For anyone interested in what the Americas looked like before and after Columbus, I highly recommend the two books, 1491[1] and 1493[2], by Charles C. Mann. I finish the first one and I'm half way through the second one and really openend my eyes. Great reads!
Also great is The Fall of Civilizations' episode about Tenochtitlan [1].
The podcast is the work of a British historian named Paul M. M. Cooper, who's also published a book derived from the podcast. Each episode is really well researched, incorporating recent discoveries rather than uncritically repeating old tropes. No filler, no theatrics, just really well-told history, backed by real sources.
Another excellent history podcast is The Rest is History [2], who also devoted an excellent (albeit much shorter) episode to the same topic.
Is it politics free? As in, no left rewrite of the noble savage? Because all those tribes that instant-joined the conquistadors still negate all that "utopia destroyed by evil europeans" story.
jdgoesmarching 33 days ago [-]
Despite being relatively conservative, I don’t think The Rest is History would appeal to someone who thinks any telling of history that doesn’t fit a far-right worldview is “political.”
There’s no such thing as politics-free history.
InDubioProRubio 32 days ago [-]
But such a world-view wrapped in tales, eternalizes suffering and does refuse to intervene in toxic cultures stuck? Take the middle east- there where two attempts at a two state solution, and the victims of the story, rejected both, wanting a "final" jew free solution.
How does one feel contributing to progress - when reality moves so obviously orthogonal to the stories you tell yourself?
s1artibartfast 32 days ago [-]
I think the rest is history did a great job of providing a balanced take in their multi part series on Cortez. They didn't shy away from the brutality on either side of the conquest. That is to say, they explored the context for why so many logal groups allied with Cortez, and the critical role of La Malinche as a translator and former Aztec slave.
InDubioProRubio 32 days ago [-]
Thanks. Thats the sort of answer that promises really interesting complex reality, without a massaged in moral-message that removes all learnings for today. I shall give it a try.
bennyfreshness 33 days ago [-]
Also "The Conquest of New Spain" .. written as a first hand account by a soldier for Cortes.
Obviously cruel and exploitative what the conquistadors did, but it's an example how fact can be sometimes more incredible than fiction.
How a small band of soldiers got in way over their heads and had to bluff and bully their way through, or would have certainly been killed.
Of course, another major factor there is that just about everyone subject to the Aztecs hated them for a variety of reasons, but most obviously all the raiding/kidnapping and blood sacrifice. That's not to say the Spanish Empire was necessarily better, but their opportunities would have been much slimmer if the Aztecs had been even a little bit less all-around cruel.
lucretian 32 days ago [-]
if you enjoyed that, i very much recommend this work of historical fiction:
Actually better is the book "The Fifth Sun: A new history of the Aztecs" written in Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and translated by Camille Townsend. It is an account of how the Aztecs viewed conquest, which they didn't see as a conquest initially. Also the descriptions of the city of Tenochitlan indicate that it was just as sophisticated, and cosmopolitan as it is today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Sun:_A_New_History_of_th...
...
Columbus sailed for India
Found Salvador instead
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead
They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot
Diphtheria and the flu
Excuse me great nations coming through!
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide your sons as well
With the great nations of Europe you never can tell
From where you and I are standing
At the end of a century
Europes have sprung up everywhere as even I can see
But there on the horizon as a possibility
Some bug from out of Africa might come for you and me
Destroying everything in its path
From sea to shining sea
Like the great nations of Europe
In the sixteenth century
UI_at_80x24 33 days ago [-]
Both books are great.
Loved the revelation of planted food forests.
sho_hn 33 days ago [-]
Strongly second these recommendations. I enormously enjoyed them for both their information density, but also their extremely clear and proficient writing style. Absolute class journalism.
blancotech 33 days ago [-]
I’m very impressed. It would be great to see similar maps reconstructions for other ancient cities like this!
