In Our Time - The Aztecs

Episode Date: February 27, 2003

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Aztec Empire. According to legend, the origins of it lie on a mythical island called Aztlan - "place of the white herons" - in the north of Mexico. From there this nomadic group of Mesoamericans are said to have undertaken a pilgrimage south to the fertile valleys of Central America. In the space of just 200 years, they formed what has been called the largest, and arguably the most ruthless, pre-Hispanic empire in North America which, at its zenith, was to rule over approximately 500 small states, comprising by the 16th century some 6 million people. Was it military might and intimidation alone that helped the Aztecs extend their power? What part did their complex belief system play in their imperial reach? Their use of human sacrifice has been well documented, but how widespread actually was it? How easily were the Spanish conquistadors able to Christianise this empire? And what legacy did the Aztecs leave behind that lives on in our world today?With Alan Knight, Professor of the History of Latin America at Oxford University and author of Mexico: From the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest; Adrian Locke, co-curator of the Aztecs exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts; Elizabeth Graham, Senior Lecturer in Mesoamerican Archaeology at University College London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. According to legend, the origins of the Aztec Empire lie on a mythical island called Ashtlan, place of the white herons in the north of Mexico.

From there, this nomadic group of Mesoamericans are said to have undertaken a pilgrimage in the 13th century, south. to the fertile valleys of Central America. In the space of just 200 years, they formed what's been called the largest and arguably the most ruthless pre-Hispanic empire in North America, which at its zenith was to rule over approximately 500 small towns

comprising by the 16th century some 10 million people. What it military might and intimidation alone that helped the Aztecs extend their power? What part did their complex belief system play in their imperial reach? Their use of human sacrifice has been well documented, but how widespread actually was it? How easily were the Spanish conquistadors able to Christianize this empire and what legacy did the Aztecs leave behind that lives on in our world today?

With me to discuss the Aztec Empire Alan Knight, Professor of the History of Latin America at Oxford University, and author of Mexico from the beginning to the Spanish conquest, Adrian Locke, co-curator of the Aztex exhibition currently at the Royal Academy of Arts, and Elizabeth Graham, Senior Lecturer in Mesoamerican Archaeology, at University College, London. Alan Knight, what exactly were the Aztecs and where did they come from? The Aztecs go under a lot of different names, which makes it complicated.

But if we stick to Aztecs for the moment, they were a migrant people who came down from northern Mexico, probably around the 12th, 13th century, part of a much greater movement of people, which traditionally came from north to south, from the big open, rather arid regions of northern Mexico, and came to settle in central Mexico, particularly in the valley of Mexico itself,

which is a well-watered fertile basin, which had been the cradle of major civilizations in the past with both Tiotti Wakan and Tula. And so the Aztecs were sort of relative latecomers who then settled, gradually developed, and sort of grafted their loosely barbarian stock onto existing civilizations, and then rather rapidly and late in the day

develop their own city-state and eventually an empire, which as you said then stretched over large areas of central and parts of southern Mexico, well. You use the word barbarians talking about the Aztecs when they came to the Central American lush lowlands there and they met older civilizations. What were these older civilizations

like and based on and how did that make the Aztecs seem barbarians by contrast? There had been at least two major empires in the region of central Mexico going back to the first millennium after Christ with Tioti Wakan, a major city in the northern part of the

valley of Mexico. And then later between about 900 and 1100, a somewhat less large and integrated empire centered on the city of Tula, a little to the northwest. So there was a tradition in this region of creating large cities, which became the hub of reasonably broad, extended empires. The Aztecs coming in as rather small, weak migrant population, eventually working their way up, then began to intermarry and appropriate some of the legend, the ideas, and the legitimacy of those previous civilizations, particularly the Tult. of Tula, who the Aztecs look to as their kind of mentors and models as they embarked on their own civilization and their own sort of imperialistic efforts. Is there any sense at all that the civilizations whom the Aztecs met had drifted over

from Europe, had any connection with the Torheidel raft that came from Egypt to central Mexico? I would say none whatsoever. This is a theory that recurrently gets produced and, includes such sort of gems as Lord Kingsborough going bankrupt, trying to show that the lost 10 tribes of Israel came over and settled in Central America. Thor Hyadel may have shown you could cross the Atlantic on an Egyptian raft, but that doesn't mean the Egyptians did. And the fact there are a few similarities in building style use of pyramids. None of that suggests any evidence.

