Difference between revisions of "ATD 919-945"

Revision as of 22:58, 16 January 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 922

Bolsón de Mapimí
Spanish: Mapimi Basin - An enclosed depression in northern Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua. Situated in the arid northern plateau region and averaging 3,000 ft (900 m) in elevation, it is structurally similar to the Basin and Range region of Arizona and New Mexico, in the United States. On very interesting detail concerns the "Zone of Silence"...

Page 923

...the mysterious ruins thought to have been built by refugees fleeing from their mythical homeland of Aztlan up north.
An interesting anacronism here. From this website, we learn that

At first, because of its Pueblo-like architecture, Paquime [aka Casas Grandes] had been regarded as a sort of southern extension of the ancient Pueblo world. But Charles Di Peso's excavations in the 1950's raised a "storm of controversy," revealing pyramid platforms mounds, ball-courts, and macaw breeding pens, leading him to conclude that what he had found was a major Mesoamerican "Gateway City," a 14th century urban trading center from whence Mesoamerican prestige items (macaw feathers, marine shells, copper bells) were exported to the American Southwest, bringing "higher" Mesoamerican culture with them.

So it seems that at the time Wren Provenance would have been part of a "semi-official" Harvard dig at Casas Grandes, the original inhabitants wouldn't have been considered to be from Aztlan. Also, Pynchon seems to subscribe here to the theory that the actual geographical location of Aztlan was somewhere in what is now the southwestern United States. He refers to Aztlan being "up north" of Casas Grandes. This theory, held by some, seems to contradict a well-established consensus among scholars that these areas were inhabited by North American Indians who, as opposed to Aztecs, left enough artifacts in these areas to document their existence there, and that Aztlan would have been closer to Central Mexico.

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