The presence of a comprehensive urban plan for all of these cities, with a clear grid subdivided into districts is extremely impressive. By contrast most European cities were organic and unplanned mazes.
robwwilliams 33 days ago [-]
Almost all inland Celtic “cities” of western Europe were built around strong fortifiable positions, aka oppida. They were definitely well planned for defense against tribal warfare and tribal invasions. Aztec cities (probably all cities) had similar root motivations—-control and defend territory.
Bibracte near Autun in Burgundy — the city Julius Ceasar had to conquer — is built at the top of a 900 meter hill;
Pyrene/Heuneburg built on a rocky spur overlooking the Danube in southern Germany is considered the first real city north of the Alps.
Titelberg in Luxembourg was built on a site easily defended on three of four sides and with plenty of space at the top.
One interesting exception—-Milan (Mediolanum). Like ancient Mexico City its defenses consisted of water; tributaries to the Po and surrounding marshes.
Venice is even more like Tenochtitlan and a more radical and more “modern” version of Milan. The Venetia hit chased into their lagoon thanks to Attila and waves if Goths.
You are right that Tenochtitlan had a much more obviously planned lurban structure. But the “organics” of Venice have their own logic, partly partly due to tides and winds but mainly due to a focus on commercial districts rather than religious/ceremonial districts.
In 1500 both cities were very large: Tenochtitlan was close to 300,000 and Venice close to 200,000.
ajross 33 days ago [-]
That's sort of a simplification. Medieval European cities were absolutely "planned," but generally as defensive structures. The nature of feudal government is that it discourages investment in big centralized "cities" and builds a ton of little forts for individual aristocrats instead. So by the time the economics of Renaissance trade effectively forced the cities on the governments, the floorplans were already set and things didn't fit.
Tenochtitlan, in comparison, was purpose-built as the seat of an empire (and a recent one, in fact). The centralized authority was there from the start.
noelwelsh 33 days ago [-]
Indeed. European rulers did do a bit of planning when the chance arose. For example, Lisbon was rebuilt in a grid after the 1755 earthquake:
> Keen to have a new and perfectly ordered city, the king commissioned the construction of big squares, rectilinear, large avenues and widened streets – the new mottos of Lisbon.
The grid is still visible in Mexico City today. All the canals you see in the reconstruction essentially became the streets as they were gradually filled in.
staplung 33 days ago [-]
Not to undermine what they did in any way but one thing the Mexica had that favored a strong grid with central planning was that each new bit of the city was built on land that had to be created from scratch. If you're going to build a new "neighborhood" from the lake, might as well make it rectangular. To some extent, they didn't even have to dig their canals, just leave bits of the lake not filled in (though there is more to making canals than just digging a ditch).
Having said all that it certainly seems that ancient Meso-American city builders of all stripes were really into grid-tastic cities, at least for the monumental cores with the temples, ball courts etc.
noelwelsh 34 days ago [-]
As a counterpoint, I much prefer the street layout of European cities to grids. I don't think the grid is particularly impressive; just a sign of a particular urban organization.
venusenvy47 33 days ago [-]
What type of layout do these use?
noelwelsh 33 days ago [-]
It's basically a tree.
sprkv5 32 days ago [-]
When we talk about cities with a grid plan, all the cited examples in sibling comments pale in comparison to Mohenjo-daro. It existed around 2500 BC and one of the iconic places is the Great Bath which is the "earliest public water tank of the ancient world".
Tenochtitlan existed in the 15th century which is fairly recent.
32 days ago [-]
34 days ago [-]
ks2048 34 days ago [-]
I'm reading a book about the Aztecs now (Fifth Sun). The meeting of the Spanish with the Mexica has to be the most epic event in human history. Tragic what was lost. Kudos to the artist for this.
comrade1234 34 days ago [-]
You can read a first-person (colonial) perspective from someone who was there.
"When I beheld the scenes around me, I thought within myself, this was the garden of the world. All of the wonders I beheld that day, nothing now remains. All is overthrown and lost."
