"History shows that in areas of irregular weather or rainfall natural forces have made men more concerned with invisible, omnipotent cosmic powers than with the reality they perceived on earth. Meso-American man devoted tremendous effort to trying to understand why some years it failed to rain on schedule, withering his cornfields and threatening him with starvation and extinction."

—T.R. Fehrenbach, from 'Fire And Blood: A History of Mexico' (1995)