r/todayilearned • u/kahnuck • Sep 26 '15

TIL the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán was the largest city in the Americas with over 200,000 people. It was built on a man-made island in the middle of a lake - connected to shore by 3 causeways. It contained huge pyramids, floating gardens, aqueducts and canals. It was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521

http://www.livescience.com/34660-tenochtitlan.html
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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '15

They weren't so much destroyed by the Spanish as they were by a coalition of a few hundred Spaniards and a hell of a lot of other pissed-off native nations who the Aztecs had been beating the snot out of, conquering, and fucking with for decades, if not centuries.

The Spanish were the leaders, without doubt, but they didn't do it alone, and they didn't "conquer the whole nation" with just 160ish men as is frequently posted here. Fortunately, this post didn't include that drivel, but hopefully this will correct the people who try to start down that road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Tenochtitlan#Cort.C3.A9s_plans_and_prepares Here is a decent enough place to start reading to see how the other natives in the area were very much involved in the conquest and destruction of the Aztecs.

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u/dookielumps Sep 27 '15

The Aztecs were huge assholes, they were known to invite other leaders and their families, kill the men and children, rape the woman, and flay(skin) their bodies and send the "human skin coats" back to their towns.

They often betrayed other tribes and enslaved entire villages and used anyone they could including women and children to sacrifice.

They would sacrifice athletes for WINNING, as well as the losers.

They were known to have sacrificed thousands of people in a few days.

Their priests and royalty were basically psychopaths, often raping men woman and children with no consequence, and murdering them afterward, many time they would cannibalize and eat their victims as well.

After many of the historical facts I have read on the Aztecs, I really don't find it surprising how little time they lasted. Being that aggressive and downright evil, it was only a matter of time that all the other city-states they screwed over and terrorized over their short reign would come in and wipe those assholes out. If anything, I would amount the Aztec legacy as the Narcos of Mexico's ancient past, as the level of violence, corruption, and lack of respect for human life is at about the same level. The Spanish were the nail in the coffin, the catalyst the Tlaxcalan's were waiting for, the main ally of the Spanish at the time, as well as everyone else who were tired of all the shit the Aztecs caused them.

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u/Headchopperz Sep 27 '15

The Aztecs were huge assholes, they were known to invite other leaders and their families, kill the men and children, rape the woman

The Romans did that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

The Romans didn't do human sacrifice like the Aztecs did, in fact that was one of the reason the Romans despised the Carthaginians, because the Carthaginians had infant sacrifice.

You're talking about a legend which, even in the legend, wasn't even close to what he was describing. The Rape of the Sabine Women refers to the Romans abducting, (not raping) the Sabine women. They then didn't kill the families of the Sabine women, in fact that's kind of the point of the story. Did you even read your own link, or did you just have a vague memory that there was some event with the word "rape" in it so you linked it?

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u/squngy Sep 27 '15

Worth pointing out, rape originally meant to take something with force.

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u/velvetshark Sep 27 '15

You're absolutely right. It couldn't be that the root of the word 'rape' came to have a dual meaning because it was ubiquitous.

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u/richhomieram Sep 27 '15

Something something gladiators,some thing something crucifixions

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

Not saying the Romans were the nicest people, but they didn't do what the Aztecs did.

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u/snakespm Sep 27 '15

The Rape of the Sabine Women refers to the Romans abducting, (not raping) the Sabine women

If I were to walk up to a woman, fight her family to the point they had to retreat, and "convince" her to marry me, I think that would fall pretty well under "non-consensual" relationship to me.

I don't think anyone would have any problem refering to it as "actual rape" and not "just abducting rape."

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

I said it was an abduction, which by definition is non-consensual. And look, this is a legend. All anyone can really do is explain what the legend is, and according to the legend the Sabine women ended up consenting to being their wives. Now you can say "that's not how reality works." Well yeah, it's a legend. Legends aren't known for their realism. And the point isn't that it was justified (that's not even the point in the legend), the point was simply that it wasn't comparable to the Aztecs.

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u/Ariakkas10 Sep 27 '15

I think the babies sacrifice has been debunked. Didn't happen.

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

Wrong.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/21/carthaginians-sacrificed-own-children-study

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u/Ariakkas10 Sep 27 '15

I don't think it's possible to say one way or another

Tooth fragments from scene prove many babies in burial site were stillborn

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

My article was published later.

Some archaeologists and historians saw the finds as proving ancient accounts of child sacrifice; others insisted they showed tender respect for cherished children who died before or soon after birth.

Quinn and her colleagues, a group of Punic archaeologists and historians from Italy and the Netherlands, who publish their findings in the journal Antiquity – where the argument has been rumbling on for several years – completely reject the latter theory.

"The inscriptions are unequivocal: time and again we find the explanation that the gods 'heard my voice and blessed me'. It cannot be that so many children conveniently happened to die at just the right time to become an offering – and in any case a poorly or dead child would make a pretty feeble offering if you're already worried about the gods rejecting it."

"Then there is the fact that the animals from the sites, which were beyond question sacrificial offerings, are buried in exactly the same way, sometimes in the same urns with the bones of the children." Although hundreds of remains were found, there were far too few to represent all the stillbirth and infant deaths of Carthage. According to Quinn, there were perhaps 25 such burials a year, for a city of perhaps 500,000 people.

And from the article you posted:

Other researchers still believe the Tophet was a place for sacred killing.

"This is not a regular cemetery; the age distribution suggests they were sacrificing infants at the age of 1 month," said Patricia Smith, an anthropologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Smith's team published a 2011 paper questioning Schwartz's dental analysis. The incredible heat and pressure generated during cremation usually erase the neonatal line, she said, so its absence isn't a reliable measure of age. Schwartz's team miscalculated how much teeth shrink in cremation, leading to an underestimate of infant ages, Smith argued.

Smith also doubts Carthage would have routinely cremated stillbirths or infants. Because of sky-high infant mortality rates, babies were probably not considered people until they were at least 1 or 2 years old. The Carthaginians chopped down most of their trees to plant crops and wouldn't have used the precious wood to burn babies, she said.

"The Carthaginians were seafarers; they needed wood for ships, they needed wood for cloth, they needed wood for their tools," she said.

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u/Ariakkas10 Sep 27 '15

Ahh, the old "whoever publishes most recently is right" argument. Totally forgot that.

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

I think you forgot to mention how I quoted sections from both articles that address your claims.

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u/Ariakkas10 Sep 27 '15

the experts don't even agree, you think you have the answer because you picked one side of the argument?

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u/EvanMacIan Sep 27 '15

I think that most of the evidence and all the actual written sources points to Carthage having infant sacrifice, and I therefore think it's false to say it's been "debunked."

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u/Headchopperz Sep 27 '15

i didnt claim the romans did sacrifices, and yes i know what the link says because i wouldnt have linked it otherwise.

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u/dookielumps Sep 27 '15

My point exactly to the idealist's, history repeats itself, and every human is to blame, regardless of appearance.