Also check out Álvaro Enrigue’s fictionalized account You Dreamed of Empires. Vividly told from the perspectives of the principals, it makes for unforgettable reading…
They weren’t doing human sacrifices at that time at least.
inkyoto 33 days ago [-]
Is torturing (and the mutilation of a human body and sometimes death as a frequent outcome of the torture process) and burning people at the stake after an auto-da-fé for not believing in someone else’s mythical deity fundamentally different from human sacrifice?
southernplaces7 33 days ago [-]
Not to defend the brutal fanaticism of 15th century catholicism in Europe and the new colonies, but you should read in depth about the sheer scale of Aztec blood sacrifice. It put the Inquisition to shame with its savagery and quantities of victims.
elnatro 29 days ago [-]
The Inquisition did not exterminate to the level of the Aztecs. Aztecs were sacrificing people by the thousands. Indeed natives were a crucial part in the conquest of the Aztec Empire by the Spaniards.
Hardly made much difference after all. Those saved from being part of a blood sacrifice tribute later died in droves as victims of the new diseases. With hindsight, it's more a question of which sort of death, and the likelihood of it happening would have been preferable.
The Reconquista had finally driven out the Moors from Spain in 1492 - 26 years before Cortez entered Tenochtitlan and began the dismantling of indigenous religion. The Spanish Catholics were the Wahhabis of the day.
Thought Experiment: If the Iberian Moors were still in power in 1518,would we today be calling Latin Americans "Arabs"?
Similarly, popular opinion in Israel likes to call Palestinians "Arabs" because they adopted the language of their conquerors.
thaumasiotes 33 days ago [-]
> Similarly, popular opinion in Israel likes to call Palestinians "Arabs" because they adopted the language of their conquerors.
That's not a practice imposed by the Israelis. The (genuine) Arabs, as you would expect, favored themselves. So, everywhere in their empire, social climbers claimed to be Arabs.
When you read about the history of the region, the luminaries who appear tend to be Persians, but this is obscured.
senderista 33 days ago [-]
Just as Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, etc. were "Arabized", in turn Turks and Mongols were "Persified".
> The Spanish Catholics were the Wahhabis of the day.
I don’t understand this comparison.
> If the Iberian Moors were still in power in 1518,would we today be calling Latin Americans "Arabs"?
This assumes the Moors would have ventured to the Americas in the first place. At the very least, they didn’t have the same incentives as the Spanish to do so.
AlotOfReading 33 days ago [-]
Spanish colonialism in the new world was largely an extension of the reconquista abroad. The Spanish crown used wealth from conquered territories to placate and balance the power of Iberian nobility. With the conquest of the canaries and the fall of Granada, the only obvious place to continue that system was North Africa, which would have brought the Spanish crown into direct conflict with the kingdom of Portugal.
Then Columbus returned with news of a route to the indies that avoided the increasingly powerful Ottomans. The war machine just got pointed in a new direction until the realities of the new world eventually caught up.
A moorish kingdom would not have had the same approach to the new world, even if someone had discovered it.
frozenport 33 days ago [-]
Hmm, but was the reconquista really a capitalist venture?
AlotOfReading 33 days ago [-]
No, it wasn't capitalist as we'd understand it. Spain was very much a medieval kingdom, but there were elements of capitalism in Italian financing that became important towards the mid 15th century and especially during the new world conquests. That's something Wickham has opinions on.
bbor 33 days ago [-]
That's an interesting juxtaposition. I was going to comment on another (insightful!) comment here about how "the only indigenous-majority country is Greenland" brings up just how Americas-centric (plus the commonwealth...) the term "indigenous" is in the first place, and this is a great illustration of that IMO. Hopefully we can all agree that applying the term even to the British Isles gets really tough, and it gets downright impossible if you try to do it to somewhere like Palestine.
And it's no mystery why it has such big sway today in commonwealth countries as opposed to the relatively-minor importance it has in Latin America... In case anyone wasn't aware, the British Empire (and early US!) were definitely the baddies. I just recently found this quote by Jacob Howard, the liberal abolitionist senator who drafted the first sentence of the US's 14th Amendment, that I think shows how deep the assumption of animosity ran:
I am not yet prepared to pass a sweeping act of naturalization by which all the Indian savages, wild or tame, belonging to a tribal relation, are to become my fellow-citizens and go to the polls and vote with me.
