Word: tenochtitlan
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Paradoxically, the thirsty city was once a great lake, where the Aztecs founded their island citadel Tenochtitlan in 1325. When the Spanish conquerors took control they drained much of the water, laying the basis for the vast expansion of the metropolis across the entire Valley of Mexico. However, as the growing population continues to suck water out in wells, Mexico City is sinking down into the old lake bed at a rate of about three inches a year. This downward plunge puts extra pressure on water distribution pipes, which are now so leaky they lose about 40% of liquid before...
...Most interesting, however, was Mann's observation that if the boat Jaguar Paw sees is indeed the 1519 landing party of Cortes (who pushed quickly through what remained of Mayan territory on his way to the bloody battle of Tenochtitlan), the man holding up the cross was no particular friend to the indians. It was not until 1537, Mann said, that, after considerable debate both ways, Pope Paul III got around to proclaiming that "Indians themselves indeed are true men" and should not be "deprived of their liberty." In the intervening 18 years roughly a third of Mexico...
...either version, the story of Hernan Cortes' great adventure is a remarkable one. In early 1519 this wily and enterprising Castilian landed at what is now Veracruz. A few months later, he and his bedraggled company of 300 soldiers entered the Mexican capital of Tenochtitlan, a city more grand and imposing than any in Europe except Naples or Constantinople. Cortes managed to take the emperor Montezuma II hostage, but after Montezuma died during an uprising of the Mexica, apparently from wounds inflicted by his own people, the Spaniards were driven from the city. The undaunted Cortes returned with a larger...
...nothing less than to keep reality in motion. The Mesoamericans believed that the world could stop at any moment, that the very cosmos was always on the brink of dissolution, its cycles maintained only by sacrifice. The sun would not rise in the morning over the lakes of Tenochtitlan if it were not refreshed by streams of blood...
...Spanish conquistadores who fell upon Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, in 1520 came to establish the old order in the New World. They came as agents of the King and God. They also came in search of gold, and they came without women. Just as Mexico City was constructed on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the new societies throughout Hispanic America sprang from the loins of the defeated Aztecs, Mayas and Incas. Nearly a century later, English settlers arrived in North America for different reasons. Accompanied by their families and not haunted by visions of gold, they sought less to conquer than...