Aztecs

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Speaker 1 Gret Jenner, I'm a historian, and I want to tell you about something cool. Well, up to a point.
The Aztec Empire.

Speaker 1 What's the Aztec Empire?

Speaker 1 Oh, it was an incredible civilization which thrived in central Mexico between the 14th and early 16th centuries and was full full of things like gold,

Speaker 1 but also human sacrifice,

Speaker 1 but also chocolate,

Speaker 1 but also a teeny bit of cannibalism.

Speaker 1 Our story begins in 1325 with the founding of what would become the capital city of the Aztec Empire. It was called Tenochtitlan.
In 1428, Tenochtitlan joined forces with two other city-states, Tezco

Speaker 1 and Clacopan, and formed something called the Triple Alliance.

Speaker 1 This helped them fight off the powerful Tepex of Azcapotzalco. Tenochtitlan became the big dog though and by 1503 its population may have been as much as 200,000 people.

Speaker 1 That is four times bigger than London was in the reign of Henry VIII.

Speaker 4 Hey non-ino!

Speaker 1 Hey noni yes!

Speaker 1 It meant that Aztec influence stretched throughout central Mexico and a big part of the culture was religion.

Speaker 1 There was a massive pyramid in the capital of Tenochtitlan that was over 300 feet tall, with two grand staircases going to the top.

Speaker 1 Imagine being the priests who had to commute to the shrines up there.

Speaker 4 I chose a bad week to skip leg day.

Speaker 1 This pyramid was the main temple for the people of Tenochtitlan, with shrines to both the god of war and the god of water, two things that were really important in Aztec life.

Speaker 1 But Aztecs had loads of gods: the god of weapons, the god of feasts and joy, the god of medicine and healing, the god of dreams, the god of starting wars for his own amusement. Oh, what am I like?

Speaker 1 I just get bored, I do. Aztecs believed that since the gods gave so much to them, it was important to give back.

Speaker 1 And how did the Aztecs give back? Was it with a baked sale? Help the gods, darling. All donations welcome.

Speaker 1 Not quite. They chose human sacrifice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, their victim was escorted to the top of the pyramid where four priests would hold them down while a fifth priest cut out their heart with a knife made from volcanic obsidian glass.

Speaker 1 Or a small monthly donations fine.

Speaker 1 Aztecs believed that they had a collective debt to the gods who had created the world, and these gods needed to be sustained through human blood.

Speaker 1 One of their myths talked about Talal Tekutli, the great Earth Crocodile,

Speaker 1 who was apparently ripped in two to create the land. Ouch!

Speaker 1 The poor thing needed to be fed fresh blood to keep her alive, and to make up for that whole being ripped in half thing as well.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to the dirty cafe, Great Earth Crocodile, home of the all-you-can-eat human buffet.

Speaker 1 May I recommend the haught of human sacrifice for stories, paired with a litre of human sacrifice blood? Oh,

Speaker 1 yum me!

Speaker 1 How

Speaker 1 fresh!

Speaker 1 Very fresh. Very cheeky, aren't you?

Speaker 1 Uh, mate, will you will you please stop cutting my heart out? Oh, stop whining. You know it's a huge honor to be a sacrifice.
What, really?

Speaker 1 Some sources say that people were happy to be offered up as a sacrifice. Oh,

Speaker 1 yeah, go on in.

Speaker 1 Anything for the crocodile god?

Speaker 1 And other sources say they weren't. But some of those accounts are from Europeans, like Hernando Cortez,

Speaker 1 who we will meet later, and may not have been the most trustworthy of sources. Oh, why would you say a thing like that? I said, we'll find out later.
Go and wait in the corner, Hernando Cortez.

Speaker 1 Fine.

Speaker 1 One really famous part of Tetnochtitlan was the Weson Pantli, a giant rack... of human skulls.
I mean, skull racks are one of the trickier racks to find at Dunelm these days.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 we've got spice racks, coat racks, shoe racks, but nothing from our thousands of skulls. Aww, penny!

Speaker 1 And we haven't even got to the cannibalism. Cannibalism? Okay, yes, some cannibalism.
But archaeologists don't think there's enough evidence to say it was very widespread.

Speaker 1 An enemy would be captured in war.

Speaker 1 You are my prisoner.

Speaker 1 And would then come to live near his captors for a while. After a bit of time, as part of a ritual, the captive would then say, You are as my son.
And the captive would say, Oh, you are as my father.

Speaker 1 I know, really sweet.

Speaker 1 Until the captive was killed on sacrifice day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sorry. And then the captive would bring the body back and send the best bit off to the ruler.
Thigh meat was apparently the best. Liggle prist, boss.
Lag, please.

Speaker 1 And the rest of the body would be cooked, usually in a stew, for the captor's friends and family to enjoy. The captor himself would skip the stew and observe the feast all dressed in white.

Speaker 1 We think this was a sign of respect. But maybe he just didn't want to get casserole on his nice white clothes.
I've got prisoner of war stew all down my front.

Speaker 1 Speaking of prisoners of war, you may think that the Aztecs would be fearsome on the battlefield, and in lots of ways they were. But war wasn't really about killing their enemies,

Speaker 1 it was about wounding them so they couldn't run away,

Speaker 1 so they could then be captured and sacrificed to the gods.

Speaker 1 Aztec warriors fought with a huge three-to-four foot long club covered in sharp obsidian glass, and these were really good for hacking at people's legs.

Speaker 1 Say hello to my little friend called

Speaker 1 Witzelopotsli, god of war and son, and their love language is being gifted human hearts.