And more recently, you also have genetic evidence, which I think pretty much shows that the origins of the American peoples really come from East Station. It's a crossing over the Bering Land Bridge and the European or Egyptian connection is interesting but wrong. So the coincidence of the pyramids and the tombs is just that coincidence. Pyramids are a neat way to build a hierarchical structure that has lots of aesthetic and symbolic attractions.

Elizabeth Graham, what was the social and political stages of the Aztecs in the valley? Allens spelt it out in one way. Can you just flesh it out a bit more, please? What we know of those groups is that they were either hunting and gathering groups when they came in, or they may have lived in some towns. We're not really sure. Apparently the documents all differ, and the different

groups that come in, talk about themselves in different ways, and some call themselves hunters and gatherers, which the Aztecs apparently did, and some claim to have settled agriculture and things like that. Are we talking about the real group? We are the Aztecs, we're coming down south, we're all related to each other,

we're taking this place on. Are we talking about dribs and drabs of different interrelated tracts, that's right. Well, it depends. And I think Alan probably, we probably use Aztecs for the same term. Those are the latest of these peoples who speak Nahuatl who come into the valley. So they are not urbanized, as he said. And they learned urbanism in the Valley of Mexico, which has this long tradition,

not just in the Valley of Mexico, but the Valley of Mexico perhaps had the biggest cities. So there's a long urban tradition in Mesoamerica, and the Aztecs came from the outside and then learned that urban tradition. But are these people coming down very like the people are already there, or they are different sort of, let's use the word stock loosely without getting into race, any of that sort of thing. Are they just like the people already there, they've come a bit later than the others?

I'm trying to get a fix on them. Are they like the Germanic tribes that came over here in the 5th century, for instance? The Germanic tribes had a different culture and a different language, yes, because the language that the Aztecs speak, Nahuatl, is not an indigenous language to Mesoamerica. So they brought their own language? The point is that the Nauwato language, was spoken when the Aztecs came into the...

So they didn't bring their own language, it was already there? It was part of this language group that, as Alan said, came from outside. And that's important because then this language spread throughout Mesoamerica as the result of Aztec conquest. So they could talk to the people they encountered? They not only... In a way, it was like the Middle East with Acadian, which became this lingua franca. So it wasn't outside people, it wasn't outside language,

and they were successful enough that that language spread throughout. Mesoamerica, but the urban tradition was there before they came. I'm finding it very difficult to get a definition of the Aztecs now. It's all gone a bit fudgy. It's absolutely, certainly my fault. Adrian Locke, can you talk a bit more about how, what day it is the Aztecs brought? I want to, were these people distinctive? Did they sort of trickle in?

We know that their language was already there, or did they come? Barbarians was a word used by Alan. and did they come already as a different element which would somehow other seed and grow in its own way? What deity does they bring for a start? Well, the ultimate deity that they brought with them was their tutory god, the man who guided them on this great pilgrimage

over these 200 years called Huitsula Poshley, whose name translates as hummingbird of the south or of the left. He's very specific to the Aztecs. There is a very specific creation myth associated with him, but he's just one of a huge number of gods that the Aztecs had and gave worship to. Why is he so important to them? He's important to them because he distinguishes the Aztecs from other previous cultures. We've heard about how the Aztecs went to Tietiwa Khan, how they went to Tula, along this 200-year pilgrimage that they themselves describe in their books.

the Aztecs collected gods religious practices, calendrical information, settlement plans, all sorts of information. They were very astute at collecting information, but this just made them a bit of a sort of mixture of previous culture. So in order to distinguish themselves, they, for one, in one element, they created this fantastic god Whistler Poshley

through this extraordinary creation myth. And that creation myth really gives lay to what their capital city, Tenochtitland later becomes. It becomes a sort of mythical recreation of their origin, if you like. And what was that? Can you spell that out a bit more? Because was it when they saw an eagle on a cactus which grew out of a stone that they thought that was the site of the city?

