University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, numerous academic journals, advanced monographs in the academic fields. One of its quasi-independent projects is a digital repository for scholarly books; the Press building is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1891, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States, its first published book was Robert F. Harper's Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum; the book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900 the University of Chicago Press had published 127 books and pamphlets and 11 scholarly journals, including the current Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, American Journal of Sociology.
For its first three years, the Press was an entity discrete from the university. Heath in conjunction with the Chicago printer R. R. Donnelley; this arrangement proved unworkable, in 1894 the university assumed responsibility for the Press. In 1902, as part of the university, the Press started working on the Decennial Publications. Composed of articles and monographs by scholars and administrators on the state of the university and its faculty's research, the Decennial Publications was a radical reorganization of the Press; this allowed the Press, by 1905, to begin publishing books by scholars not of the University of Chicago. A manuscript editing and proofreading department was added to the existing staff of printers and typesetters, leading, in 1906, to the first edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. By 1931, the Press was an leading academic publisher. Leading books of that era include Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed's The New Testament: An American Translation and its successor, Goodspeed and J. M. Povis Smith's The Complete Bible: An American Translation.
In 1956, the Press first published paperback-bound books under its imprint. Of the Press's best-known books, most date from the 1950s, including translations of the Complete Greek Tragedies and Richmond Lattimore's The Iliad of Homer; that decade saw the first edition of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, which has since been used by students of Biblical Greek worldwide. In 1966, Morris Philipson began his thirty-four-year tenure as director of the University of Chicago Press, he committed time and resources to lengthening the backlist, becoming known for assuming ambitious scholarly projects, among the largest of, The Lisle Letters — a vast collection of 16th-century correspondence by Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, a wealth of information about every aspect of sixteenth-century life. As the Press's scholarly volume expanded, the Press advanced as a trade publisher. In 1992, Norman Maclean's books A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire were national best sellers, A River Runs Through It was made into a film directed by and starring Robert Redford.
In 1982, Philipson was the first director of an academic press to win the Publisher Citation, one of PEN's most prestigious awards. Shortly before he retired in June 2000, Philipson received the Association of American Publishers' Curtis Benjamin Award for Creative Publishing, awarded to the person whose "creativity and leadership have left a lasting mark on American publishing." Paula Barker Duffy served as director of the Press from 2000 to 2007. Under her administration, the Press expanded its distribution operations and created the Chicago Digital Distribution Center and BiblioVault. Editorial depth in reference and regional books increased with titles such as The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park, new editions of The Chicago Manual of Style, the Turabian Manual, The University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary; the Press launched an electronic reference work, The Chicago Manual of Style Online. In 2014, the Press received The International Academic and Professional Publisher Award for excellence at the London Book Fair.
Garrett P. Kiely became the 15th director of the University of Chicago Press on September 1, 2007, he heads one of academic publishing's largest operations, employing more than 300 people across three divisions—books and distribution—and publishing 72 journal titles and 280 new books and 70 paperback reprints each year. The Press publishes across many subject areas, it publishes regional titles, such as The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, Janice Reiff; the Press has expanded its digital offerings to include most newly published books as well as key backlist titles. In 2013, Chicago Journals began offering e-book editions of each new issue of each journal, for use on e-reader devices s
Codex Borgia
The Codex Borgia or Codex Yoalli Ehēcatl is a Mesoamerican ritual and divinatory manuscript. It is one of a handful of codices that some scholars believe to have been written before the Spanish conquest of Mexico, somewhere within what is now southern or western Puebla, though some scholars argue, produced in the first decades after the conquest as a copy of an earlier precolumbian codex; the Codex Borgia is a member of, gives its name to, the Borgia Group of manuscripts. The codex is made of animal skins folded into 39 sheets; each sheet is a square 27 cm by 27 cm, for a total length of nearly 11 meters. All but the end sheets are painted on both sides; the codex is read from right to left. Pages 29–46 are oriented perpendicular to the rest of the codex; the top of this section is the right side of page 29, the scenes are read from top to bottom. So the reader must rotate the manuscript 90 degrees in order to view this section correctly; the Codex Borgia is organized into a screen-fold. Single sheets of the hide are attached as a long strip and folded back and forth.