On another note: you likely know this, but Columbus only got funding for his voyage because the monarchs were doing their victory-lap after finally conquering the last stronghold of the Iberian Moors, Granada. So it's all quite connected, not just by chance.
It's semi-common knowledge among nerds that the Islamic Golden Age isn't appreciated enough in western culture beyond "someone presumably was on the other side of the Crusades", but this is making me consider how the age of discovery's push for colonization might've been driven/inspired by a feeling of jealousy and inferiority compared to the rapid growth of the Islamic emirates...
thaumasiotes 33 days ago [-]
> "the only indigenous-majority country is Greenland"
The thing thats wild about Tenochtitlan, as the story goes, is that the Aztec people discovered it themselves, and no one really knows who originally built it!
loloquwowndueo 34 days ago [-]
You’re thinking of another city, very likely Teotihuacán. Tenochtitlán was built from scratch by the aztecs. (Either that or please give sources for your statement).
viciousvoxel 34 days ago [-]
Parent is probably thinking of Teotihuacán which is nearby. We do know who built it but there is relatively little know about them (compared to the Aztecs). The ruins of Teotihuacán were discovered by the Aztecs and they were mythologized, for instance even the name "Teotihuacán" is the Aztec (Nahuatl) name for the city meaning "the place where gods were created."
ks2048 34 days ago [-]
Maybe they are referring to the fact that the Mexica came from elsewhere and founded the city and there were already other people/cities in the area. It seems the Valley of Mexico has been inhabited since around 12,000BC, so not surprising there isn't history of the first people there.
loloquwowndueo 33 days ago [-]
Nope. It was just an honest mistake see response from parent.
beepbooptheory 34 days ago [-]
oops yes, definitely was thinking of Teotihuacán.. My bad!
shermantanktop 33 days ago [-]
T-something. Those names are easily confused for me as an English speakers.
33 days ago [-]
ecocentrik 34 days ago [-]
You think some mysterious people or aliens built something as technologically complex as a planned urban city, with a clear grid, subdivided districts with schools and commercial centers... that facilitates the application of human labor, commerce, worship and education and then gifted it to some other people who somehow knew how to use and maintain that technology?
To most Americans today, who have no idea why their country works the way it works, and would rather tear it all down, I'm sure the actions of the last few generations might seem alien.
beepbooptheory 34 days ago [-]
Well first of all, I got the city wrong so its really not applicable here.
But also more broadly, your point is basically why Teotihuacan is so interesting to me! Not because of aliens, but because its fun to think about how the Aztec/Mexica people were as displaced from the origins of that particular place as much as we are!
But yes absolutely with you: even more so than attributing it to a particularly American decadence (which is a little too pat/editorial column to pass my sniff test, but ymmv), the whole impulse to Ancient Alienize things seems to me to be a kind of mystification which sustains, ultimately, racist/colonial stereotypes of ancient non-white people. It clearly serves to sustain a certain idea of civilization, rather than overturn or disrupt it.
Either way, its an important point, and happy to be your punching bag so you can make it!
ecocentrik 33 days ago [-]
Thank you for giving your statement more context. :)
Asking the question: "How could they have done that?" is not dissimilar from asking "Why didn't we do that?" so occasionally truly curious individuals do step through the self-soothing cultural narrative.
thaumasiotes 33 days ago [-]
> The thing thats wild about Tenochtitlan, as the story goes, is that the Aztec people discovered it themselves
Considering that the Aztecs were a recent conquering group, the southern extremity of their ethnicity, that isn't surprising at all, whether or not it's true.
NickC25 33 days ago [-]
Very cool. I've lived in and spent a ton of time in Mexico city , and this is really on-point. Would love to see more of these.
wlll 33 days ago [-]
There's a podcast I really enjoy that has an episode on the rise and fall of the aztecs, highly recommended:
Fascinating how some road paths have endured the centuries.
sayrer 33 days ago [-]
Yep. You can see it on the map in the Museo Nacional de Antropología. El periférico ("the ring highway") and other major roads follow the old causeways. I have been there many times in my life, maybe 30 or 40.
pfannkuchen 33 days ago [-]
I’m not sure why there isn’t more of an active association between so-called “Hispanics” in North America and the Aztecs and other pre-European cultural groups in the area. The current “Hispanics” are largely descended from the natives, I think?