Was those three, the eagle, the cactus and the stone to do the recreation with? This was a sign that had been foretold that they were waiting, expecting to see at some point and there's migration in this pilgrimage. But Whitsler poshly has this extraordinary pathogenic creation and there's a goddess called Kurt Likwe, whose name translates as she of the serpent skirts, who one day was sweeping out a temple on top of a pyramid mound at Kuatipek,

which is serpent hill, and a ball of fluff miraculously impregnated her while she was doing this sweeping as cleaning. Her daughter, Coyoschalki, who's associated with the moon, became incensed when she heard that her mother was pregnant by an unknown parent and descended on Kuatipak with the intention to kill her mother and the unborn baby and she summoned her 400 brothers to help her in this task Quitsla Poshley was miraculously born as a fully armed warrior

sprang out of the womb and defeated his sister Koyoshaelki he decapitated her and dismembered her and sent her body rolling down the hill and put flight to the 400 brothers. And he emerges as this supreme, powerful God associated with the sun, and there's this idea of the balance of the sun and the moon, that the sun puts flight to the moon and reigns supreme in the universe. And this held, this was their specific God and this distinguished them, did it? You talk in that way, it sounds as if there are sort of a driven group of people or people.

I think we can assume that the Aztecs were a driven, group of people. They were quick to distinguish themselves. Once they'd established their identity and their city, they were quick to distinguish themselves from the nomadic tribes that still existed in northern Mexico or northern central Mexico. The Chichimex, they called them the dog people. They certainly looked down on them. They were trying to elevate themselves, and they clearly were quite ambitious. Alan Knight, can you tell us a bit more about their culture? I'm we talking about a Stone Age culture, but we've heard about calendars here. We've heard about quick intelligence. We've heard about

very elaborate myth working out and so on. What sort of culture are we talking about there? There's one minute to go back to why they're Aztecs. Aztecs is a later name that was given to them which is derived from Aztlan, their mythical place of origin, and there are enormous speculations where that is, and we really don't know.

Their ethnic name that they would have used was Mexica, from which we get Mexico, and we are stuck with this notion of an Aztec Empire, as we're like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy Nor Roman. but we're stuck with it so we use it, but it's not a very precise ethnic term, and we don't want to probably get too hung up on that.

In terms of their technology, which is, I think, very important, they were a stone age people in the sense that they still relied on a kind of neolithic technology. Their basic steel, if you like, was obsidian, which is flint. The only metallurgy they had was, broadly speaking, decorative, silver, copper and gold. they had no developed metal work for weaponry, for example. They hadn't developed bronze, which obviously was significant when the Spaniards arrived with Talade and steel at their disposal. And in other respects, too, it was, like the rest of the Americas, a culture in which they had no draft animals because they'd been eliminated back in the Pleistocene.

So there was no horses or mules. There was no cattle, no pigs, no sheep. So, A, they could not have nomadic pastoral civilizations. their mobility was limited and they could only carry what humans could carry. They had no carts, they had no wheels except on little toys. They had no functional wheel. So in many ways, technologically, it was, if you want to put it crudely,

a very backward civilization compared to Europe. But in terms of astronomy, art, architecture, it was extremely advanced and sophisticated. So it's in some ways somewhat paradoxical. It shows that art architecture don't sort of neatly follow from some technological given. and there's a big differential between the two. That's a very good distinction about the Mexico and the Aztecs.

But when did the Aztecs to move on, as we now think of the Aztecs, become recognizable as such? In the beginning of the 15th centuries, I understand it. They'd settled enough to begin to make alliances, and it was out of this what we look on as the Aztec Empire. Let's just make an analogy of the whole Roman Empire and sacred. began. Can you tell us about that? The classic political unit in Mesoamerica as a whole, including the valley of Mexico, is a kind of city state, a city with a hinterland, rather like in ancient Greece.

And you could therefore say the crucial point which we touched on just now was the foundation of the island city of Telichitlan sometime in the 14th century. The date is disputed. And that's when the Aztecs definitively settle. They stop being a rather mercenary and nomadic people, and they then begin to create their own sense. of production and power. Production is very important because this is a very fertile region where they can develop the resources of the lake, they can use the communications which the lake affords them to begin to build up a center of power in what is a very almost kind of Darwinian environment of conflicting city-states. This was a classic model in many parts of Mesoamerica. The interesting thing about the Aztecs is eventually around the early to mid-15th century.

