Hello everybody and welcome to Myths Matter a lot of extra mythology. I'm James Portnow
I am the creative director of extra credits and the very often writer of extra mythology,
and sam, this time, who are you? Hi, I'm Samuel Dassler,
I write a lot of extra credits
But I also have written some extra mythology including the Aztec myths
so we're gonna be talking about Aztec myths this week because Aztec myths are fascinating not only because what's in them
But also through the history behind them and how we received them. So
when I was reading through a lot of this stuff when we're going back and forth on this
I noticed something that you see very often in mythology
Which is sort of these inconsistencies between people like being born several different kinds. What's up with that stuff?
So what happened as the Aztecs were basically conquerors, right?
They- a story of them coming from the north and settling that's all historical but also part of the mythology so
The Aztecs would basically come and conquer and all these different
Cultures would kind of have the same myths but they would sort of adapt them for themselves
So depending on the source you read, it could be totally different gods filling the same roles
Which is also sometimes they seem to be a little bit out of character. Like Quetzalcoatl is actually like- he's pals with humanity
He's like friends and he's usually the good guy but he's the one who kind of starts
The stuff with Tezcatlipoca in our myth so it's a little bit weird and like Huitzilopochtli being born in that one, in other versions
he's not the guy. I think the Aztecs if that was their patron God, so they're like we're gonna stick him
where we would stick a different God. James: and this is really interesting because this happens a lot, right?
Whether it's the Roman Duke or a Greek mythology or later
bringing in the various
Celtic myths and all that sort of thing when we see
in myth cycles, I mean even in Egyptian where you have one culture, that's sort of
Grabbing older myths and incorporating them into a whole new myth style you get these weird inconsistencies. It's really hard as a writer to
Put that together into something that feels coherent to all of you because fundamentally a lot of times our miss cycles
Aren't totally cohesive
what was some of the really interesting stuff that when you research in this that you
stumbled across was stuff that interests you that you want to share with everybody
One of the most interesting things like read about was reading about how the myths were
Transcribed because he touched on it and the previous myths matter
It's like sometimes the native sources get destroyed something totally happened to the Aztecs
the Spaniards came in conquered them completely and so all of the
written stuff we have, with the myths was the Spanish friars that came in and they weren't
Necessarily like writing down the essence of Aztec culture that preserve it. Their job was to basically catalogue like what we conquered
New Spain so what all do we have here the link literally the Florentine codex is original title is the
universal history of the things in New Spain
and they also were Christian missionaries, right? So they were not
sympathetic towards the
Polytheistic kind of stuff that the Aztecs so there's like in the Florentine codex
which is the main codex that people tend to reference half of the first book is all here's all of their gods and
Then once in a while, he'll be like this is all wrong. You know, they don't have Jesus. This is not good
And then the second half of the book
it's just like literally a
manifesto of talking about why the Aztecs are wrong and the idolaters and they need to stop having to accept Jesus
James: and its interesting because also in- since that's one of our primary sources and
it's
one of the things that
Has been passed down to us if we look at
in this source some of the violence it's uncertain whether the
level of sort of violence in these tales is
completely
True to the original Aztec myths or if it was sort of kicked up a notch. I mean it's definitely there
it's definitely part of the culture but whether or not was kicked up a notch by some of the sort of
monastic
authors and priestly authors who are essentially often kind of writing propaganda back to Europe to say
Hey, look, it's totally good. We comfort these people were bringing civilization
Which leads me to the question? I mean talking about civilization. Let's talk about Tenochtitlan because
I'm very proud of so many different ways to knock big blond. I've heard it announced a ton ways. I'm butchering it
I'm sure I'm butchering it, but the city was very cool
So tell us about the city because our whole second myth was about the founding of the city, dude
Chuck's a heart out from the lake
It lands on an island how they build this giant sodon't on your head
So Tenochtitlan is crazy because this is like one of the most amazing engineering feats that I've ever read about
So they- the swampy island is completely true, Tenochtitlan all just in the middle of this swamp
They did is they took thousands of wooden pylons. They just put them everywhere and then they put
Platforms over it and then they put the city on top of that
So if you've seen any pictures
You see it like Tenochtitlan in the middle of the lake is really how it looked at
All that Spaniards came in and they all like everyone there are individual accounts is like we thought we were like in dreamland
or something, it was it was just so super cool and then they also had
hundreds of littler islands around it
Which is really grew their food those were called
chinampas and so they would- the guys would go out into all the food and then they also had
aqueducts
Which is the mark of a truly advanced engineering society- big aqueducts two of them running parallel to bring water in the city
so one of them going to be repaired while the other one was still running and
James: Oh, brilliant.