Images were painted over with a white gesso. Stiffened leather are used as end pieces by gluing the first and last strips in order to create a cover; the edges of the pages are overlapped and glued together, making the sheet edges hardly visible under the white gesso finish. The gesso creates a stiff, white finished surface that preserves the images below; the Codex Borgia features eighteen pages of an astronomical narrative that shows the yearlong alteration of the rainy and dry season. The Codex Borgia is named after the Italian Cardinal Stefano Borgia, who owned it before it was acquired by the Vatican Library; the Codex Borgia was brought to Europe Italy, some time in the early Spanish Colonial period. It was discovered in 1805 by Alexander von Humboldt among the effects of Cardinal Stefano Borgia; the Codex Borgia is presently housed in the Apostolic Library, the Vatican, has been digitally scanned and made available to the public. The first eight pages list the 260 day signs of the tonalpohualli, each trecena of 13 signs forming a horizontal row spanning two pages.
Certain days are marked with a footprint symbol. Divinatory symbols are placed below the day signs. Sections parallel to this are contained in the first eight pages of the Codex Cospi and the Codex Vaticanus B. However, while the Codex Borgia is read from right to left, these codices are read from left to right. Additionally, the Codex Cospi includes the Lords of the Night alongside the day signs. Pages 9 to 13 are divided into four quarters; each quarter contains one of the twenty day signs, its patron deity, associated symbols. Page 14 is divided into nine sections for each of the nine Lords of the Night, they are accompanied by symbols indicating positive or negative associations. Pages 15 to 17 depict deities associated with childbirth; each of the twenty sections contains four day signs. The bottom section of page 17 contains a large depiction of Tezcatlipoca, with day signs associated with different parts of his body. Pages 29 through 46 of the codex constitute the longest section of the codex, the most enigmatic.
The pages refer to different veintena festivals. Together these images represent a 20-day period for the veintena cycle; the glyphs refer to rainy seasons. They show a journey but the complex iconography and the lack of any comparable document have led to a variety of interpretations ranging from an account of actual astronomical and historical events, to the passage of Quetzalcoatl—as a personification of Venus—through the underworld, to a "cosmic narrative of creation". Pages 37 and 38 depict Xolotl holding a Xiuhcoatl or "fire serpent" descending into the underworld with lightning; the sequence ends with a New Fire ceremony, marking the end of one 52-year cycle, the start of another. Pages 47 through 56 show a variety of deities and other complex iconography. Pages 57 through 60 allowed the priest to determine the prospects for favorable and unfavorable marriages according to the numbers within the couple’s names. Pages 61 through 70 are similar to the first section, showing various day signs winding around scenes of deities.
Each of the 10 pages shows 26 day signs. Page 71 depicts the sun god, receiving blood from a decapitated bird. Surrounding the scene are the thirteen Birds of the Day, corresponding to each of the thirteen days of a trecena. Page 72 depicts four deities with day signs connected to parts of their bodies; each deity is surrounded by a serpent. Page 73 depicts the gods Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcoatl seated back to back, similar to page 56, they have day signs attached to various parts of their bodies, the entire scene is encircled by day signs. A list of the "proper sequence" of sections of codices in the Borgia group. Facsimile of Codex Borgianus Mexicanus 1 Digital scans of the Codex Borgianus as produced by the Vatican
Sap
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from resin, or cell sap. Saps may be broadly divided into two types: xylem sap and phloem sap. Xylem sap consists of a watery solution of hormones, mineral elements and other nutrients. Transport of sap in xylem is characterized by movement from the roots toward the leaves. Over the past century, there has been some controversy regarding the mechanism of xylem sap transport. Xylem sap transport can be disrupted by cavitation—an "abrupt phase change from liquid to vapor"—resulting in air-filled xylem conduits. In addition to being a fundamental physical limit on tree height, two environmental stresses can disrupt xylem transport by cavitation: "increasingly negative xylem pressures associated with water stress, freeze-thaw cycles in temperate climates. Phloem sap consists of sugars and mineral elements dissolved in water, it flows from where carbohydrates are stored to where they are used.
The pressure flow hypothesis proposes a mechanism for phloem sap transport. Although other hypotheses have been proposed. Phloem sap is thought to play a role in sending informational signals throughout vascular plants. "Loading and unloading patterns are determined by the conductivity and number of plasmodesmata and the position-dependent function of solute-specific, plasma membrane transport proteins. Recent evidence indicates that mobile proteins and RNA are part of the plant's long-distance communication signaling system. Evidence exists for the directed transport and sorting of macromolecules as they pass through plasmodesmata." A large number of insects of the order Hemiptera, feed directly on phloem sap, make it the primary component of their diet. Phloem sap is "nutrient-rich compared with many other plant products and lacking in toxins and feeding deterrents, it is consumed as the dominant or sole diet by a restricted range of animals"; this apparent paradox is explained by the fact that phloem sap is physiologically extreme in terms of animal digestion, it is hypothesized that few animals take direct advantage of this because they lack two adaptations that are necessary to enable direct use by animals.
