I never understood, are the pyramids hollow with rooms inside ?
It’s pyramids all the way down, at least for the templo mayor (the ceremonial center of the empire’s capital; it’s the biggest pyramid in the illustration above) . It was built on seven stages. Each time making it bigger.
They would build newer bigger temples over the older smaller ones. They considered it more sacred that way.
I always desperately want to live in these worlds, especially Aztec or Mayan ones. I wonder what it would really be like, overall better or worse… Not being able to see anything until I got close to it would be a bummer though 😅 (nearsighted)
I mean, worse overall than modernity, without a doubt, even for the elite. We take a lot of things for granted in the modern day - not even getting into some of the, uh, peculiar aspects of the Aztecs that even their neighboring states didn’t like.
On the other hand, it would much better than a number of other regions of the period - I’m reminded of the Spanish visiting Tenochtitlan for the first time and noting that it was more beautiful and better laid-out than the finest city in Europe at the time (generally agreed to be/have been Constantinople/Istanbul)
Yeah for sure. The Aztecs in particular would be a little scary to be part of. But I do honestly wonder if it maybe doesn’t balance out from the perspective of the average citizen. I know it kinda sounds totally insane to even question it, but on the other hand I think their experience of the world was so alien to my own it’s hard to say. Sometimes people are happier in the strangest of circumstances. I am definitely being biased by the visual beauty component, but at the same time that just shows how powerful that component can be. Hmmm
Ahhh yeah. I needed this like coffee in the morning.
@PugJesus This essay by Barry Lopez is pretty descriptive of what was there, what was destroyed by Cortéz.
https://toad.social/@ArrowbearMoore/115520882092968051That’s… an extremely strange piece considering the nature of the Aztecs, the destruction wrought by them, the overwhelming majority of Cortez’s army, and, for that matter, the purpose of the aviaries themselves.
@PugJesus The Aztecs were in no way inferior to Europeans, not in their art & ingenuity, nor in their use of a cruel religion as a tool hand in hand with war. I think Barry’s point was to highlight the inhumanity, but he does neglect to include that European introduced disease enabled Cortez to succeed on his second try. The Aztec’s rapid rise of “civilization” shows what humans are capable of. If only we could do so with compassion as a foundation.
Destruction of objects and buildings of importance is ancient and universal - and very many beautiful things have been destroyed or killed along with this process. I suppose I found mostly odd the implication of a in-some-way fundamentally different culture from the degraded ‘West’, and the association of the Aztecs with nature.
@PugJesus Yes. The history of pre-Euro western hemisphere has been severely biased in our education systems, even more so now with our felonious leader. That the Indigenous Americans were lessor beings, just savages, was the myth Lopez was dispelling. I don’t think the irony that they were just as sophisticated in their savagery as Europeans was lost on him, based on some of his other work.
Millenia pass, some things change, some stay the same. We can travel to the moon, but we can’t get along.
