In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl

$22.95 at de Young Museum.

The question of human origins took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, as scholars began to look beyond the Bible to understand how different cultures and civilizations emerged. Zelia Nuttall was among the most accomplished of these scholars. A child of the San Francisco Gold Rush, Nuttall also had roots in Mexico City, where her mother was born. As a young woman, she threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the emerging sciences of archaeology and anthropology to…