptions, seal scripts, or made-up pictographs to build a specific thing - the image of the oracle bone inscriptions/seal script - the logical process of the semi-image traditional Chinese characters.
.Finally, the abstract conceptual meaning is derived from the semi-image traditional Chinese characters.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! After a while, Hulot heard someone lifting the curtain of the door. He raised his head and saw Bertard entering the house with dye in a clay pot.
, followed by Avitt, whom I hadn’t seen for a few days.
"Xulot, what have you been busy with lately?"
As soon as he entered the door, Avitt said with a smile.
"There have been many banquets in the camp these days, but I haven't seen you show up."
"The banquet is just to eat some roasted deer and drink some tequila. The supplies are tight recently, and there isn't much delicious food."
Shulot smiled, his eyes sparkling.
"I'm busy with a big thing recently, Avitt. Please help me if you have time."
Afterwards, the two of them sat cross-legged on the edge of the earth platform, with a deerskin blanket spread on the ground.
"Look at these boards."
Shulot pointed to the pile at his feet.
"What's this?"
Avitt looked at the two lines of pictures and text on the wooden board and immediately raised his eyebrows.
"This is text! The top line is a variety of graphics, many of which we have learned on the sacrificial plate. The bottom line of text is a summary of the meaning of the graphics. This type of text has a fixed writing form and a structure to construct the text.
You can guess the meaning of the words based on the graphics."
Avitt became interested and began to study it carefully.
"This piece of wood has a row of images on it: a person, an eye, a mountain, a river, a tree, two trees, three trees, and a fish?"
Shulot took a look and saw the following line: "People, eyes, mountains, water, trees, forests, forests, fish."
"Yes, the characters below are a writing standard and condensation of the meaning of the pictogram above. You see, one character "木" means a tree, two characters "木" means a large forest, and three characters "木" means the one behind us.
Forest. The superposition of the word "wood" is not a number of two or three, but an expansion of the meaning of a large space."
"Then on this piece of wood, the image is of a person holding a round object, a river with land in the middle, a tree with fruits, an eye with hair, and a person looking up at the sky? These images are
Extended from the previous board?"
"That's right, so the following text is also related to the previous one. They are melon, continent, fruit, eyebrow, and sky. Melon comes from the character for human, continent comes from the character for water, fruit comes from the character for wood, and eyebrow comes from the character for eye.
Come, heaven also comes from humans."
"Avit, look at this one again. The ones that grow on the ground and have round fruits are 'beans'; the beans that grow lushly and have many seedlings and leaves are 'feng', which means a good harvest; the skull's
The shape is the 'bone' in our body. The word 'feng' derives from harvest, which means big and full. 'bone' and 'feng' combined mean to expand the bones into big and full, which is your body.
,'body'..."
"And this one, you see one line is 'one', two lines is 'two', three lines is 'three', a short line plus a long line is 'up', and a long line plus a short line is 'down'.
..”
The two chatted more and more passionately, until nightfall was approaching and the room became dim.
"Xulot, these words are very interesting. At the beginning, they were things that could be seen and touched. Then gradually they were combined and turned into something that was invisible and intangible. However, there is no need for these words.
I know something, and looking at the words you said, I can have some feeling of understanding."
"That's because you're too smart."
Shulot laughed and asked.
"What do you think of these words?"
"The testimony of the Lord God is very good!"
Avitt praised him happily and sincerely.
"How about I tell you the meaning of the words, and then you draw the corresponding shapes?"
Shulot followed the temptation and wanted to find a reliable labor force.
"Okay. I have some free time these days. I just want to play with you for a while."
"If, I mean if. If this is not a joke, I want to use these words with fixed meanings to replace the priests' memory graphics. What do you think?"
There was a moment of silence, the cabin was so silent that you could hear a needle drop.
After a while, Avitt answered with a slight smile.
"Xulot, I want to live longer, and I also want you to live longer."
