A Capital Built on Swampy Islets
The Mexica were latecomers to the Valley of Mexico. Pushed out of one place after another, they finally settled on a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco. The year usually given for the founding of their city, Tenochtitlan, is 1325. It did not look like a promising spot.
Yet the city grew. It spread across a series of islets and followed a fixed, balanced plan divided into four sections. Canals ran all through it and were used for transport. Houses were made of wood and loam with reed roofs, while palaces and temples were built of stone. The Great Pyramid rose 50 meters above the city.
How many people lived there? One anthropologist estimated about 200,000, counting the neighboring city of Tlatelolco. Another scholar gives 212,500. If you include the nearby islets and lake shores, estimates run from 300,000 to 700,000. Texcoco, the second largest city in the valley, had only some 25,000.
Gardens Made From Lake Mud
Feeding such a city took clever farming. The Aztecs built chinampas, artificial islands in the shallow lake. They piled up layers of mud from the lake bottom and plant matter to make raised beds. Narrow canals separated the beds, and farmers moved between them by canoe.
These gardens were extremely fertile. They could be farmed all year round and gave, on average, seven crops a year. Based on today's yields, one hectare of chinampa could feed 20 people, and 9,000 hectares could feed 180,000. The main crops were maize, beans, squashes, chilies and amaranth.
The city brought in fresh water through aqueducts from springs on the lake shore. It even collected human waste to use as fertilizer. The lake itself was full of food: fish, shrimp, amphibians, insects, insect eggs and waterfowl. With so much protein around, the only animals kept for meat were turkeys and dogs.
Shopping With Cacao Beans
Aztec goods moved through a network of markets. A typical town held a market every five days, while larger cities had one every day. Cortés reported that the central market of Tlatelolco, Tenochtitlan's sister city, drew 60,000 people daily. Supervisors made sure only approved merchants sold goods, and they punished cheats and sellers of fakes.
Small purchases were paid for with cacao beans, which had to be brought in from the lowlands. A small rabbit cost 30 beans. A turkey egg cost three beans. A tamal cost just one. For bigger purchases, people used standard lengths of cotton cloth called quachtli, worth between 65 and 300 beans each. About 20 of them could support a commoner in Tenochtitlan for a year.
Long-distance trade was run by the pochteca, merchants organized into exclusive guilds. They traveled to every part of Mesoamerica and brought back exotic luxury goods. They also served as judges and supervisors of the Tlatelolco market. Oddly, land and labor were not usually for sale, even in this busy money economy.
An Empire Held Together by Deals
In 1427, Tenochtitlan joined with two other city-states, Texcoco and Tlacopan, to defeat the Tepanec state of Azcapotzalco, which had dominated the valley. This partnership became the Triple Alliance, or Aztec Empire. Soon Tenochtitlan was the dominant partner, and the other two were pushed into junior roles.
The empire was never held together by soldiers stationed across its lands. Instead, it controlled client city-states by installing friendly rulers, arranging marriages between ruling families and spreading an imperial ideology. These states paid taxes to the emperor. The system limited trade between outlying areas, so they had to depend on the capital for luxury goods.
The empire reached its greatest size in 1519, just before Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés arrived. Cortés allied with city-states that opposed the Mexica. Tenochtitlan fell on 13 August 1521, and the Spanish founded Mexico City on its ruins. Local nobles then helped the Spanish rule by collecting taxes and organizing labor.
Aztec Words You Use Every Day
You probably speak a little Aztec already. The Nahuatl language gave the world words like chocolate, tomato, chili, avocado, tamale, taco and chipotle. These words passed through Spanish into other languages around the globe. Many of the foods themselves, such as corn, beans, squash and avocado, are still the base of Mexican cooking.
Nahuatl is still alive. It is spoken by 1.5 million people today, mostly in the mountains of central Mexico. Aztec place names are everywhere in Mexico, partly because Aztec troops traveled with the Spanish on early expeditions. Mexico City's Metro line 1 even has stations named after the rulers Moctezuma II and Cuauhtemoc.
The Aztecs also prized featherwork. Skilled craftsmen called the amanteca made colorful mosaics from tiny bits of feathers, stuck down with glue made from orchid bulbs. The finest quetzal feathers came from Chiapas, Guatemala and Honduras. Because feathers are so hard to preserve, fewer than ten original pieces survive today.
