Hello,
I’m Lucius Beauchamp and I’ve written a fast-paced fantasy novel, called
‘Beyond Atlantis: An Epic Of The Ancient Americas’. Today, I’ll talk about chinampas
and black earth.
Excerpt:
“Wandering, Zithia came to an island dominated by a thirty-foot tall avocado tree. Orchids with bunches of small pink tiger-face flowers, the mouths and eyes drawn in white, grew shaded between willows which edged the chinampa. Crossing lush grass, she looked over open water.
The noise of the crowds in the patchwork
plantation had reduced to a buzz. Taking off her shoes, Zithia felt a branch
beneath her feet, one of many used to stabilise the chinampas, sandwiched
between dirt dredged from the lake. In the water several metallic gold-armoured
fish, dazzling as the sun, shimmered around begging for fruit.”
Ancient Mesoamerica cultivated tens of miles of land by creating small raised plots of fertile earth, called chinampas, above low-lying wet meadows. To ensure the fertility of these chinampas, they made their owned enriched soil which is named simply ‘black earth’. Thus, todays water-leached agricultural regions of the south American continent once supported massive numbers of people. From the air one can still sometimes see the archeological evidence of great ancient plantations, in the form of stencil outlines of patchwork rectangles plus the canals between them. In the days of the book, the Mississippi also had its chinampas.
“Vivid pink, blue and red plantations were rainbow splashes between pyramids, henges and villages. Even the obligatory lake, behind the city, was impressive, with ten thousand chinampas quilting half of it. Live-oaks graced its banks. From a hill, a wood-henge marked sunrises and, in a lush park, a herd of white bison grazed.”
Black earth itself was a kind of magic. Scientists have examined the creation of black earth and marvelled at how the ancient process vastly raises the production of positive microbial activity. This then enables the fertility, almost puzzlingly, to increase at an exponential rate.
Excerpt:
“she checked the just-smouldering black earth, ever being made at low burn from plants and refuse. The resultant charcoal, enriched with condensed smoke, produced magic soil when mixed with dirt.”
Just as the world, after the fall of Rome, lost the art of making cement much of meso-America came close to losing chinampas and how to make the black earth. Civilisations seem to be about re-discovering things, again and again. Which did you find most interesting, chinampas or black earth? For me, it’s a tie.
Excerpt:
With lightning rushing to greet the barbarians, not only sulphur made their guts wrench. That most feared God, the God of lightning, was among them. Sheets of power forked across the ground, felling dozens of the pure race. Repeatedly, the riverbed exploded and sprayed molten sand. Dripping glass sculptures remained and pressure waves threw barbarians into the glowing glass pools. Where some lay stuck, in death or dying.The false day reached the refugees, the sky pulsing green. From the Safety of the hillside they saw it all, with deafening thunder rocking them. Dodging lightning bolts, the barbarians ran when they could to slid into super-hot streams of glass where their flesh seared so completely that bare-bones were exposed among living tissue. There was screaming at newly blackened limbs and sizzling holes within a shoulder or thigh, created by actual lightning strikes. And then more astral screams as the black shadows of the underworld chased and fell upon the freshly dead. Only a handful survived. It was another mist-night.*Tancah. Ten ships comprising another fleet had landed. Gold. Mounds of gold was being turned into ingots for shipment to the Far World.The gangplanks were sunk into the pink sand by the tread of disembarkingwarriors.The scarred pyramids were towers with large stone tablets standingon top. Not very wide, with ladder-like stairs, each had an almost sheerdrop at the back. Saplings burst forth in unexpected places among the ruins.The seventh ship to dock was grander than the others. Its occupants always liked to be seventh, from superstition. Rhaim, the commander-in-chief hurried to meet these new arrivals. They were the main reason he’d come back to Tancah. After all, he didn’t want their leader to take offense. In black clothing with wide purple edging, the thirteen glided down the gangplank. Weary soldiers made hasty signs in the group’s direction while dropping their eyes. Even with a close trimmed mustache, the outlines of the first face were a death mask. Udo, the leader. Tall, white-haired and eyes robin’s-egg blue. The whole group was from similar molds.Not on land yet, Udo glanced at Tancah. A connoisseur, he breatheddeeply of the destruction. Then he put a foot hard on the sand and dogs began to howl. A flock of monarch butterflies, resting on their way to their wintering ground, filled the air. Raising his hand to the sky, Udo cut a swath through the gossamer wings. The lovelies rained down among the pyramids, while the coven roared with laughter.Invisible to everyone, a watcher hovered over the beach within sight of the ships. As one, the black-garbed group turned to look at him, eyes burning. Languidly, Udo said, ‘Kill.’Two men vacated their flesh so utterly that their bodies fell to the ground. Their spirits were shadow hounds. Instantly the temple flyer telepathed the sight to his temple, then spirit claws were on him. Dying, screams filled the heads of other flyers.The murdered watcher’s body, seated in the temple chamber, spasmed and went limp. A high priest wiped the corpse’s brow, ‘Where is the other?’Simultaneously, Udo’s face was in the room, hanging in mid-space.Gloating, he disappeared. Then he was back at the beachfront. ‘Find the other watched.’The two dark hounds pounced forward, but Udo’s snarl sent them scurrying into their bodies. He believed in sharing and signaled a fresh pair.
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