Mesoamerican Codex Tradition

Timeline

1. 1325–1521Tenochtitlan · MexicoThe Mexica and neighboring civilizations recorded tribute, warfare, sacrifices, and genealogies in folding screen-style codices using pictographic-ideographic signs and number systems. Codices were painted by specialized scribes (tlacuilo) on amatl paper or deer skin, serving ruling-class bookkeeping, ritual calendars, and historical memory, and were a core medium of Mesoamerican political and religious knowledge.
2. 1571–1580New Spain (Texcoco and Mexico City) · New SpainIn the 1570s, Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún organized Nahuatl-speaking painters and informants in Texcoco to systematically record Aztec rituals, medicine, calendars, and daily life, producing great works such as the Florentine Codex. Meanwhile, some traditional codices (such as ritual codices of the Borgia type) were copied or hidden under Church censorship, as the codex tradition shifted from an independent political medium to a dual role of colonial ethnography and preservation of indigenous knowledge.
3. 1580European collections and Mexico itself · FlorenceAfter 1580, Spanish colonial authorities intensified censorship and burning of codices depicting "pagan" images, and vast numbers of pre-Columbian codices were lost. Surviving works scattered into European collections and Mexico itself, becoming key evidence for 19th–20th century archaeology and ethnology in reconstructing Mesoamerican civilizations. Contemporary indigenous communities and scholars also revive identity narratives through codex image traditions, keeping this written culture alive as a living tradition.