They managed to break out from being a powerful city state to being a kind of empire. In fact, three city-states ally, and they then proceed to perform the hub of an empire that now stretches way beyond the Valley of Mexico. So they go from city-state to alliance and eventually to a very loosely integrated, broader empire. Elizabeth Graham, how did this, how did they manage to control this empire? That's a really interesting question, because the popular image is that the Aztecs controlled their empire militarily. But one of the things that we're finding in recent years is that the key seems to be how elites in the Aztec Empire reinforced each other, how the Aztec rulers

allowed elites in their city-states to extract tribute. And even though the Aztecs often talked about being very powerful militarily, there were really interesting things going on that linked the elites of the provinces to the elites in central Mexico in which they were allowed to exact tribute. And so in a sense, if you look at the economic situation. There was more that tied the elites in Central Mexico, the Aztecs themselves, to all of their empire than those elites shared

with people below them. And this is something that's just coming out, perhaps, in the last decade or so, this very interesting elite structure that developed after the classic collapse with the elites reinforcing each other. So it's a tribute system rather

than a system of garrisoning and that sort of thing. Right. Yes, it's a system by which Well, the Aztecs, and we'll probably talk more about this, because their warfare is highly ritualized. Let's talk about it now. Shall we? Yeah.

And there are debates, I think, about exactly how Aztec fighting began, but the Mesoamerican tradition of warfare is that generally it was an elite affair in which... The nobles did the warfare. They had hand-to-hand combat. They didn't. The overall purpose was not to kill on the battlefield, but for individuals to have hand-to-hand combat, one individual overcame the other,

took him back, and then he was sacrificed. And throughout Mesoamerica, it was always the nobles that were sacrificed. Now, this may have changed at the Aztec Empire. It's something that we're looking into right now, but basically sacrificial victims throughout Mesoamerican tradition, and as far as I know among the Aztecs as well,

they had to be the upper classes were the elite sacrificial victims. They were the ones who you sacrificed to the gods. So the men who called the wars, fought the wars, and the people they captured had also called the wars in their state, and they were the people who were sacrificed. Right. So it's a little close to, it's a bit of a club there.

What do you think this, do you think that's sort of what we might call by some kind of jump, a chivalry code? Do you think that it did obtain? And if so, what were the consequences? within the Aztec Empire? Well, I think undoubtedly there was some sort of code of chivalry. The nobility comprised various facets as well. I mean, the Aztecs had this extraordinary tribute empire

based on tax-paying groups of people, individuals around them. And these supported quite a large number of individuals. The nobility, you could say the priesthood also were part of the nobility. There were merchant class who were extremely important and acted like ambassadors, diplomats, if you like, for the state. There are all these various groups that made up the nobility. But the ones that Elizabeth are talking about, clearly, they're sort of the people that we refer to as the eagle and jaguarians,

the very esteemed people in the military tradition. And, of course, there was also the royal class, which was another slight step up. And these sort of these flowery wars, as they've been called, they are almost like sporting fixtures. The flower was because they were decorated, can you just explain them? Yeah, they were called flowery wars because basically the warriors went into battle dressed in the most elaborate and magnificent ornaments and adornments and accessories imaginable.

Featherwork shields, high-quality goldwork ornamentation in the nose and the ears and the lips. And extreme kind of... Sounds like Mardi Gras. Yes, I mean, it's very, very beautiful and costly, costly, costly. costumes, unavailable to the average person, of course, and the fall of these warriors on the battlefield was likened to petals, falling of flowers and this beautiful sort of idea or vision of these colourful battlefields, not so much stained by the colour of blood, rather marked by the colour of the outfits that people were wearing.

Now, it's interesting that so far we haven't really hit the idea of human sacrifice, top of pyramid, the knife goes in, heart comes out and so on, yet that is the central image of Aztec culture under the burning sun, and it's been taken up by a lot of historians from the beginning, the very beginning. Western historians put that on paper, and novelists, particularly D.A. Lawrence, have reinforced it in some magnificent and some off-the-wall writing, but there you go. Alan, where are we with that? What part did that play? Is that what it's all leading to, and this is peripheral we've been talking about, the poetry,

the feathers, the ornamentation, the artefacts and so on. Well, what do you think is central and peripheral will probably depend a bit on your take on that civilisation, what you're interested in. But I think from a point of view of the politics and the imperialism of the Aztecs, sacrifice was extraordinarily important, and it's very tied in with the warfare we've been talking about because it's been suggested.

