WARWICK BRAY
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264461
- eISBN:
- 9780191734625
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264461.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter attempts to visualize how Tenochtitlan may have looked and functioned before the Spanish invasion. This usually assumed barbaric society with a culture of sacrificing thousand of ...
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This chapter attempts to visualize how Tenochtitlan may have looked and functioned before the Spanish invasion. This usually assumed barbaric society with a culture of sacrificing thousand of captives for the blood-thirsty Aztecs was truly a civilized city by any criteria used to define civilizations such as the existence of bureaucracy, sophisticated agricultural technology, ceremonials and monumental architecture. Aztec Tenochtitlan was built and has been civilized more than 2,000 years ago. This ancient Mexican city started in the year Two Reed, it proliferated into stone-built city larger than Europe and had functions and bureaucracy similar to that of the sixteenth century Madrid. In terms of agriculture, the Aztec city has sophisticated agricultural technology—the chinampas which provided for the Aztecs and which provided insight into the chinampa ownership history of this ancient civilization. Complex architectural buildings also graced the Aztec civilization before the invasion of the Spaniards. Palaces, temples and avenues were dominant in this old Mexican civilization. These buildings were characterized by their complex decorations of serpents, murals and sculpture celebrating the state, its rulers, its gods and their conquests.Less
This chapter attempts to visualize how Tenochtitlan may have looked and functioned before the Spanish invasion. This usually assumed barbaric society with a culture of sacrificing thousand of captives for the blood-thirsty Aztecs was truly a civilized city by any criteria used to define civilizations such as the existence of bureaucracy, sophisticated agricultural technology, ceremonials and monumental architecture. Aztec Tenochtitlan was built and has been civilized more than 2,000 years ago. This ancient Mexican city started in the year Two Reed, it proliferated into stone-built city larger than Europe and had functions and bureaucracy similar to that of the sixteenth century Madrid. In terms of agriculture, the Aztec city has sophisticated agricultural technology—the chinampas which provided for the Aztecs and which provided insight into the chinampa ownership history of this ancient civilization. Complex architectural buildings also graced the Aztec civilization before the invasion of the Spaniards. Palaces, temples and avenues were dominant in this old Mexican civilization. These buildings were characterized by their complex decorations of serpents, murals and sculpture celebrating the state, its rulers, its gods and their conquests.
Vera S. Candiani
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780804788052
- eISBN:
- 9780804791076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804788052.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
In the lacustrine basin of Mexico, pre-Hispanic technologies of water and wetland ecosystems management had developed at both the city-state and village scales. Village hydraulic and soil management ...
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In the lacustrine basin of Mexico, pre-Hispanic technologies of water and wetland ecosystems management had developed at both the city-state and village scales. Village hydraulic and soil management technology depended on land becoming water and then land again, and sustaining domesticated and wild plant and animal life with use value. The main village-level hydraulic structures in the northwest quadrant were the Cuautitlan River diversion dam, its irrigation network, and the Xaltocan chinampas; causeways and albarradones were the main structures around Tenochtitlan; all were multipurpose and designed to contend with both wet- and dry-season events. Ushering in technologies used mainly for the creation of exchange values, and with single purposes predicated on wet-season events, the Spanish conquest affected indigenous technologies without destroying them, as they used them to contend with the effects of ongoing deforestation and changes in the usage of the soil: increased urban flooding.Less
In the lacustrine basin of Mexico, pre-Hispanic technologies of water and wetland ecosystems management had developed at both the city-state and village scales. Village hydraulic and soil management technology depended on land becoming water and then land again, and sustaining domesticated and wild plant and animal life with use value. The main village-level hydraulic structures in the northwest quadrant were the Cuautitlan River diversion dam, its irrigation network, and the Xaltocan chinampas; causeways and albarradones were the main structures around Tenochtitlan; all were multipurpose and designed to contend with both wet- and dry-season events. Ushering in technologies used mainly for the creation of exchange values, and with single purposes predicated on wet-season events, the Spanish conquest affected indigenous technologies without destroying them, as they used them to contend with the effects of ongoing deforestation and changes in the usage of the soil: increased urban flooding.
