Mysterious Mexico
A History of Ghosts, Legends, and Perplexing Places Across the Mexican States
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Narrated by:
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Scott Clem
About this listen
At a time in antiquity when most of Europe was covered with forests and wandering tribes, Mexico had already developed complex civilizations, beginning with the Olmecs and followed by the Maya, a civilization with advanced knowledge of medicine, engineering and astronomy. The Maya calculated the precession of the equinoxes and cycles of the Pleiades, on which they based their year, since they believed they had come from that constellation. The last, and perhaps most famous, great civilization before the arrival of the Europeans was the Aztecs.
With so many ancient peoples whose influence, beliefs, and modifications to the landscape extend to the present day, Mexico is fertile land for legends, ghosts, surprising places, and mysteries. A belief in communing with things that lie beyond (stars, constellations, and life after death), mysticism, and apparitions are intimately woven into the colorful fabric of the Mexican nation, to the point that a metaphysical event (the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe) is considered by many as one of the founding elements of the nation. Our Lady of Guadalupe has an eerie counterpart, another woman who appeared around the same time: La Llorona, the weeping woman. If the content of the former vision is loving and conciliatory, the latter is full of regret and agony.
La Llorona is just the first of a long procession of even less benign ghosts. For many years, human sacrifices and endless cruelties were committed in present-day Mexico City. People across the country believe that a legion of ghostly voices - if one believes in ghosts as a byproduct of repetition, remembrance and re-experience of tragic memories - can still be heard in the cities and valleys of Mexico. After all, archaeologists have found evidence of chilling human sacrifices in the Mexican capital, proof that the ancient inhabitants honored their gods by decapitating the bodies of their prisoners and putting their bleeding heads on a stick. Several sites have been found, and the largest one was unearthed in ancient Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), which may contain up to 60,000 human skulls.
Mexico's territory was relatively unknown until the beginning of the 20th century, even by its own people, as many of its ruins and natural wonders were out of reach or buried under thick jungles. It wasn't until the development of the railroad at the turn of the 20th century that this vast country (the world's 14th largest) began to reveal its secrets. Once Mexico was pacified, the interest in Mayan and Aztec ruins and the strange stories that circulated in the villages brought dozens of archaeologists, anthropologists, photographers and historians from all over the world.
From that point, the nation was able to show its charms and mysteries to its own people and to strangers. The south kept memories of a race that talked to the stars, the center possessed ghosts filled with regret and resentment, and the north teemed with places that only a science fiction writer could imagine. The result is a collection of the most surprising, mysterious, and terrifying aspects of Mexico, including magical places, puzzles of history, and strange beings and apparitions. Mexico is a mystical country where everyday people have learned to live with their ghosts, old and new. As Octavio Paz, the Literature Nobel Prize winner, once said, "One of the most remarkable traits of the Mexican character is its willingness to contemplate horror - the Mexican is even familiar and complacent in his dealings with it."
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Story
Arguably one of the most provocative, puzzling, and misunderstood organizations of medieval times, the legendary Knights Templar have always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, while inspiring popular culture from Indiana Jones to Dan Brown. In The Templars, author Michael Haag offers a definitive history of these loyal Christian soldiers of the Crusades - sworn to defend the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but ultimately damned and destroyed by the Pope and his church.
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Narrator ruined it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-19-17
By: Michael Haag
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Ancient Civilizations: A Captivating Guide to Mayan History, the Aztecs, and Inca Empire
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Duke Holm
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Explore the captivating history and mythology of three ancient civilizations. Three captivating manuscripts in one audiobook! In the first part of this captivating guide, you will discover why Maya have gained such worldwide admiration over the many other civilizations that existed in Mesoamerica at the time. You will learn how the Maya civilization developed, the major turning points in their 3,000-year-long history, the mysteries surrounding their demise, some of the unique places where Maya exist to this day, and much more!
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Low quality
- By Jonathan Enterline on 06-24-20
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The Hidden History of the Knights Templar
- The Church's Oldest Conspiracy
- By: Conrad Bauer
- Narrated by: Charles D. Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The Knights Templar existed officially for less than 200 years. Founded to protect pilgrims who were travelling through the Holy Lands, their rise to power was sudden. They became some of the most feared warriors in the region, they had a mandate from God, they controlled perhaps the world's first real banking system, and they waged war against anyone who tried to wrestle Christianity and seize holy grounds from the control of the Catholic Church.
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Insightful
- By Tina on 09-11-16
By: Conrad Bauer
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Mirage
- Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt
- By: Nina Burleigh
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Little more than 200 years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. Its history and peoples were the subject of much myth and speculation: and no region aroused greater interest than Egypt.
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A lesson in history
- By —- on 01-05-10
By: Nina Burleigh
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The Buried Book
- The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
- By: David Damrosch
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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One day in 1872, self-taught Assyriologist George Smith was sifting through a pile of clay tablets when he realized he was reading about "a flood, storm, a ship caught on a mountain, and a bird sent out in search of dry land". This is the riveting story of the discovery of the world's first literary epic, the "Epic of Gilgamesh".