The purpose of the warfare, though it in part was to extend the empire to get tribute, because it was typically a tribute empire. The other purpose was to get sacrifices, to get prisoners. And so you have this form of warfare, which is distinctive, where the goal is not to annihilate the enemy, which is what the Spaniards did when they arrived, but it was to get prisoners to haul back to Tenochtitlan or whatever was your home community.

That was an old tradition in Mesoamerica, as has been said, elites had been fighting and sacrificing each other for a long time. But the Aztecs raised this a whole new quantum level. Their imperialism is more aggressive. I would argue almost it's more terroristic, to use a rather loaded term, and sacrifice acquired sort of industrial proportions. The scale of the sacrifice, you can debate the numbers, but the numbers are very high and higher than they had been in the past. And so you have this combination of sacrifice and warfare, which is pitched at a higher level of intensity, which explains in some ways

both the rapidity of the growth of the empire, but also its inherent fragility. Before we talk about the extent of it, can we just nail why sacrifice was so important? What was it about sacrifice that was so compelling and essential to that civilisation? Well, compressing some very controversial and complicated arguments. First of all, there is clearly a powerful religious sanction, which is that to keep the cosmos in its course, to keep the sun coming up and the cycle of the seasons, you had to aid the gods.

You're not exactly propitiating a god like Jehovah or Zeus, what you were doing was helping the gods in their various ways of keeping the cosmos going. And the sacrifice, there were many other forms of bloodletting and flagellation and penance, but the human sacrifice was a way of producing the heart and the blood, which were the sort of lifeblood of the cosmos. However, I think it's also important to note at least two more, if you like, mundane factors at work here. I think, first of all, this was a way of intimidating, to some extent, even domestic audiences, the Aztec plebeians perhaps, but even more clearly,

it was a way of intimidating your subject peoples and using terror as a way of trying to maintain and extend your imperial control. And it seems to me that that form of aggressive military politics also lay behind the growth of sacrifice as a practice which the Aztecs carried beyond anybody else. Because these were carried out on the great stages of the pyramid with huge crowds around and visitors sometimes forced to come

and watch what happened. brought to down bassers and sat them in the best seats to watch the show. Elizabeth Graham, as I understand it, you don't think that this was as widespread as massive as it has been implied in what Alan has said and was certainly put down by the early historians, the Spanish conquistadores, the Spanish Christian historians. I think that he's right and that the Aztecs did up the ante. There's no question that they expanded and carried out more military back. in which to take prisoners back. But we do know, at least where we've been able to provide archaeological excavations

that the Spaniards exaggerated. But then that's another issue. No, it isn't actually, to be honest, because we feel that this is a massively important central feature of Aztec. And at one stage, there's a historian says 20,000 were sacrificed in the day, is that right? And yet there's no archaeological evidence whatsoever for this. Now, if that exaggeration is just a lie or a bit of propaganda, then we have a reason to suspect a lot of the other figures from that time.

There is archaeological evidence because the skulls were placed on skull racks and where these have been excavated. You do find skulls. But you might find 20,000. No, you don't find 20,000. I'd have to look up the records, but I think in one case, maybe there were a dozen. It's quite a different.

Well, but you have to allow for a bit of. of decay and things like that. But where Skull have been excavated. Yeah, there are no huge, you know, layers with hundreds and hundreds of... I'm actually quite in your notes. I'm a bit of... I'm a bit stuck here, Liz.

But you've gone out and said quite strongly, look, this is massively exaggerated. And there isn't the evidence for this. It is massively exaggerated by the... And that was quite... I found that quite interesting. And I don't know whether you're backing off from this or whether I'm pushing you too high. No, it is massively exaggerated by the Spaniard.

So I didn't want to contradict, though, what Alan said about the fact that the Aztecs did carry out more sacrifice than the Maya, for example, who I study. That is true. But I would, I'd like to put this in a different perspective. Now, we talk about human sacrifice. We talk about warfare. Let's just talk about human sacrifice. In our culture, when we send soldiers out to fight, you could call that human sacrifice. You could say that, you know, in World War II.

No, let's say what you said the same age. It's much better than that. to stick to that time. The Crusades are a better analogy. No, more. You're sending people out in a religious thing to do something. You sacrifice yourself for your faith. I think there's an analogy. No, listen. Listen what I'm going to say.

With the Aztecs, we call it human sacrifice, and it is sacrifice in that people have hearts cut out or their heads are cut off or their various ways of people are killed. But I emphasized that in Aztec warfare, they emphasized hand-to-hand combat. So if you actually looked at how many people died, what the Aztecs did was fight on the battlefield but to bring the majority of people back for sacrifice.

