Mesoamerican Codex Writing System

Timeline

1. 900–1200Valley of Oaxaca · OaxacaMixtec city-states developed a tradition of long narrative folding codices recording lineage, war, and marriage, painted in red, yellow, and green mineral pigments with day-name and place-name signs, becoming a visual archive of noble political legitimacy.
2. c. 1331–1340Valley of Mexico and Yucatán Peninsula · MexicoIn the 1330s CE, priestly classes of rising city-states like Tenochtitlan continued using amatl-paper codices to record tribute lists and ritual calendars, Mixtec nobles continued making lineage codices in Oaxaca, and the Maya region preserved calendars and myths in bark-paper codices, forming a parallel written culture of multiple languages and pictorial traditions.
3. c. 1428–1521Tenochtitlan · Valley of MexicoAfter imperial expansion, codices became administrative tools for managing tribute districts, sacrificial schedules, and conquest narratives; Moctezuma's court had dedicated scribes who produced and kept codices, and the sign system was further standardized to serve imperial governance.