(jazzy piano music)
- [Instructor 1] We're here at the Templo Mayor,
the main temple of the Aztecs,
which is in present-day Mexico city.
This was the heart, the most sacred place
in the Aztec Empire.
But they didn't call themselves Aztecs.
- [Instructor 2] They called themselves the Mexica,
or more accurately, the Tenochca Mexica.
- [Instructor 1] And they called the city Tenochtitlan.
- [Instructor 2] That basically means "the place
"of the prickly pear cactus."
The name Aztec is something that was given to them later
in the 19th century, and the Mexica or the Aztec
belonged to a much larger ethnic group
called the Nahua, who spoke Nahuatl.
- [Instructor 1] And they founded their capital city here
because of a vision that they saw
at the end of a very long period of traveling.
- [Instructor 2] One of the most important myths
for the Aztecs was this migration myth,
where they left their mythic homeland of Aztlan
from a place called Chicomoztoc,
or the place of the seven caves.
And the ancestors begin this migration
because their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli,
told them to go on this migration and to behold the sign
and to establish a city there.
- [Instructor 1] And the sign that they saw at the end
of their journey was an eagle perched on a cactus
that was growing out of a rock.
- [Instructor 2] In the middle of a lake,
and that lake is here in central Mexico.
And in fact, modern-day Mexico City
is on top of that lake.
- [Instructor 1] The city of Tenochtitlan
is founded in 1325.
And the city is a planned city.
The Spanish who conquered it two centuries later
were awed by the incredible planning.
They saw canals, they saw four major causeways
going through the city meeting at the centerpoint
of this temple where we are now.
- [Instructor 2] The city was all laid out
on a very careful grid plan.
This was a very ordered, very clean urban center.
- [Instructor 1] And it had four quadrants,
and this was part of Aztec ideology.
- [Instructor 2] They believed that the universe
was divided into four, and so what the city reflects
is this cosmological diagram
with Tenochtitlan as the center of the universe
and their main temple, the Templo Mayor,
in the sacred precinct as the center of that center.
- [Instructor 1] We're talking about the center
of a vast empire with subordinate cities
that pay tribute to the Aztecs.
- [Instructor 2] Some of the goods that made up
this tribute included lots of luxury and precious goods,
like feathers or green stone, or textiles.
- [Instructor 1] It was critical for the Aztecs
to bring prisoners from those subordinated cities
here to Tenochtitlan to be part of a sacrificial ritual.
- [Instructor 2] Maybe some of you are familiar
with what's called the Flowery Wars,
which was a form of a ritualized warfare or battles
where the main point was to acquire captives
for the purpose of sacrifice.
And initially they didn't have this vast power
over the Valley of Mexico.
They were subordinate to other places around the lake,
who they eventually defeated and they formed
what's called the Triple Alliance.
Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan.
Eventually, the peoples of Tenochtitlan
became more powerful.
- [Instructor 1] We're talking about a city
that at its height had between 200,000
and 300,000 people estimated.
- [Instructor 2] So with such a large population,
it was critical to find ways to feed the people
that lived here.
And so there were important agricultural techniques
used like chinampas, these muddy raised beds
to help provide food for the people of Tenochtitlan.
And the landscape played a critically important role
also in ritual.
We know that there were many processions
made to various mountains around the lake.
- [Instructor 1] It's hard to imagine as we look
over Mexico City today that this was once a lake.
- [Instructor 2] And it's after the Spanish conquest
in 1521, that you begin to have the draining of the lake.
But of course, it's still a lake bed,
so you can actually see the parts of Mexico City
that are sinking.
- [Instructor 1] One of the largest cities
of the Mesoamerican world in the 15th century
is one of the largest cities today
in the 21st century, Mexico City.
(jazzy piano music)