I put “Hispanics” in quotes because it’s pretty weird to be labeled by the language of your conquerors who don’t even control anything in the area anymore.
jcranmer 33 days ago [-]
> The current “Hispanics” are largely descended from the natives, I think?
You can generally divide most of the Americas into three categories: (mostly) pure indigenous ancestry, mixed ancestry (Mestizo is the common term), and (mostly) European ancestry. In regions where slavery was important, you also have significant groups of African ancestry, mixed African/indigenous ancestry, and sometimes Asian ancestry from post-slavery labor importation.
In most of the Americas, the dominant ethnic group is mestizo. Greenland is the only country where indigenous peoples are the clear majority, and Guatemala is probably the only other country where indigenous comes closest to being a plurality over mestizo. (The degree to which modern people accept indigenous versus mestizo as a term varies from country to country).
> I put “Hispanics” in quotes because it’s pretty weird to be labeled by the language of your conquerors who don’t even control anything in the area anymore.
The vast majority of modern Latin Americans speak Spanish or another European language as their dominant language.
lupusreal 33 days ago [-]
The genetic background of Hispanics varies considerably from individual to individual, a lot of them are lily white by any visual measure and most of them have considerable if not majority European ancestry. In any case, culturally it's no contest; they have far more in common with European cultures than the Aztecs. Remember that most of them are Catholics, not humans sacrificing sun worshipers.
artistic_regard 33 days ago [-]
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lo_zamoyski 33 days ago [-]
This seems like a very Anglo and anachronistically racialist take.
Catholic colonial empires were characterized by a different ethos than, say, the Protestant English. The former involved a good deal of intermarriage (beginning with Cortes himself) and saw what could be described as cultural transfiguration and fusion. The latter tended to see the natives through the lens of Amalek (ask the Acadians about their experiences with the British). So, the distinction between conqueror/conquered is a false dichotomy, as Hispanic peoples are heirs to the heritage of both. And even where the heritage of non-Spanish origin is concerned, here, too, it is not quite so simple. After all, Cortes did not conquer Tenochtitlan with his merry band of men alone. He did so in alliance with the enemies of the Aztecs (e.g., Tlaxcalans, Tetzcocans, Cempoalans, Huejotzingans) who numbered in the thousands, and these do not include the historical enemies of the Aztecs, some of whom were conquered by them.
r14c 33 days ago [-]
"hispanic" is also more like a general term than an identity that anyone in latinoamerica actually holds. we largely identify with our home regions (which actually correspond pretty closely to pre-colonial cultural groups). "hispanohablante" and "latino" are far more common terms than "hispano", but are not really used except in very broad terms. however, due, in part, to the incomienda system there's a lot of erasure of indigenous and afro contributions to our cultures.
miningape 33 days ago [-]
I think you put too much stock into the conquered / conqueror narrative. These are living breathing cultures which develop in their own ways beyond the interactions of their ancestors. The majority of the population is a blend between both, and even many cultural traditions are a clear blend of both (Dia de los Muertos being probably the most obvious).
Most Hispanics I've spoken to about this see it all as apart of what makes them, them, not some artificial separation based on what modern politics thinks of the groups their ancestors were apart of. In another sense you cannot remove one part and still have the Hispanic people, and they also cannot reconstruct what has been lost.
You can also see this with groups like the Cape Coloureds who have their own distinct culture from the black, white, and indian cultures which it grew out of.
> who don’t even control anything in the area anymore
Note that they still speak Spanish and many are Catholic to this day - you can identify a lion by the marks of its claws so to speak.
tempodox 34 days ago [-]
This is so awesome. I want a time machine to go visit there, if only as an intangible ghost.
xandrius 34 days ago [-]
I think I'd only go back as an intangible ghost, unaffected by disease, needs and danger.
