Word: teocuitlatl
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Dates: during 1974-1974
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Thus Peter Martyr, a Habsburg court chronicler and diplomat, greeted the Old World's first exaction upon the New: a stupendous hoard of ornaments, masks and ritual objects cast and hammered from teocuitlatl, "the gods' excrement"-as the Aztecs called gold-which Montezuma had given to the insatiable Cortes. It was shown in Europe in 1519, and nothing from it survives today. Like nearly all the gold artifacts that Spain dragged from the New World, it was melted down for bullion...
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