The Four Suns
Translated by E. Ross
Translated by E. Ross
Translated by E. Ross
The Four Suns: Recollections and Reflections of an Ethnologist in Mexico
In THE FOUR SUNS Jacques Soustelle recalls how and why he decided that the proper study of mankind is man'. It is a book in which abstract thought develops naturally and elegantly out of concrete experience; at its centre is Soustelle's account of two Mexican Indian tribes, remnants of Mayan and pre-Aztec time.
His own curiosity, sympathy and adaptability helped him to go beyond a mere scholarly assessment of what they had preserved or distorted of their heritage, to gain an extraordinarily vivid sense of their predecessors as people.
The Aztecs believed that four Suns, or Universes, had already come and gone. They ended in disaster. We are now living in the fifth cycle, and its ending remains question. Soustelle feels that this cyclic vision is near the truth of how cultures soar into civilizations and then topple. With the profound humanism his endlessly fascinating discipline has led him to, Soustelle leaves his readers wondering if we will ever understand the process well enough to control it.
