Codex Xolotl, map 1: The migrating Chichimec settle in the Valley of Mexico during the thirteenth century

How different were the mapping traditions of Europe and America? What effect did the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas have upon native cartography? And did the encounter — between two ostensibly different systems of cartographical and geographical representation — produce a hybrid form of city view, something new, something peculiarly American?

The human need to record and thereby preserve information for later use manifests itself pictorially and hieroglyphically in Mesoamerica to an extent not seen elsewhere in the ancient Americas. Mesoamerican peoples developed several pictographic writing systems to preserve their knowledge; they painted and carved images on walls, containers, and sculptures, but, more fundamentally, they painted in books. The painter-authors and keepers of the books were guardians of community knowledge and …