50 Fun Facts About Quetzalcoatl

In Toltec legend, the priest-king Quetzalcoatl refused to offer his gods what?

Human victims: as priest-king of Tula he is said to have offered only snakes, birds and butterflies, a striking stand in a world where sacrifice was the norm.

Aztec temples to Quetzalcoatl in his wind-god guise were built in what unusual shape?

Round: circular walls were thought to please the wind god because they gave the wind no sharp corners to strike, and his temple in Tenochtitlan was built that way.

Quetzalcoatl was the patron god of which Aztec group?

The priesthood: as god of learning he was honoured in the calmecac, the temple schools where noble boys trained for the priesthood, and the school in Tenochtitlan was dedicated to him.

Quetzalcoatl's 'wind jewel' pendant was a cross-section sliced from what?

A conch shell: sliced across to show its spiral, the pendant hangs on his chest in most images, and scholars have read it as a sign of whirling wind or of new life.

Aztec tradition credited Quetzalcoatl with inventing books and what else?

The calendar: he was the god of learning, and in the schools where he was honoured noble boys were drilled in reading, writing and the count of days.

Besides his plumed-snake form, Quetzalcoatl was often pictured as a man with what feature?

A beard: he was often drawn as a bearded man, which helped later writers cast the bearded Cortés as the god come back, a tale many historians now doubt.

The world's largest pyramid by volume, raised in Mexico to Quetzalcoatl, now has what standing on its summit?

A Catholic church: the mound was so overgrown when the Spanish arrived that they are said to have taken it for a hill, and the chapel they built on top still stands.

The oldest known carving of a feathered serpent, at La Venta on Mexico's Gulf coast, was made by which people?

The Olmec: their crested rattlesnake rearing behind a seated man at La Venta began an image that Teotihuacan, the Toltec and the Aztecs would each inherit in turn.

Which city's great temple of Quetzalcoatl drew pilgrims in the centuries before the Spanish arrived?

Cholula: pilgrims had come to his temple there since about 1200, and Cortés's men killed thousands in the city on their march inland to the Aztec capital.

What did the Maya call their equivalent of Quetzalcoatl?

Kukulkan: Maya writers also gave the name to a lord said to have come to rule Chichen Itza, so god and man blurred, while the K'iche' Maya called their plumed creator Gukumatz.

At Chichen Itza's El Castillo, a serpent of shadow seems to slither down the stairs at which points in the year?

The equinoxes: late-afternoon sun throws triangles of shadow down the north stair to a carved snake's head at its foot, though the effect lasts for weeks and may not be by design.

Counting the top platform as a final step, El Castillo's four stairways add up to what number?

365: with about 91 steps on each stairway and the platform as the last, the pyramid counts out the days of the solar year.

After Chichen Itza declined, which city became the new centre of the feathered-serpent cult?

Mayapan: its builders copied Chichen Itza, serpent columns and all, and its main pyramid, also called the Castillo, is a rougher imitation of the famous one.

Which god was Quetzalcoatl's twin and his companion in the underworld?

Xolotl: god of twins and of the misshapen, he is said to have gone down to the land of the dead with Quetzalcoatl to help bring back the bones of humankind.

Quetzalcoatl's twin was commonly depicted with the head of which animal?

A dog: the Aztecs believed dogs guided their dead masters through the underworld and across its river, and dog remains have turned up in their burials.

In the myth of the four Tezcatlipocas, brother gods of four colours, which colour was Quetzalcoatl?

White: the creator pair set four sons over the four directions, and he took the white west while the black north went to Tezcatlipoca himself, his lifelong rival.

What does the name Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl's great rival, mean?

Smoking mirror: he was shown with a mirror of black obsidian where one foot should be, and in such a mirror he was said to see everything that went on in the world.

Which virgin is said to have conceived Quetzalcoatl, in one story by swallowing an emerald?

Chimalman: in another telling the hunter god Mixcoatl shot arrows at her and she caught every one in her bare hand, and the two later married.

To bring the stolen bones to life as the people of the fifth sun, Quetzalcoatl added what?

His own blood: he bled himself over the crushed bones, and because they had broken in a fall on the way out, people were said to come in different sizes.

What is the name of the Aztec underworld from which Quetzalcoatl retrieved the bones?

Mictlan: in the myth its lord would give up the bones only if Quetzalcoatl sounded a trumpet that had no holes, so he had worms bore it and set bees buzzing inside.

Which crop was Quetzalcoatl said to have given to humanity?

Maize: in the myth he spotted an ant carrying a kernel, turned himself into an ant as well, and followed it into the mountain where the grain lay hidden.

Which plant, whose seeds the Aztecs spent as money, was held to be Quetzalcoatl's gift?

Cacao: the beans bought food and goods, and the chocolate made from them was no sweet but a bitter, frothy drink, often spiced with chilli and mostly kept for the upper classes.

In the Codex Chimalpopoca, what did Tezcatlipoca trick Quetzalcoatl into drinking?

Pulque: the fermented agave sap left him drunk enough to break his vows with his priestess sister, and in shame he abandoned his city of Tula.

After burning himself on a pyre, what was Quetzalcoatl said to become?

The morning star: he rose as Venus, the legend says, and because that planet sinks from view and then comes back, he stood for death and resurrection.

In one Aztec creation story, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca became giant snakes and tore a sea monster in two to make what?

Earth and sky: the torn monster lived on, the story goes, and cried out for human blood in return, which is one way the Aztecs explained the need for sacrifice.

Later chronicles merged the god Quetzalcoatl with which legendary Toltec priest-king of Tula?

Ce Acatl Topiltzin: rulers and high priests often took their patron god's name, so tales of the Toltec king and of the god he served ran together, and historians still argue over how much is real.