Basically I'm imagining a VR with an immersive window to the past, not actually going back.
34 days ago [-]
sizzzzlerz 34 days ago [-]
Looks like a scene from some of the ages in the old Myst PC game.
jostmey 33 days ago [-]
Did the floating city actually have lots of trees?
marc_abonce 33 days ago [-]
Yes, chinampas can have some types of trees on their borders.
Do all of these comments seem like they are AI generated to anyone else?
lastdong 34 days ago [-]
With AI assistants on our phones, it can be hard to tell the difference, and people often use it for completeness or clarity. Blind AI rephrasing has a cost though, sacrificing your personal voice, and often resulting in overly enthusiastic and repetitive sentences.
(re-reading this, it sounds just like AI!)
tecleandor 33 days ago [-]
> (re-reading this, it sounds just like AI!)
That's what an AI would say!
lastdong 33 days ago [-]
;)
zamadatix 34 days ago [-]
We've long passed the point where I can tell a good AI comment from a real one at a quick read through of a comments section. It's only the blatantly bad ones (blocks of listicles we delve into) which stick out like a sore thumb. That said, I think that says more about how good AI has become than it hints all the long established accounts in this thread using one just because they could.
marstall 34 days ago [-]
stunning! though curious about the sewage situation.
viciousvoxel 34 days ago [-]
Sewage was taken out of the city by boat via the system of chinampas, i.e. canals cutting through the man-made patches of reclaimed land within the lake. Almost all of this was destroyed/filled in under Spanish occupation and is likely one of the major factors in the spread of disease and decimation of the native population.
ecocentrik 34 days ago [-]
That is tragic. Europeans, with inferior civil engineering skills but superior military weapons, decimate a civilization instead of transferring and absorbing their technology and then take a few hundred years to catch up. It's a tech lesson that some of us still fail to understand.
kykeonaut 33 days ago [-]
Turns out that Tlaxcaltecas did most of the work in conquering the Aztecs. They also had vast privileges granted by the Spanish once the conquest was over. For example, they were granted the title of Don. Not as black and white as it might seem.
ecocentrik 33 days ago [-]
Yes, the Tlaxcaltecas defeated the Aztecs but they did not succeed in establishing themselves as the dominant power for very long. The Spanish returned with a greater military force and eventually dominated them.
There is admittedly plenty of nuance but my comment was intended to decry the tragedy of conquest, where a conquering party does not recognize the genius of technology implemented by the conquered party and proceeds to destroy that technology, to their own detriment.
29athrowaway 34 days ago [-]
Cahokia is another interesting place.
m0llusk 34 days ago [-]
Inspiring in many ways, but also troubling. These people would have used fire for heating, cooking, and crafting, but there is no smoke. Depictions of ancient peoples that delete critical elements are troubling, distracting, and misleading.
ferfumarma 34 days ago [-]
> To mark the ending of the 52-year cycle, all fires in the Basin of Mexico are extinguished and then lit again from a single source, in what is called the New Fire Ceremony.
So the renders are probably from right after the ceremony.
Troublesome, distracting, misleading problem solved.
ImPleadThe5th 34 days ago [-]
Brother, just wait til you hear they didn't even bother to render each of the individual pieces of hay that made up their beds.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491?ref=nav_sb_ss... [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9862761-1493
The podcast is the work of a British historian named Paul M. M. Cooper, who's also published a book derived from the podcast. Each episode is really well researched, incorporating recent discoveries rather than uncritically repeating old tropes. No filler, no theatrics, just really well-told history, backed by real sources.
Another excellent history podcast is The Rest is History [2], who also devoted an excellent (albeit much shorter) episode to the same topic.
[1] https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
[2] https://therestishistory.com/episodes/
There’s no such thing as politics-free history.
Obviously cruel and exploitative what the conquistadors did, but it's an example how fact can be sometimes more incredible than fiction.