These include the existence of a high ratio of non-essential/essential amino acids in phloem sap for which these adapted Hemiptera insects contain symbiotic microorganisms which can provide them with essential amino acids. A much larger set of animals do however consume phloem sap by proxy, either "through feeding on the honeydew of phloem-feeding hemipterans. Honeydew is physiologically less extreme than phloem sap, with a higher essential:non-essential amino acid ratio and lower osmotic pressure," or by feeding on the biomass of insects that have grown on more direct ingestion of phloem sap. Maple syrup is made from reduced sugar maple xylem sap; the sap is harvested from the Sugar Maple, Acer saccharum. In some countries harvesting the early spring sap of birch trees for human consumption is common practice. Certain palm tree sap can be used to make palm syrup. In the Canary Islands they use the Canary Island Date Palm while in Chile they use the Chilean Wine Palm to make their syrup called miel de palma.
Latex Resin
Mesoamerican chronology
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian, the Archaic, the Preclassic or Formative, the Classic, the Postclassic and Postcolonial. The periodization of Mesoamerica is based on archaeological and modern cultural anthropology research; the endeavor to create cultural histories of Mesoamerica dates to the early twentieth century, with ongoing work by archeologists, ethnohistorians and cultural anthropologists. 10,000–3500 BCE The Paleo-Indian period or era is that which spans from the first signs of human presence in the region, to the establishment of agriculture and other practices and subsistence techniques characteristic of proto-civilizations. In Mesoamerica, the termination of this phase and its transition into the succeeding Archaic period may be reckoned at between 10,000 and 8000 BCE, although this dating is approximate only and different timescales may be used between fields and sub-regions. Before 2600 BCEDuring the Archaic Era agriculture was developed in the region and permanent villages were established.
Late in this era, use of pottery and loom weaving became common, class divisions began to appear. Many of the basic technologies of Mesoamerica in terms of stone-grinding, pottery etc. were established during this period. 2000 BCE–250 CEDuring the Preclassic Era, or Formative Period, large-scale ceremonial architecture, writing and states developed. Many of the distinctive elements of Mesoamerican civilization can be traced back to this period, including the dominance of corn, the building of pyramids, human sacrifice, jaguar-worship, the complex calendar, many of the gods; the Olmec civilization developed and flourished at such sites as La Venta and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán succeeded by the Epi-Olmec culture between 300–250 BCE. The Zapotec civilization arose in the Valley of Oaxaca, the Teotihuacan civilization arose in the Valley of Mexico, the Maya civilization began to develop in the Mirador Basin and the Epi-Olmec culture in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec expanding into Guatemala and the Yucatán Peninsula.
250–900 CEThe Classic Period was dominated by numerous independent city-states in the Maya region and featured the beginnings of political unity in central Mexico and the Yucatán. Regional differences between cultures grew more manifest; the city-state of Teotihuacan dominated the Valley of Mexico until the early 8th century, but we know little of the political structure of the region because the Teotihuacanos left no written records. The city-state of Monte Albán dominated the Valley of Oaxaca until the late Classic, leaving limited records in their undeciphered script. Sophisticated arts such as stuccowork, sculptural reliefs, mural painting and lapidary developed and spread during the Classic era. In the Maya region, under considerable military influence by Teotihuacan after the "arrival" of Siyaj K'ak' in 378 CE, numerous city states such as Tikal, Calakmul, Copán, Palenque, Cobá, Caracol reached their zeniths; each of these polities was independent, although they formed alliances and sometimes became vassal states of each other.
The main conflict during this period was between Tikal and Calakmul, who fought a series of wars over the course of more than half a millennium. Each of these states declined during the Terminal Classic and were abandoned. 900–1521 CEIn the Postclassic Period many of the great nations and cities of the Classic Era collapsed, although some continued, such as in Oaxaca and the Maya of Yucatán, such as at Chichen Itza and Uxmal. This is sometimes seen as a period of increased warfare; the Postclassic is viewed as a period of cultural decline. However, it was a time of technological advancement in architecture and weaponry. Metallurgy came into use for jewelry and some tools, with new alloys and techniques being developed in a few centuries; the Postclassic was a period of rapid movement and population growth—especially in Central Mexico post-1200—and of experimentation in governance. For instance, in Yucatán,'dual rulership' replaced the more theocratic governments of Classic times, whilst oligarchic councils operated in much of Central Mexico.