In the Aztec story of earlier worlds, the age called the Wind Sun ended in hurricanes and its people became what?

Monkeys: that age belonged to Quetzalcoatl in his guise as the wind, and the spider monkey, quick as a gust, stayed one of his animals.

Which Aztec year, tied to Quetzalcoatl, fell in 1519 when Cortés landed?

One Reed: the god himself bore that date as a name, and later writers made much of the match, claiming the emperor feared the strangers were Quetzalcoatl come home.

Which Aztec emperor supposedly took Cortés for the returning Quetzalcoatl?

Moctezuma II: no account free of Spanish influence tells the tale, and many historians now think it was made up afterwards to explain how so few men toppled an empire.

Which book, compiled by a friar from Nahua accounts, records the welcome speech said to hail Cortés as a god?

The Florentine Codex: Bernardino de Sahagún's Nahua informants set the speech down decades after the event, and some historians think its courtly politeness was misread as surrender.

Which fantasy author parodied the god as Quezovercoatl, a tiny demon trampled by a piece of walking luggage?

Terry Pratchett: in his Discworld novel Eric, the dreaded god of the Tezumen finally shows himself, turns out to be tiny, and is promptly flattened by the Luggage.

Which apostle did some Spanish friars identify with the original Quetzalcoatl?

Thomas: the apostle was believed to have carried the gospel far beyond the Roman world, and a long-ago visit from him would explain why parts of Aztec religion looked Christian to the friars.

Some Latter Day Saints have identified Quetzalcoatl with whom?

Jesus Christ: John Taylor, the church's third president, wrote that the god's life story so closely resembled the Saviour's that the two must be one being, though the church does not teach it.

Which Mexican muralist painted the coming of Quetzalcoatl across a library wall at Dartmouth College in the 1930s?

José Clemente Orozco: his frescoes cast the god's arrival as a golden age of crops, art and science, then set against it the conquest and a grim machine age in the room's other wing.

The Texas fossil Quetzalcoatlus, named after the god in 1975, was what kind of animal?

A pterosaur: with wings spanning about 11 metres it is widely thought the largest animal ever to fly, and unlike its namesake it had no feathers, only a hair-like fuzz.

The resplendent quetzal is the national bird of which country?

Guatemala: the bird was long believed to die if caged, so it became the country's emblem of liberty, and today it flies on the flag and gives the currency its name.

In the 1982 monster film Q, Quetzalcoatl nests in the art-deco spire of which New York landmark?

The Chrysler Building: a small-time crook on the run stumbles on the nest and its giant egg, then tries to sell the city the location while the creature snatches New Yorkers off rooftops.

Why were 200-plus people buried under Teotihuacan's Temple of the Feathered Serpent apparently killed?

To dedicate the building: they were buried as the pyramid went up, and though many were soldiers laid in groups with their gear, their hands were tied behind their backs.

A temple to Ehecatl, the god's wind form, was unearthed in 1960s Mexico City during the building of what?

A metro station: the builders left the shrine where they found it, so it now stands in the open inside Pino Suárez station, passed by crowds of commuters changing lines.

Deep in a sealed tunnel beneath Teotihuacan's Temple of the Feathered Serpent, archaeologists found large amounts of what?

Liquid mercury: pooled at the far end of the tunnel, the shimmering metal seems to have stood for the lakes or rivers of a miniature sacred landscape, perhaps the underworld itself.

In Aztec belief Quetzalcoatl, as the wind, swept the roads clean for the coming of which gods?

The rain gods: the gusts that whip up dust ahead of a storm were seen as him clearing their path, and his earliest images already show him among raindrops and pools of water.

At Tula, the Toltec capital tied to Quetzalcoatl, the giant columns that once held up a temple roof depict what?

Warriors: each stone giant carries a spear-thrower and wears a butterfly-shaped breastplate, fitting for a people whose rise brought a new age of militarism to ancient Mexico.

A handclap at the foot of El Castillo's main staircase comes back as an echo resembling what?

A bird's chirp: the steps scatter the clap into a falling chirp much like the call of the quetzal, the feathered god's sacred bird, though whether the builders planned it is still argued.

The Aztecs' word for the Toltecs, the people of Quetzalcoatl's legendary Tula, doubled as their word for what?

A master craftsman: the Aztecs looked back on Tula as a golden era when metalwork and the other arts were perfected, so their own jewellers and metalworkers were known as tolteca.

The quetzal, whose tail feathers give the god his name, was so prized that Maya law forbade what?

Killing the bird: feather-gatherers had to catch it alive, pluck the long green tail plumes and set it free, and only rulers and nobles wore them.

How did the earliest depictions of the feathered serpent differ from the later Nahua images?

Fully animal, not human: for centuries he was carved simply as a plumed snake, and the man in a conical hat familiar from Aztec books became common only in the last few centuries before the conquest.

Inside El Castillo at Chichen Itza, archaeologists found an older buried temple holding a red throne shaped like which animal?

A jaguar: painted red and studded with jade, the throne sits in a smaller, older pyramid that the builders did not pull down but simply encased inside the new one.

Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl is usually shown wearing what distinctive item?

A beak-like mask: often likened to a duck's bill, it was the mouthpiece through which he was said to blow the winds across the world.

At the Tlatelolco temple of the wind god Ehecatl, a sacrificed young man was buried clutching which skull-faced clay instrument?

A whistle: the so-called death whistle makes a sound like rushing wind, so scholars suspect it was meant to mimic the gusts of the god at whose temple it was buried.

Which English novelist first drafted his Mexican novel The Plumed Serpent under the title Quetzalcoatl?

D. H. Lawrence: he went back to Mexico to rewrite the book before it came out in 1926, and the original Quetzalcoatl draft stayed unpublished for some seventy years.