How a small band of soldiers got in way over their heads and had to bluff and bully their way through, or would have certainly been killed.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108490.The_Conquest_of_N...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127938747-you-dreamed-of...
Loved the revelation of planted food forests.
For those who want to see the before and after of Manhattan, I highly recommend reading Mannahatta https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5955328-mannahatta
Bibracte near Autun in Burgundy — the city Julius Ceasar had to conquer — is built at the top of a 900 meter hill;
Pyrene/Heuneburg built on a rocky spur overlooking the Danube in southern Germany is considered the first real city north of the Alps.
Titelberg in Luxembourg was built on a site easily defended on three of four sides and with plenty of space at the top.
One interesting exception—-Milan (Mediolanum). Like ancient Mexico City its defenses consisted of water; tributaries to the Po and surrounding marshes.
Venice is even more like Tenochtitlan and a more radical and more “modern” version of Milan. The Venetia hit chased into their lagoon thanks to Attila and waves if Goths.
You are right that Tenochtitlan had a much more obviously planned lurban structure. But the “organics” of Venice have their own logic, partly partly due to tides and winds but mainly due to a focus on commercial districts rather than religious/ceremonial districts.
In 1500 both cities were very large: Tenochtitlan was close to 300,000 and Venice close to 200,000.
Tenochtitlan, in comparison, was purpose-built as the seat of an empire (and a recent one, in fact). The centralized authority was there from the start.
> Keen to have a new and perfectly ordered city, the king commissioned the construction of big squares, rectilinear, large avenues and widened streets – the new mottos of Lisbon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
Paris as we currently know it is the work of Haussmann.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
Having said all that it certainly seems that ancient Meso-American city builders of all stripes were really into grid-tastic cities, at least for the monumental cores with the temples, ball courts etc.
Tenochtitlan existed in the 15th century which is fairly recent.
"When I beheld the scenes around me, I thought within myself, this was the garden of the world. All of the wonders I beheld that day, nothing now remains. All is overthrown and lost."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_con...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127938747-you-dreamed-of...
Some sources:
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p09x1374/the-huge-tower-of-hu...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-find-brings-sk...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37365215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973229
Thought Experiment: If the Iberian Moors were still in power in 1518,would we today be calling Latin Americans "Arabs"?
Similarly, popular opinion in Israel likes to call Palestinians "Arabs" because they adopted the language of their conquerors.
That's not a practice imposed by the Israelis. The (genuine) Arabs, as you would expect, favored themselves. So, everywhere in their empire, social climbers claimed to be Arabs.
When you read about the history of the region, the luminaries who appear tend to be Persians, but this is obscured.
How?
I don’t understand this comparison.
> If the Iberian Moors were still in power in 1518,would we today be calling Latin Americans "Arabs"?
This assumes the Moors would have ventured to the Americas in the first place. At the very least, they didn’t have the same incentives as the Spanish to do so.
Then Columbus returned with news of a route to the indies that avoided the increasingly powerful Ottomans. The war machine just got pointed in a new direction until the realities of the new world eventually caught up.
A moorish kingdom would not have had the same approach to the new world, even if someone had discovered it.
And it's no mystery why it has such big sway today in commonwealth countries as opposed to the relatively-minor importance it has in Latin America... In case anyone wasn't aware, the British Empire (and early US!) were definitely the baddies. I just recently found this quote by Jacob Howard, the liberal abolitionist senator who drafted the first sentence of the US's 14th Amendment, that I think shows how deep the assumption of animosity ran:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_M._Howard#Speech_on_the_...On another note: you likely know this, but Columbus only got funding for his voyage because the monarchs were doing their victory-lap after finally conquering the last stronghold of the Iberian Moors, Granada. So it's all quite connected, not just by chance.
It's semi-common knowledge among nerds that the Islamic Golden Age isn't appreciated enough in western culture beyond "someone presumably was on the other side of the Crusades", but this is making me consider how the age of discovery's push for colonization might've been driven/inspired by a feeling of jealousy and inferiority compared to the rapid growth of the Islamic emirates...