So if you compare that to warfare, what we call warfare, it is essentially, in terms of the numbers of people who die, they're probably far less in Aztec culture. But in our minds, we seem to talk about Aztec human sacrifice in Aztec warfare, as if they were two separate things and they are not always. In fact, in most times,

battles are fought to bring prisoners back and sacrifice them. Whereas in our culture, battles are fought and people are sacrificed on the battlefield. If we kill people on the battlefield, if they're not brought off to hospitals,

they are left to die, which they did in the Crusades. And that is considered legitimate. And we don't call that human sacrifice. We call it war. With the Aztecs, they fought each other on the battle, field, hand-to-hand combat, had to bring back the person that they subdued, not killed on

the battlefield, and then sacrificed him in a temple. So if you look at it that way, in a sense, it's equivalent. Do you see what I mean? Let Adrian come in for us, Enion. One thing we should also remember about the practice of human sacrifice and the numbers that are involved is that we're relying on two, if you like, one source of information. The archaeological record is very scarce and scanty as we've heard from Elizabeth. The archaeologists working at the Temple Mayor would say they found hardly any skulls from the Zompanthlies or Skull Racks.

So we rely very heavily on the chronicles or the books written in the early 1500s by the Spanish. And there we could argue that the Spanish are talking up human sacrifice in order to say, well, this civilization is clearly barbaric. we're completely correct in overthrowing them and claiming them for the Spanish crown and for Catholicism. And you could also argue that the Aztecs are saying, well, look, we're so powerful. We can sacrifice 20,000 people in a day. It doesn't mean to say they did, but they're saying that we could do if we wanted to. It's maybe a mute point, but we're not clear.

The historical record isn't that clear, I don't think. And it is actually a feature of warrior tribes and epic tribes to go in for the most incredible boasting, isn't it, about what they have done and what they do. that's what epics are full of. Well, I just don't think we want to, you know, say, is this civilization more bloody than another? I mean, this sort of, you know, counting of bodies is not probably the right way to proceed. I mean, and we need to distinguish between deaths in warfare. I mean, the Aztecs did fight some pretty serious campaigns,

for example, against the Taraskins, and people were finding whitened bones out on the plains of Mituu Khan for decades, even centuries later. So there were some fairly sizable battles there. and if you look at the statistics of deadly conflict, some of those Aztec battles were quite deadly as well. As regards to human sacrifice, clearly there is a lot of debate about the scale of it,

and I suppose it's a question, how long is a piece of string? How many do you want to have before it becomes significantly different from others? And I do think in terms of whether it's, you know, the Great Temple is inaugurated in 1487 and the story is something like 80,000 people are sacrificed. Now that is true, a story that's relayed through Spanish, sources and the archaeological

evidence may not bring that out but of course it raises the question well what did they do with the bits and pieces. I mean if they were taken off and then used for food which in some cases they were then logically you're not going to find intact skeletons or skulls because they would have gone. So

I'm not getting an argument about how many except to say and I think we broadly agree on this that this was a fairly elaborate form of public ostentatious spectacle in which respect it is somewhat different from deaths on the battlefield. And it relates, as Elizabeth said, to the practice of bringing back the warriors as prisoners

to be sacrificed, or you buy slaves in the market to sacrifice. That's nothing to do with warfare. That is using sacrifice as a demonstration of your worth, your prestige, your value in society, and at the same time propitiating the gods or at least of maintaining the cosmos. So sacrifice is not just about warfare and prisoners. It's part of a bigger set of practices and beliefs that is extremely central to Aztec society. whatever the numbers may be. Can I move on to the collapse of the Cortes came in in 1519,

and a couple of years later this, by any standards. I mean, their major city was one of the biggest cities in the world at the time. They were very, very sophisticated, developed in very sophisticated ways. They'd had tremendous success in a tough environment. And a couple of years later, the thing was on the way out. It happened very quickly. Can you briefly tell us why it happened so quickly, Adrian Locke? Well, there are various reasons why the Spanish were able to overthrow it, in effect, the power base of the Aztecs, to Nosteclan.