It appears that the wealthy pochteca and military orders became more powerful than was the case in Classic times. This afforded some Mesoamericans a degree of social mobility; the Toltec for a time dominated central Mexico in the 9th–10th century collapsed. The northern Maya were for a time united under Mayapan, Oaxaca was united by Mixtec rulers in the 11th–12th centuries; the Aztec Empire arose in the early 15th century and appeared to be on a path to asserting dominance over the Valley of Mexico region not seen since Teotihuacan. Spain was the first European power to contact Mesoamerica and its conquistadores and a large number of native allies conquered the Aztecs. By the 15th century, the Mayan'revival' in Yucatán and southern Guatemala and the flourishing of Aztec imperialism evidently enabled a renaissance of fine arts and science. Examples include the'Pueblan-Mexica' style in pottery, codex illumination, goldwork, the flourishing of Nahua poetry, the botanical institutes established by the Aztec elite.
1521-1821 CEThe Colonial Period was initiated with Spanish conquest, which ended the hegemony of the Aztec Empire. It was accomplished with
Codex Magliabechiano
The Codex Magliabechiano is a pictorial Aztec codex created during the mid-16th century, in the early Spanish colonial period. It is representative of a set of codices known collectively as the Magliabechiano Group. Others in the group include the Codex Ixtlilxochitl; the Codex Magliabechiano is a religious document. Its 92 pages are a glossary of cosmological and religious elements, they depict in turn the 20 day-names of the tonalpohualli the 18 monthly feasts, the 52-year cycle. They show various deities, indigenous religious rites and cosmological beliefs; the Codex Magliabechiano is based on an earlier unknown codex, assumed to have been the prototype for the Magliabechiano Group. It is named after Antonio Magliabechi, a 17th-century Italian manuscript collector, is held in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Italy, it was created on European paper, with drawings and Spanish language text on both sides of each page. Some of the images are included below. SVG renderings Full pages of icons Icons Other images Carrasco, David..
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Oxford. ISBN 0-19-510815-9. Facsimile: Codex Magliabechiano, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Middle of the 16th century. Colour facsimile edition of the manuscript in possession of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. 186 pp. size: 215 x 155 mm. Encased in box with leather spine. Introduction, summaries: F. Anders, Vienna, 78 pp. 1 plate.
Aztecs
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec peoples included different ethnic groups of central Mexico those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states, some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires; the Aztec empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca. Although the term Aztecs is narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era, as well as the Spanish colonial era; the definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early nineteenth century. Most ethnic groups of central Mexico in the post-classic period shared basic cultural traits of Mesoamerica, so many of the traits that characterize Aztec culture cannot be said to be exclusive to the Aztecs.
For the same reason, the notion of "Aztec civilization" is best understood as a particular horizon of a general Mesoamerican civilization. The culture of central Mexico includes maize cultivation, the social division between nobility and commoners, a pantheon, the calendric system of a xiuhpohualli of 365 days intercalated with a tonalpohualli of 260 days. Particular to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan was the patron God Huitzilopochtli, twin pyramids, the ceramic ware known as Aztec I to IV. From the 13th century, the Valley of Mexico was the heart of dense population and the rise of city-states; the Mexica were late-comers to the Valley of Mexico, founded the city-state of Tenochtitlan on unpromising islets in Lake Texcoco becoming the dominant power of the Aztec Triple Alliance or Aztec Empire. It was a tributary empire that expanded its political hegemony far beyond the Valley of Mexico, conquering other city states throughout Mesoamerica in the late post-classic period, it originated in 1427 as an alliance between the city-states Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan.
Soon Texcoco and Tlacopan were relegated to junior partnership in the alliance, with Tenochtitlan the dominant power. The empire extended its reach by a combination of trade and military conquest, it was never a true territorial empire controlling a territory by large military garrisons in conquered provinces, but rather dominated its client city-states by installing friendly rulers in conquered territories, by constructing marriage alliances between the ruling dynasties, by extending an imperial ideology to its client city-states. Client city-states paid tribute to the Aztec emperor, the Huey Tlatoani, in an economic strategy limiting communication and trade between outlying polities, making them dependent on the imperial center for the acquisition of luxury goods; the political clout of the empire reached far south into Mesoamerica conquering polities as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala and spanning Mesoamerica from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans. The empire reached its maximal extent in 1519, just prior to the arrival of a small group of Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés.
Cortés allied with city-states opposed to the Mexica the Nahuatl-speaking Tlaxcalteca as well as other central Mexican polities, including Texcoco, its former ally in the Triple Alliance. After the fall of Tenochtitlan on August 13, 1521 and the capture of the emperor Cuauhtemoc, the Spanish founded Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. From there they proceeded with the process of conquest and incorporation of Mesoamerican peoples into the Spanish Empire. With the destruction of the superstructure of the Aztec Empire in 1521, the Spanish utilized the city-states on which the Aztec Empire had been built, to rule the indigenous populations via their local nobles; those nobles pledged loyalty to the Spanish crown and converted, at least nominally, to Christianity, in return were recognized as nobles by the Spanish crown. Nobles acted as intermediaries to convey tribute and mobilize labor for their new overlords, facilitating the establishment of Spanish colonial rule. Aztec culture and history is known through archaeological evidence found in excavations such as that of the renowned Templo Mayor in Mexico City.