Mongolia? Kazakhstan? Kyrgyzstan? Korea? Indonesia? Madagascar? Egypt?
Do the Greenlanders of today predate or postdate the Vikings?
https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-02-13/the-lost-city-... https://www.wired.com/story/explore-tenochtitlan-ancient-azt...
To most Americans today, who have no idea why their country works the way it works, and would rather tear it all down, I'm sure the actions of the last few generations might seem alien.
But also more broadly, your point is basically why Teotihuacan is so interesting to me! Not because of aliens, but because its fun to think about how the Aztec/Mexica people were as displaced from the origins of that particular place as much as we are!
But yes absolutely with you: even more so than attributing it to a particularly American decadence (which is a little too pat/editorial column to pass my sniff test, but ymmv), the whole impulse to Ancient Alienize things seems to me to be a kind of mystification which sustains, ultimately, racist/colonial stereotypes of ancient non-white people. It clearly serves to sustain a certain idea of civilization, rather than overturn or disrupt it.
Either way, its an important point, and happy to be your punching bag so you can make it!
Asking the question: "How could they have done that?" is not dissimilar from asking "Why didn't we do that?" so occasionally truly curious individuals do step through the self-soothing cultural narrative.
Considering that the Aztecs were a recent conquering group, the southern extremity of their ethnicity, that isn't surprising at all, whether or not it's true.
https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/12/16/episode-9-...
I put “Hispanics” in quotes because it’s pretty weird to be labeled by the language of your conquerors who don’t even control anything in the area anymore.
You can generally divide most of the Americas into three categories: (mostly) pure indigenous ancestry, mixed ancestry (Mestizo is the common term), and (mostly) European ancestry. In regions where slavery was important, you also have significant groups of African ancestry, mixed African/indigenous ancestry, and sometimes Asian ancestry from post-slavery labor importation.
In most of the Americas, the dominant ethnic group is mestizo. Greenland is the only country where indigenous peoples are the clear majority, and Guatemala is probably the only other country where indigenous comes closest to being a plurality over mestizo. (The degree to which modern people accept indigenous versus mestizo as a term varies from country to country).
> I put “Hispanics” in quotes because it’s pretty weird to be labeled by the language of your conquerors who don’t even control anything in the area anymore.
The vast majority of modern Latin Americans speak Spanish or another European language as their dominant language.
Catholic colonial empires were characterized by a different ethos than, say, the Protestant English. The former involved a good deal of intermarriage (beginning with Cortes himself) and saw what could be described as cultural transfiguration and fusion. The latter tended to see the natives through the lens of Amalek (ask the Acadians about their experiences with the British). So, the distinction between conqueror/conquered is a false dichotomy, as Hispanic peoples are heirs to the heritage of both. And even where the heritage of non-Spanish origin is concerned, here, too, it is not quite so simple. After all, Cortes did not conquer Tenochtitlan with his merry band of men alone. He did so in alliance with the enemies of the Aztecs (e.g., Tlaxcalans, Tetzcocans, Cempoalans, Huejotzingans) who numbered in the thousands, and these do not include the historical enemies of the Aztecs, some of whom were conquered by them.
Most Hispanics I've spoken to about this see it all as apart of what makes them, them, not some artificial separation based on what modern politics thinks of the groups their ancestors were apart of. In another sense you cannot remove one part and still have the Hispanic people, and they also cannot reconstruct what has been lost.
You can also see this with groups like the Cape Coloureds who have their own distinct culture from the black, white, and indian cultures which it grew out of.
> who don’t even control anything in the area anymore
Note that they still speak Spanish and many are Catholic to this day - you can identify a lion by the marks of its claws so to speak.
Basically I'm imagining a VR with an immersive window to the past, not actually going back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa
(re-reading this, it sounds just like AI!)
That's what an AI would say!
There is admittedly plenty of nuance but my comment was intended to decry the tragedy of conquest, where a conquering party does not recognize the genius of technology implemented by the conquered party and proceeds to destroy that technology, to their own detriment.
So the renders are probably from right after the ceremony.
Troublesome, distracting, misleading problem solved.