Mesoamerican Usage
S. hispanica is described and pictured in the Mendoza Codex and the Florentine Codex, 16th century Aztec codices created between 1540 and 1585. Both describe and picture Salvia hispanica and its usage by the Aztec. The Mendoza Codex indicates that the plant was widely cultivated and given as tribute in 21 of the 38 Aztec provincial states. Economic historians suggest that it was a staple food that was as widely used as maize.
Chia seeds were at first a staple in the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican diet and valued for multiple uses as food, medicine and oil. Chia seed use declined though during Spanish colonization as the Spanish and Columbians had several cultural conflicts. After the Spanish invasion, the seeds frequently migrated around the Americas to the Aztecs in the early 16th century. Aztec tribute records from the Mendoza Codex, Matrícula de Tributos, and the Matricula de Huexotzinco (1560)—along with colonial cultivation reports and linguistic studies—give detail to the geographic location of the tributes, and provide some geographic specificity to the main S. hispanica growing regions. Most of the provinces grew the plant, except for areas of lowland coastal tropics and desert. The traditional area of cultivation ranged from north-central Mexico south to Guatemala. A second area of cultivation was in Nicaragua and southern Honduras.
Read more about this topic: Salvia Hispanica
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