Perhaps the most talked about is the change in military tactics. We've already touched on that. The Spanish had a different attitude to war. This wasn't the same practice. They fought at night. The Aztecs, of course, didn't fight at night. They fought at times of the year. The Aztecs wouldn't fight, the harvest time, the sewing time.

They brought with them gunpowder, horses to laden steel, as Alan said, and mastiffs, these huge European vicious dogs that were trained to kill. But they also brought with them disease. And we mustn't underestimate the impact that European diseases, smallpox in particular is the one that's cited. But European flu had a devastating effect on the... population, an indigenous population of Mexico as in the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas later on, and this severely weakened the numbers of people who were able to literally go out and repel the Spanish,

but also the other thing that people don't talk about is that we all have this miraculous kind of story, this wonderful historical account of how Cortez were 200 men over through this empire of millions. He had a huge number of indigenous Mexican allies, those people who weren't favorable to the Aztecs, all after they'd seen the strength and power of the Spanish allied themselves quite quickly to them and gave them vast numbers of foot soldiers and logistical help in overthrowing the Aztecs. I think Sorin has touched on the main things, and particularly the importance of Indian auxiliaries. And it suggests that the Aztec Empire, for all its sort of size and impressive quality, was quite first. because it depended on controlling and trying to govern a very disparate large area with, as I said, very

poor communications and with a very restive population. There have been recurrent rebellions and repressions of a number of other ethnic groups, particularly in southern, southeastern Mexico. So when the Spaniards arrived, they, if not initially, could be seen gradually by groups like the Clascalsans to the east or others further to the south as potential allies, I wouldn't quite say liberators, but there's a sense in which an alliance, could be struck against the Aztecs and Tenoch Titlan. And of course, those Indians didn't know the outcome of what was going to happen. They would exchange one empire for another.

But in effect, it was that Indian manpower allied to the other factors that have been mentioned that made it possible for this small group of a couple of hundred Spaniards to really hijack the empire. I mean, what they did, they captured Moktizuma, the emperor. They eventually, after a very bitter siege, were able to take over and destroy Tenotetlan and then sort of place themselves in the position. of the old Aztec elite. So it was a kind of hijacking with mass Indian support

which enabled them to replace the Aztecs. And one of the fascinating things, I mean, a lot came out of that. First of all, it fed into the myth of European superiority massively, didn't it? I mean, 200 Spanish took on 10 million in Aztecs and walloped them. I mean, that is very crude, but it actually was a truth of a received truth of education in the Western system for a very long time.

But secondly, Elizabeth Graham, the Roman Catholicism, Spanish Roman Catholicism, took over the Aztec religion, as it were. Can you just say why that did happen? And again, so comparatively quickly, what was there about the Aztec religion and Roman Catholicism that allowed the one to be so quickly subdued and overlaid by the other? I think Christianity was fairly successful in Mesoamerica,

And it's partly because of this idea of sacrifice and of people having to shed blood for religious purposes. That was a theme that ran through Christian religion, of course, with the sacrifice of Jesus and the Aztecs and the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples didn't really have any problems with that concept. So it was a religion that in some senses did make sense to the Aztecs themselves. they were able rather quickly to sort of switch their gods for Christian saints. And you still find that in Mexico today and in my area as well, that the saints, for example, people will say prayers to saints in the fields. And those saints are just makeovers of pre-Columbian deities but made into saints. And the Blessed Virgin, for example, is equated with the moon.

Jesus is equated with the sun. So it was a very, in some ways, it was a very easy transition from... Jesus was equated with the sun in Western culture at the beginning too, wasn't it? With a halo in the sun and so, yes. And what interests me in particular, I discovered when I was reading one of the early Aztec catechicisms that it was the same catechism I had when I was a child. And so I knew that what the priests were dictating to the Aztecs was exactly what I had been told as a child. and we know that the techniques were the same.

They would aim for the children. They would get Aztec children, Maya children, and they would speak to them first. They would teach them catechism. They would reward them with beads and pictures and things like that. And what's interesting is that it doesn't take long. If you've got the children, it doesn't take long for that society, in a sense, to change rather rapidly.

