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Aztec Empire Summary: Egypt and Rome seem to get all the glory of ancient history and civilization, but what was happening in the rest of the world? Was everyone else just fumbling through life, trying to figure out how to put two syllables together? As it turns out, no. Astoundingly large, marvelous civilizations existed all throughout the world; we just rarely hear about them in our Eurocentric history. The Aztecs built a vast empire, one that outpaced, outstaged, and outpopulated the likes of Paris at the time. They were a powerhouse warrior based society with a devout religious following and growing empire. Then Hernan Cortes showed up with 400 soldiers and took them down, as the traditional story tells us. Or was it really that simple? To the victors, goes the history but let’s dig a little deeper and find out what really happened. Did Montezuma's bloody and superstitious Mexica empire crash at the hands of a few brave conquistadors, as Cortes and history often tell us? Or did a cruel and greedy Cortes walk into a brewing feud and capitalize on the situation? Let’s find out on today’s episode of Timesuck. Aztec History and Settlement: DISCLAIMER: Due to repeated attempts at cultural genocide, dates and figures regarding this topic have become extraordinarily difficult to verify. Book burning was such a rampant practice during Spanish missionary work, that the Aztec histories, lore, and documentation was all but entirely destroyed. Pair that with the nearly complete physical genocide that took place, and little is left. The Spanish recorded their own version of events but the politics at play and sheer volume of discrepancies make it clear that much of what was recorded and used as “history” was propaganda, while other texts (harder to access texts) seem more accurate. Like any good storyline, the history of the Aztecs doesn’t start with glory and riches. The Aztecs were anything but wealthy or comfortable, but they were savvy and dogged in their pursuits. They were one of many groups of people who came from the Mexica ethnicity who spoke Nahuatl and they fiercely believed that they descended from greater people than themselves. In fact, they believed that they actually came from Aztlan, a mythical place similar to Atlantis in belief, where all Nahuatl-speaking people came from. Aztec translates as “people of Aztlan”, and according to Diego Duran, a Dominican friar who moved to the area in 1540 when he was 5 years old, Aztlan translates to “the place of white birds”. Duran recorded a great deal of information about the Aztec in his document called Los Anales de Tlatelolco (The Annals of Tlatelolco), which is currently housed at the National Library of France in Paris, and is one of few remaining texts with first hand accounts. Legend holds that the Aztec came from this place, in caves of the hollow earth, with six other tribes (Acolhua, Chalca, Tepaneca, Tlahuica, Tlaxcalteca, and Xochimilca). The seven tribes wandered Earth together from around 1100 to 1300 until the other tribes decided to migrate south and the Aztecs chose to remain in the north. This could all be written off as legend, lore, or even propaganda given that the Aztecs actively rewrote some history as a way to better display their lineage to the gods. But there is some interesting etymological evidence that points to a common link between Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and languages spoken by the Hopi, Pima, and Utes (tribes - Utes are actually from Utah and the language tree stretches all the way from Idaho and Montana to northern/central Mexico; it’s still spoken by about 1.5 million people in central and western Mexico) of northern regions. They all share the Uto-Aztecan language tree. Wherever they were at this time, their legend goes on to say that they found Aztlan on a large island in the middle of lake Metztliapan (“the lake of the Moon”) and set up camp, living there happily for quite some time until others moved in and wanted to enslave them. Additional accounts say that it was a natural disaster that sent them south; climactic studies show there was an extensive drought at that time. Either way, they headed south. The Aztec became a nomadic tribe, working their way south over two hundred years. They were supposedly guided by a deity called Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, the sun, and human sacrifice (who later became the patron god of the their great city of Tenochtitlán). By the time they made it to the Valley of Mexico, where their history says the other six tribes had traveled to centuries past, the are was well populated and established. The Aztec were walking into a pseudo-urban area of diverse tribal influence and interaction, looking like backwoods hillbillies. They were uncultured, poor, and savage like by comparison according to the description put forth by Professor Edwin Barnhart in chapter 33 of his lecture series Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed. Lucky for the Aztecs, several of these groups were also rivals. The Tepanecs allowed the Aztecs to settle and stay, granting them Chapultepec (Chapultepec is a common name in Mexico City today - I lived in Chapultepec Sur for five weeks there) or “the grasshopper hill” that was located on the western shore of Lake Texcoco, which is now the central park of Mexico City. The Tepanecs were one of the largest groups in the area and were direct rivals with the Culhuacan, so the Aztec were sitting in good company to say the least. But the did little to ingratiate themselves to the Tepanecs, who quickly tired of them and kicked them out in less than a years time (they didn’t pay their tributes and were considered uncultured and annoying). The Aztec moved south and took refuge with their previous landlord’s enemy - the Culhuacan - who gave them Tizapan, a barren land to live on and work. The Aztec were forced to subsist on mostly rats and lizards during this time. The Aztec priests never wavered though - they preached that they should take up the “dirty work” that others cast to the side and trust their god, Huitzilipochtli. Twenty years went by, and the Aztec had intermarried with the Culhuacan and fully joined their society. Things were looking good and then they screwed it up. Again. With some Aztecs rising in the social and political ranks of the Culhuacan, Achicometl, the ruler of Culhuacan, offered his daughter for marriage to an Aztec leader in 1323. The Aztecs were honored and wanted to show their immense gratitude, so they killed her. It wasn’t well received and may explain why many previous groups viewed the Aztec as savage. Sacrifice was the ultimate way to get closer to the gods, or to appease them and the Aztec regularly practiced self mutilation as smaller blood sacrifice - That said, killing her was a very honorable and normal thing for them to consider. So, when Achicometl offered his daughter for marriage to a mere human, they did him one better and sacrificed her to their gods, making her an eternal goddess in turn. Shockingly, Achicometl did not see it quite that way. On what had likely been a normal day up until this point, he saw one of the Aztec priests wearing her flayed skin during a festival dinner and naturally lost his mind and cast them all out of his territory. They found refuge once more with the Tepanec, who were probably loving the whole skinned daughter situation if gossip worked at all like it does now back then, and promised to pay their tribute this time around. The Aztec priests continued to keep focus and preach that their day was coming, claiming that through a vision they had learned that, “Our promised land will be marked by an eagle, sat on a cactus, holding a snake in its mouth.” (this is the image used in the center of the Mexican flag today). While waiting for this sign, they became warriors for the Tepanec and joined in active fighting against the Culhuacan. Nearly two years later, their god, Huitzilopochtli showed them their final destination, their promised land. Unfortunately, it happened to be in the middle of a lake on a remarkably tiny and marshy island. In 1325, the Aztecs trusted their priests, their faith, and their gods and began to build Tenochtitlán. They continued to pay their tributes to the Tepanec while they slaved away to build their city. They were nothing if not hard workers. They began to literally build their land on the lake. Using a local farming method called chinampa, they built man-made islands by piling earth in the shallow lake bed in small, rectangular areas that could be used for gardens. They marked each area with stakes that they pushed into the shallow lake bed and then fenced it off using a lightweight construction material called wattle that they created by weaving thin branches together to form a woven lattice. This would’ve been grueling work, but it paid off by creating incredibly fertile land to farm and a city that was easily defensible as it sat in the middle of a lake. They also began to accrue wealth at this time - They fought tirelessly for the Tepanec and expanded the groups territory while stockpiling their own wealth. Establishment of The Triple Alliance: • In the 1350’s the entire region was divided into city-states that were each individually ruled and governed. For the most part, they shared similar beliefs and traded well amongst each other, although fighting was far from unheard of.
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