Word: tenochtitl
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...various symptoms of Mexico City's illness all work on and worsen one another. But the one problem that underlies all the others is the extraordinary growth in population. The Aztec capital known as Tenochtitlán, with its lakes and flower gardens (and an efficient sewage system), was depopulated by a smallpox epidemic in 1520, which killed more than 80% of all the Indians who survived the Spanish invasion. Mexico City did not reach the 2 million mark until after World War II. But then a systematic national policy of urban industrialization helped send the figures soaring...
When Cortés and his fellow conquistadors first glimpsed Tenochtitlán, they had every reason to be astonished. Built on an island in Lake Texcoco, it was a thriving metropolis with a population of perhaps 200,000, larger than any European city at the time. It was divided into quadrants, each symbolizing a corner of the world. In the center of this cosmos was a complex of temples, the heart and soul of Aztec life. The largest, some 15 stories high, as tall as many European cathedrals, was a stepped pyramid topped by two shrines-one dedicated...
...Mass. Inland, the conquistadors first met the strange Mexican-Indian priesthood, men whose hair was caked with human blood and whose temple floors were clogged with it. The Christians had no hesitation in breaking their idols. Even then they had no notion that in the city of Tenochtitlán as many as 20,000 human sacrifices had been made in one ceremony. Victims stood in queues miles long waiting their turns, as relays of beaked and painted priests presided at the altar set up at the top of the pyramid-temples to cut out living hearts with stone knives...
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