Important for knowledge of post-conquest Nahuas was the training of indigenous scribes to write alphabetic texts in Nahuatl for local purposes under Spanish colonial rule. At its height, Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions, as well as achieving remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments; the Nahuatl words and mean "people from Aztlan," a mythical place of origin for several ethnic groups in central Mexico. The term was not used as an endonym by Aztecs themselves, but it is
Agave
Agave is a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Some Agave species are native to tropical areas of South America; the genus Agave is known for its succulent and xerophytic species that form large rosettes of strong, fleshy leaves. Plants in this genus may be considered perennial, because they require several to many years to mature and flower. However, most Agave species are more described as monocarpic rosettes or multiannuals, since each individual rosette flowers only once and dies. Along with plants from the related genera Yucca and Hesperaloe, various Agave species are popular ornamental plants in hot/dry climates, as they require little supplemental water to survive. Most Agave species grow slowly; some Agave species are known by the common name "century plant". The succulent leaves of most Agave species have sharp marginal teeth, an sharp terminal spine, are fibrous inside; the stout stem is extremely short, which may make the plant appear as though it is stemless.
Agave rosettes are monocarpic, though some species are polycarpic. During flowering, a tall stem or "mast" grows apically from the center of the rosette and bears a large number of short, tubular flowers and sometimes vegetatively produced bulbils. After pollination/fertilization and subsequent fruit development, in monocarpic species, the original rosette dies. However, throughout the lifetime of many Agave species, rhizomatous suckers develop above the roots at the base of the rosette; these suckers dies. It is important to note. Agaves can be confused with cacti, aloes, or stonecrops, but although these plants all share similar morphological adaptations to arid environments, each group belongs to a different plant family and experienced convergent evolution. Further and stonecrop lineages are eudicots, while aloes and agaves are monocots. Agave species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including Batrachedra striolata, recorded on A. shawii. The agave root system, consisting of a network of shallow rhizomes, is designed to help the agave efficiently capture moisture from rain and dew.
In addition to growing from seeds, most agaves produce'pups' – young plants from runners. Agave vilmoriniana produces hundreds of pups on its bloom stalk. Agave leaves are crucial to its continued existence; the coated leaf surface prevents evaporation. The leaves have sharp, spiked edges; the spikes discourage predators from eating the plant or using it as a source of water and are so tough that ancient peoples used them for sewing needles. The sap is acidic; some agaves bloom at a height up to 30 ft so that they are far out of reach to animals that might attack them. Smaller species, such as Agave lechuguilla, have smaller bloom stalks. In the APG III system, the genus Agave is placed in the subfamily Agavoideae of the broadly circumscribed family Asparagaceae; some authors prefer to place it in the segregate family Agavaceae. According to the most recent phylogenetic analyses, the genus Agave is shown to be paraphyletic with the embedded genera Manfreda and Prochnyanthes; these genera are now combined with Agave to form the group described as Agave sensu lato, which contains about 252 species total.
Traditionally, the genus Agave was circumscribed to be composed of about 166 species. In the Cronquist system and others, Agave was placed in the family Liliaceae, but phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences showed it did not belong there. In the APG II system, Agave was placed in the family Agavaceae; when this system was superseded by the APG III system in 2009, the Agavaceae were subsumed into the expanded family Asparagaceae, Agave was treated as one of 18 genera in the subfamily Agavoideae. In some of the older classifications, Agave was divided into two subgenera and Littaea, based on the form of the inflorescence; these two subgenera are not monophyletic. Agaves and close relatives have long presented significant difficulties to the biological field of taxonomy; these difficulties could be due to the young evolutionary age of the group, ease of hybridization between species, incomplete lineage sorting, long generation times. Within a species, morphological variations can be considerable in cultivation.
Some grown species include Agave americana, Agave angustifolia, Agave tequilana, Agave attenuata, Agave parviflora, Agave murpheyi, Agave vilmoriniana, Agave palmeri, Agave parryi and Agave victoriae-reginae. One of the most familiar species is a native of tropical America. Common names include maguey, or American aloe; the name "century plant" refers to the long time. The number of years before flowering occurs depends on the vigor of the individual plant, the richness of th
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