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interesting- but not for everyone
- By J Michael on 07-16-08
By: David Damrosch
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Conquistadors
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernán Cortés, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires.
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Horrific anti-European bias
- By Anonymous User on 08-30-20
By: Michael Wood
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American Holocaust
- The Conquest of the New World
- By: David E. Stannard
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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For 400 years - from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the US Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s - the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people.
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Most important book I never heard of
- By Robert Bourque on 03-16-18
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Jerusalem
- The Biography
- By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice - in heaven and on earth.
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In-depth and gripping history of 3,000 years
- By A reader on 12-16-11
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Incas: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Inca Empire and Civilization
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Duke Holm
- Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most notable ancient cultures of South America is undoubtedly the Inca civilization. They once ruled over the largest empire in South America. Not only that - their empire was also the largest in the world at the time. There are many mysteries surrounding the Incas. Where did the Incas originate? And how did they come to rule over their vast empire that incorporated mountaintops, tropical jungles, and coastal lands? What were the most notable achievements of their great kings?
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Thoroughly and objectively presented
- By Rodrigo on 06-03-18
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Rome
- By: Matthew Kneale
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Rome, the Eternal City. Today visitors can stand on bridges that Julius Caesar and Cicero crossed; walk around temples in the footsteps of emperors; visit churches from the earliest days of Christianity. This is all the more remarkable considering what the city has endured. It has been ravaged by fires, floods, earthquakes, and - most of all - by roving armies. Matthew Kneale uses seven of these crisis moments to create a powerful and captivating account of Rome’s extraordinary history. He paints portraits of the city before each assault, describing how Romans, both rich and poor, lived their everyday lives.
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Lack of language skills an irritation
- By lmc on 07-16-18
By: Matthew Kneale
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Lotharingia
- A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country
- By: Simon Winder
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 18 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Following Germania and Danubia, the third installment in Simon Winder's personal history of Europe. In 843 AD, the three surviving grandsons of the great emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited the area we now know as France, another Germany, and the third received the piece in between: Lotharingia.
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The Loquacious Traveler in Middle Earth
- By Doris on 11-22-19
By: Simon Winder
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The Sign and the Seal
- The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant
- By: Graham Hancock
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 21 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The fate of the Lost Ark of the Covenant is one of the great historical mysteries of all time. The Bible contains hundreds of references to the Ark's power, but the Ark itself mysteriously disappears from recorded history sometime after the building of the Temple of Solomon. After 10 years of searching through the dusty archives of Europe and the Middle East, Graham Hancock has succeeded where scores of others have failed. This intrepid journalist has tracked down the true story behind the myths and legends - revealing where the Ark is today, how it got there, and why it remains hidden.
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Ridiculous.
- By D. MacNair on 11-09-19
By: Graham Hancock
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Venice
- Pure City
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The Venetians' language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its listeners to that sensual and surprising city. His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers.
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An endless droning list.....
- By jack on 03-15-11
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Bloody White Baron
- The Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia
- By: James Palmer
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In the history of the modern world, there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented as Baron Ungern-Sternberg. An anti-Semitic fanatic with a penchant for Eastern mysticism and a hatred of communists, Baron Ungern-Sternberg took over Mongolia in 1920 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese, and native Mongolians.
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Truth is stranger than fiction
- By David on 01-21-10
By: James Palmer
What listeners say about Mysterious Mexico
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- EVIE
- 04-26-20
Interesting
A bit slow in the beginning but, it got interesting at towards the end. I knew alot of what was discussed but, also heard new things.
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- becausetheyaredead
- 06-28-18
poor narration
this could be a good book but the narration is so like nails on a chalkboard (or even like cardboard pizza) . I tried a could times to listen to this but the narration is so bad the story is impossible to follow
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- Silva
- 03-04-18
Crazy stuff little known facts
This book was full of little snippets of history that one doesn't hear much of. The stories are quick reads and if you come across one that doesn't grab your interest the next one probably will.
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- N
- 07-02-20
Please use Spanish-speaking narrators!
The stories in this book are interesting, but somewhat hard to follow, and missing some details. For instance, a lot is said about the Virgin of Guadalupe, but the actual story of it is not told. Overall the stories were amusing.
The narrator is the real issue here. Not only his monotone extremely boring to listen to, but his pronunciation of Spanish words and towns was almost offensive. There is a town in Mexico called "Paricutín" and it is pronounced pah-ree-koo-TEEN, not, as the narrator decided "para-KOOtin'." I literally laughed out loud when he said this. He also pronounced the town of "Querétaro" as "kwe-re-TA-ro." If a Spanish speaking narrator could not be found (doubtful, as there are upwards of 41 million in the US alone), could someone at least have given this man a basic concept of how Spanish works? I realize that not everyone needs to speak Spanish, but if you have a book about Mexico, you should choose someone who has a basic grasp of it, right?
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