and then the main kind of Emperor his like bats were overlooking basically the entire valley
Which today,
lake texcoco does not exist because the Spaniards destroyed Tenochtitlan drained the lake for various
Purposes and what is now the location of that whole story is
Mexico City. James: and uh
Why build in the middle of the lake was it for defensive purposes was it- or was it really just part of
or the rituals in the myth side of this culture? Samuel: I think it had to do with both because it was pretty
defensible because really the only way you could reach it without it was the cosway's which are very easy to
Pick off with archers. James: but so lastly let's touch on
This concept of human sacrifice because it's it is definitely part of these myths. It was probably very much played up by
the priests, conquistadors and all these people coming in trying to justify taking over and basically tearing apart the civilization
that said it is in there. And so how much of a part
did the
Human sacrifice- how big of a part of the culture was is it as?
Predominant as we often think about it when we talk about Aztecs in pop culture
We reference Aztecs or what role did it play in that society. I mean it was definitely in there
I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle
but
There was definitely evidence that we have like literally just an entire wall at Tenochtitlan
Which is just covered in human skulls and part of this was not just a ritual thing
But also political because a giant wall of skulls like in the main square
Probably if you're a civilian and you see that you're probably gonna stay in line
James: but this- but was
Sacrifice ever used as a punishment because I thought it was a a
Very often considered an honor
to be- to probably be
be apart of these sacrifices? Samuel: I think it depends on the circumstances because if you
you would have
Volunteer sacrifice stuff for the gods and whatever but you would also go out conquer another city, and then those people would be sacrificed
involuntarily
So in that case it may be seems to be more political for
People coming into the city who may be from the tributary tribes
seeing these sort of things and seeing the power of
the Aztec culture and the centralized
City, but that gets me actually to one last thing
I know that I said that- tell me about the political structure of Aztec life? Were they?
Sort of a kingdom in the way that we often think about it would be more like or public like role
what were they like? Samuel: this is actually a really good thing to touchup because a lot of people who
Maybe don't know that the Aztec empire was actually a Triple Alliance
So Tenochtitlan was sort of a main member, but there were two other cities
Which I'm not going to try to pronounce and they were the ones who really were the start of the Aztecs
They were the Triple Alliance that spread out and they conquered most but not all of central Mexico
so one of the places they didn't conquer was, if you look at a map, theres a nice little hole there
Those are the people that Cortez went to with his like 600 men
to try to get them to join their cause to defeat the Aztecs, so it wasn't just
Spaniards with amazing technology. They had sword and shield. Mostly. It was also they got the enemies of the Aztecs who they hadn't
Yet conquered because the Aztec Empire only lasted about two hundred years
Uhm and used them as allies to also help defeat the Aztecs. James: Oh, man. There's so much more to talk about in terms of
the fact that this Empire in the last 200 years
But that there were cultures that came before it- that they brought this from all these things
But we have to go I know we're running out of time. So I just want to say join us next time
We have are going to be talking about some mythology from the Old Testament. Would you be fascinating specifically Samson and Delilah?
So come back for that and we hope to see you there. See you next week everybody
Subtitles by Dylan Miller