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Spanish conquistadors first arrived in Latin America in the 1500’s, where they would eventually meet eye to eye with the great Aztec Empire. The Aztec empire covered most of what is now present-day central Mexico with their Capital city of Tenochtitlan being modern day Mexico City. The Aztecs were an advanced civilization for their time; hence, they were able to build great cities, were good at creating jewelry and pottery and were even capable of creating their own calendar.
Agriculture
The Aztecs first started off as a nomadic tribe that relied-on hunting/ gathering principles for food and shelter. Eventually they decided to settle in the swampy area of Mexico, where they started building their empire of what is to become the city of Tenochtitlan. One of the underlying reasons on why the Aztecs prospered so fast in so little time is that they ruled by conquest and demanded tribute of goods from captured neighborhood tribes. If you think paying tribute was bad, being sacrificed was worse and was a common practice for the Aztecs to sacrifice enemy warriors along with their women and children.
Aztecs were excellent farmers even though they didn’t have animals to plow their fields, nor did they use any wheeled equipment. The only tool they used to feed such a fast-growing population was a wooded digging stick they used to turn the soil and place the seed and a whole lot of human labor. Without the use of animals, the Aztecs started looking for ways to improve their productivity. The Aztecs started building up these pieces of land called Chinampas that could be found in the middle of their swampy lakes. They were created by piling up layers and layers of rich mud, aquatic vegetation as well as animal and human feces which as a result, created this soil that was super fertile. Chinimpas did extremely well especially paired with the warm climate of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and were typically harvested around 7-8 times a year. In the middle of these Chinimpas they planted tomatoes, squash, beans, and corn which made up most of their diets. Equally important they planted willow trees around these Chinimpas that contained complex root systems that helped keep the soil together and avoid it getting washed away.
Xiuhpohualli and Tonalpohualli
(Aztec calendar stone) (Tenochtitlan: Monolithic Calendar)
The Aztecs had developed two calendars, the Xihuitl and the Tonalpohualli. The Tonalpohualli was the day count calendar; it had 13 numbers and 20 symbols. The symbols were the crocodile, wind, horse, lizard, serpent, death, deer, rabbit, water, dog, monkey, grass, reed, jaguar, eagle, vulture, movement, flint, rain, and flower. Each completed block of time was called a veintene and it was on a 260 day cycle. It was sometimes called the Sun Stone and was painted with bright colors. It served as an altar for sacrificial rituals. Xiuhpohualli was on a 365 day cycle that focused on annual ceremonies and it was based on the solar year. both calendars would meet up exactly every 52 years (Schwaller, J. F., p. 2-3).
The Nezahualcoyotl Dike
(Torres-Alves, Gina Alexandra, and Oswaldo Morales-Nápoles)
The Aztec empire was surrounded by lakes. The complex water system included dikes, walkways, canals, aqueducts, irrigation ditches, drainage works, drawbridges, piers, and navigation channels. The Nezahualcoyotl dike was constructed to prevent saline water passing through towards their drinking water supply lake. It measured a length of 16 km long, 8 meters high, and 3.5 meters thick. The dikes were composed of wooden beams, rocks and sand to hold in the water. This was all done to avoid floods and provide irrigation to the different crops they had growing on their chinampas (Torres-Alves, Gina Alexandra, and Oswaldo Morales-Nápoles).
Religion
There was a polytheistic religion among the Aztecs. There were many different gods that had monthly activities with offerings. They also had rituals which had human sacrifices. Another agricultural civilization also exhibited this feature. For the Aztecs the sacrifices were used to please Tonatiuh, the sun god, in order to provide warmth and light that came from the sun. They were prisoners of war who were sacrificed.
According to a letter from Hernan Cortez, priests were described to wear traditional robes and had temples. As well as domestic rituals, they practiced many religious practices. During the rituals the priest would “convert” into gods in order to do the ritual. Due to the fact that gods could transform into humans, everything was considered divine. They were melodramatic and mixed dancing and costumes into these rituals of human sacrifice.
The crucial belief was that the universe had been produced and eradicated four times before. This fifth one started in darkness so two gods sacrificed themselves and became the sun and moon. The rest of the gods continued to sacrifice themselves in order to continue life itself. Thus began the necessity of life continuing by human sacrifice in order to sustain the gods.
It was believed that their gods were more than good and evil and viewed as eminently complex individuals. One of the primary principles of the Aztecs was dualism, which was exhibited by most of them. This being that the cosmos was put into binary counterparts. One of the gods embodied this idea by being both male and female. They could create humans and gods.
References
Aztec calendar stone. Artstor, library-artstor-org.hmlproxy.lib.csufresno.edu/asset/AYALE_PEABODYIG_10313284116
Eagle Warrior. 1440-1469. Artstor, library-artstor-org.hmlproxy.lib.csufresno.edu/asset/SCALA_ARCHIVES_10310197218
Elizabeth Baquedano, University Press of Colorado, 2014, pp. 41–58. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt128807j.7. Accessed 31 Oct. 2022
Morehart, Christopher T., and Charles Frederick. “The Chronology and Collapse of Pre-Aztec Raised Field (Chinampa) Agriculture in the Northern Basin of Mexico.” Antiquity, vol. 88, no. 340, 2014, pp. 531–548., doi:10.1017/S0003598X00101164.
Rosado, Juan José Batalla. “Iconographic Characteristics of Tezcatlipoca in the Representations of Central Mexico: The Ezpitzal Case.” Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity, edited by
Schwaller, John F. “Of Time and Space in Mexico, Native and Colonial.” Latin American Research Review, vol. 43, no. 1, 2008, pp. 255–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20488121. Accessed 22 Nov. 2022.
Smith, Michael E. “The Expansion of the Aztec Empire: A case study in the correlation of Diachronic Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Data American antiquity, 1987, Vol.52 (1), p.37-54
Source: Cortés, Hernán. Hernán Cortés to Emperor Carlos V., 1522. In Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico. Translated and edited by Anthony Pagden, 72-74. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986.
The Archaeologist. “'Chinampas': The Ancient Aztec Floating Gardens That Hold Promise for Future Urban Agriculture.” The Archaeologist, The Archaeologist, 22 Aug. 2021, https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/chinampas-the-ancient-aztec-floating-gardens-that-hold-promise-for-future-urban-agriculture.
Tenochtitlan: Monolithic Calendar: Stone of the Fifth Sun: Reconstruction. N.p. Print.
Torres-Alves, Gina Alexandra, and Oswaldo Morales-Nápoles. “Reliability Analysis of Flood Defenses: The Case of the Nezahualcoyotl Dike in the Aztec City of Tenochtitlan.” Reliability engineering & system safety 203 (2020): 107057–. Web.
Townsend, Camilla. “Worlds without End.” American Historical Review, Vol.124 (2), April 1, 2019, P. 539-549.
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