Mexico

Discover The City Of Destiny – The Founding of Tenochtitlan

Established during 1325 and declined after almost two centuries later, and in between those times, Tenochtitlan was one of the world’s most magnificent cities; the name of the city was actually a name of the prickly pear plants which grew among the rocks near the site of its construction. Also known as Mexico Tenochtitlan, it is the capital of the Aztec empire as well as its most important city; Tenochtitlan was a majestic and without a doubt an incredible site to behold, not to mention its construction and flourishing represented nothing less than a prophecy come to perfect fruition, and even to the European conquerors who helped to eventually defeat it.

Teotihuacan was one of two primary altered (an Aztec word which implied a self-contained political unit) together with Tlatelolco its sister city, found in the so called Mexico City of today. Roughly estimated between 8 and 14 square kilometers, its centre was located on a small island which faces the western side of Lake Texcoco. During the time of its peak, Teotichuacan was inhabited by more than 200,000 souls. It was deemed to be a truly world-class metropolis because of its size, importance and population; in Europe alone, it can be compared only to great and ancient cities like Paris, Seville and Constantinople.

The Land Condition

A series of causeways which pointed in each of the cardinal directions connect the city centre to mainland. Bridges were made to be removable for defensive purposes in times of siege or warfare which allowed canoes and several other river traffic to pass by. Furthermore, the city centre was sustained by a network of canal which permitted all parts of the city to be visited through canoe and by foot.

A levee was constructed during the rule of Moctezuma. It worked by keeping the waters around Tenochitilan fresh, by means of feeding tem from surrounding spring water; the lake’s normal component of partially salty water was stored behind a dike to the east. They also built double aqueducts which was made to supply the entire city with fresh water coming from springs at Chapultepec. Farming was carried out generally with the aid of chinampa – famously identified as “floating gardens”, they were essentially man made islands, made by walling off rectangular areas of lake bed and overlaying them with sediment and fertilizer, generating suitable plots for growing squash, beans, tomatoes, maize, together with other well-known Mesoamerican crops.

Incredibly Grand Palaces And Grandiose Temples

Tenochtitlan was broken into 20 districts, having three vast main streets crossing its whole width. Despite the fact that each district had its own marketplace (referred to as a tiyanquztli in the Nahuatl language), the main commercial centre of the region was only adjacent, within the sister city of Tlatloco – such market is enormous as it can hold a very huge crowd of 60,000 people together during a ceremonial occasion.

Besides the wonderful Moctezuma’s temple, which was comprised of its own aquarium, zoo and botanical gardens, the numerous public buildings of Tenochtitlan comprised a variety of schools, temples, plus a 300-meter wide walled centre intended for religious events. A few of the most well known infrastructures which have been rediscovered as well as excavated include the following: the huge Templo Mayor, a tlatchtli ball court, and the Temple of Quetzelcoatl. Eventually ruined by the Spanish invaders, its remains had sunk into the soft lake bed sediment right up until they’re excavated during the 1980s, uncovering the priceless Aztec Calendar Stone and enormous ceremonial discs and various other artifacts. Quite morbid, the city was also home to temples made as sacrificial combat by ritual gladiators, and tzompantli are racks which publicly showcased the skulls of dead gladiators or sacrificial victims.

In a general way, Tenochtitlan grew to be like a noteworthy city owing to the bizarre instances involving its founding. As mentioned in their legends, previous to Tenochtitlan was established, the Aztecs were a vagabond; having been provided with consent to settle in the fertile valley of Mexico, they harboured a prediction that they will know the place to find the city that would definitely become their permanent home by the sight of a hawk eating a snake while perched on a cactus. By all accounts, the place where the said prophecy manifested itself was not ideal; initially, the future site of Tenochtitlan was a little more than a small swampy island in freshwater marshes or brackish coastal swamps. Yet, it was the industrious Aztecs who developed it, enhancing the small natural island into Mesoamerica’s premier polity, which went to lead every bordering settlement. Tenochtitlan would after that become the lynchpin of Aztec political and religious unity, as well as the centre of trade routes which reached as far as the Gulf of Mexico and also the Pacific Ocean – and then, based on what some experts claim, they have reached their southern neighbor’s land, the Incas, then gave rise for the hemisphere’s initial global economic highway.

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