Product Description
Victor Wolfgang von Hagen (February 29, 1908 - March 8, 1985) was a US-American explorer, archaeological historian, anthropologist, and travel writer who traveled the South Americas with his wife, Christine. Mainly between 1940 and 1965, he published a large number of widely acclaimed books about the ancient people of the Inca, Maya, and Aztecs.
The author has a wonderful enthusiasm for history and writes beautiful sentences like 'The dream of every archaeologist is that someday in the hushed sanctity of the forest he will find a place, a city, a ruin which no other explorer has ever seen. This is a fundamental human instinct, for life exists for the sake of newness.'
The book animates everyday life in the Meso American and South American societies, examining social structures, art, development, rulership, belief systems of gender roles, and how available resources shaped society. For the Aztecs both religion and war stemmed from their understanding of the climate - wars had to be fought to gain sacrifice victims so that human hearts could be offered to the rain God, so that rain would come when needed and cease when needed to sustain the perfect crop of maize, which was the staple of everything.
Profusely illustrated, with both colour b&w and period reproductions
Water stain mark - external only - to the slipcase and corner of the book
Slipcased, published by Panther UK