This doesn't mean that there wasn't resistance. But there is a lot more similarity than people think between aspects of pre-Columbian religion and Christianity. I think there's an interesting parallel between the political and the religious in this sense. We were talking about the superiority of the Europeans. It was, in some senses, easier for the Spaniards to knock out a big integrated empire, be it the Aztecs or the Incas, and replace it, than to dominate more scattered stateless or small state people,

the Maya or even more in northern Mexico, which the Spaniards had tremendous difficulty in controlling, because there wasn't a state structure for them to take over. And similarly, I think in religion, what partly happened with the Aztecs or with central Mexico is that the Spaniards came to a society in which religion had been somewhat loose, fluid, and in a kind of way eclectic. We've mentioned how different gods came and went and absorbed others. The Spaniards come with this much more almost fundamentalist belief.

There is only one true religion, and you have to believe it. The Mesoamericans went along with this in a sort of prudential way. they thought, well, actually these Spaniards, obviously, you've got something we don't have, a number of ways, so we'll go along with it. There was a prudential conversion and at the destruction of, for example, the cult of which Lepotian Human Sacrifice. But down at the grassroots, I think there was a lot of older Mesoamerican beliefs associated with particular shrines, caves, mountains and streams, or even little artifacts, which maintained and continued sort of under the carapace of official Catholicism. So apart from the saints being equated with gods, which is the familiar argument,

There's also a duality here between a kind of formal Catholic hierarchy to which the Indians paid lip service and probably actually did in many ways genuinely defer. But down below, you have older popular superstitions and again, exactly as in Europe. It's not that different from what happened with the conversion of Europe to Christianity. Nevertheless, the Christianity did bring in a lot of new ideas. I mean, there was monotheism. There were ideas about hell, in a way, hell and heaven, which were different in many ways. notions about monogamy and the way you should behave, sexual and family relations.

The Catholic Church did change a great deal in terms of norms and behaviour. So it wasn't all a kind of story of syncretic fusion. Finally, then, what of that Aztec Empire of the 15th century until the arrival of course? What actually remains of it now? What has it left? Starting with you, Adrian. Well, clearly, though, the archaeological ruins,

if you go to Mexico, you can see the physical remains of the Aztecs. But we've spoken earlier about the Nahuatl language. It's still spoken by some two and a half, three million people in central Mexico. The traditional way of preparing maize for the preparation of tortillas, for example, they still use the metate, which is a pre-Columbian grinding stone. And, of course, the food stuff, the types of food that people eat, including chocolate and chilies, all these things that we didn't know in Europe before the Americas were discovered, and also some of the regional clothing,

all remnants, if you like, or very strong survivors from that time. Alan? Many of those, of course, are features of Mesoamerica in general, the foodstuffs, and they clearly do survive and are very important. Indeed, we've imported some of them. If you take the Azteg Empire as a system of belief and a structure of power, it was destroyed, and actually I don't think very, very strong resonances remained thereafter.

In contrast, say, to the Maya in the southeast, another group we haven't mentioned, or indeed the Inca's in South America. And so if you look at the later history of colonial Mexico or even Mexico in the 19th and 20th century, although attempts have often been made, particularly by politicians or intellectuals, to revalorize the Aztecs

and to sort of use them as a template or a model for Mexico, it doesn't actually work, except at a rather cerebral level. The average, if I can generalize, Mexican, Mesoamerican Indian, I don't think looks back, to the Aztecs in the way that certainly I think the Maya and some of the South American Indians might look back, for example, to the Inca. There's a long tradition of rebellions in the name of the Inca in Peru.

There are virtually no, in fact, I would say no rebellions in the name of the Aztecs. So I think in a way the empire came and went and went rather dramatically and suddenly and did not leave a sort of powerful legitimizing symbol that could be used thereafter. Elizabeth Graham. Well, I think he's probably right in terms of the nature of empire, but then the nature of Aztec Empire was quite different also from the Peruvian Empire. If you look at family structure, though, in aspects of community organization, they are still the same. Sometimes employment organizations, the way labor is organized. As Alan had said, when the Spaniards conquered at first, they did take over the administrative system. ultimately they did impose their legal system.

But if you look at village life, you often see with family structure and the way people interacted that some of those structures were integrated then into Spanish political hierarchy, and they still exist. If you look at the cathedrals too, of course this is two in Europe. As you both said, you see many motifs that come from pre-Columbian motifs, flowers and the way space is organized. and the way offerings are made on altars and churches.

So it's a wonderful mixture, I think, of both, of Spanish and indigenous culture. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Elizabeth Graham, Alan Knight, and Adrian Locke. Thank you very much indeed. And thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy at bbc.com.com.