Speaker 1 The fact that Aztecs didn't usually fight to kill became important later when.

Speaker 1 Hola! Is it time to say how I ruined everything yet? Still no, Hernando Cortez. Back to your corner.

Speaker 1 Sorry about him.

Speaker 1 Sometimes there could be a big problem with the whole sacrificing prisoners of war to the gods thing.

Speaker 1 Slate problem with your order, your crocodileness. We haven't had a war lately, so we ran out of prisoners of war.

Speaker 1 And this is when Aztecs may have had flower wars. Sounds nice, right? Hey man, peace and love.
Let's please the gods with the power of flowers.

Speaker 1 Not quite. Flower wars were possibly scheduled battles just for the purpose of capturing future human sacrifices.

Speaker 4 Hey man, totally gonna have to drag you back to my pyramid of peace and cut out your heart to keep the sun shining on all the groovy dudes.

Speaker 1 You're welcome. If Aztecs excelled at battle, it wasn't just pleasing the gods they could look forward to.
Top warriors were also rewarded with drinking chocolate. Nice.

Speaker 1 For a second there I was worried my reward be something cheap and nasty like gold. Yeah, Aztecs didn't think gold was that fancy.

Speaker 1 They also didn't have money in the way that we know it, but but instead had a barter system of swapping valuable things like cotton capes and cacao beans.

Speaker 1 So chocolate was a bit like money. In the Aztec language, called Noatl, the word for gold, teo quitlatl, meant excrement of the sun.
Yes, sun poo. And who pays for things with poo anyway?

Speaker 1 That's a quick way to get thrown out of Tesco. Please tap or insert your card.

Speaker 1 Unexpected poo-poo in the badge area. Security!

Speaker 1 Speaking of supermarkets, what did Aztecs get in their big weekly shop? Well, their main food was maize, especially in tasty tortillas. They also ate beans and avocados.

Speaker 1 Lots of stuff you'd still find in Mexican food today, actually.

Speaker 1 Ho ho! Sounds delicious, but not as delicious as a pizza pizza. Ho ho ho! Actually, Mr.
Italian, Aztecs had tomatoes way before anyone in Europe. Mama Mia.

Speaker 1 They also ate chilies long before they popped up in curries, and they had turkey before it became a fixture of Christmas dinners. Aztecs also ate squash, potatoes, and fish.
Delicious.

Speaker 1 And the odd bit of lizard and some pond scum. Less delicious.
No, you are not getting any pudding until you've eaten all your green algae.

Speaker 1 Speaking of feasts, Aztecs loved a good wedding, and to get married, they would need a matchmaker. Hi!

Speaker 1 These people were usually older women, and they would arrange marriages, often with some surprising extras, including giving the bride a piggyback to the wedding venue. Oh, we should bring that back.

Speaker 1 Forget getting picked up by a limo. Newlyweds should get picked up by a granny.

Speaker 6 Well, that wraps up this wonderful wedding. It's time to say good night to the bride and groom.

Speaker 1 Papa, you love birds.

Speaker 1 And at an Aztec wedding ceremony, the groom's cape and the bride's skirt were tied together to symbolise their commitment to one another. Literally, tying the knot.

Speaker 1 And then everyone would drink chocolate

Speaker 1 except the elderly people who had alcohol.

Speaker 1 The couple would then spend four days getting to know each other before emerging as a married couple.

Speaker 1 They'd have trouble writing their thank-you cards, though, because Aztec writing used pictures, not letters. The Aztecs were basically using emojis way before they were cool.
So, how did the war go?

Speaker 1 Ah, thumbs down, emoji. What's going to happen to you?

Speaker 1 Knife and fork emoji. What does that mean?

Speaker 1 The Aztec civilization came to a devastating end because...

Speaker 1 Is it my turn now?

Speaker 1 Yes, Hernando Cortez, it's your turn now. In 1519, Spanish colonizers led by Cortés turned up and it all went horribly wrong for the Aztecs.

Speaker 1 At first, the Emperor Motecuzoma welcomed Cortes into Tenochtitlan.

Speaker 1 Welcome, and I took that personally.

Speaker 1 But Cortes, along with thousands of indigenous allies like the Tashkalans, besieged Tenochtitlatlan for four months, which is pretty rude if you've just been invited into a city.

Speaker 1 After about a year, Motecazoma died, the city surrendered, and the new emperor Guatemoc was executed.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't get any better. Oh, come on.
The Spanish conquistadors brought smaller invaders with them that were just as deadly. Germs.

Speaker 1 Yes, while the Spanish got gold, chocolate, tomatoes, maize, and potatoes, the Aztecs got smallpox, flu, measles, and mumps in return. Is that a good deal? No.

Speaker 1 Wave after wave of disease devastated the indigenous population until about 90% of the population of Mexico, many millions of people, had been wiped out within a hundred years. See?

Speaker 1 This is why we prefer to trade in chocolate, not foreign diseases. Yeah, pretty depressing.
Sorry, they can't all have happy endings.

Speaker 1 Okay, so how much do you remember from today's speedy history lesson? Let's find out. Pencils are the ready.
Question one, what was the name of the capital city of the Aztec Empire?

Speaker 1 Tenosh Chitlin.

Speaker 1 Question two, what yummy thing which we still enjoy today was used as Aztec currency as well as a tasty snack for top warriors.

Speaker 1 Chocolate or cacao beans.

Speaker 1 And question three, what was the purpose of an Aztec flower war?

Speaker 1 Capture enemies for human sacrifice.

Speaker 1 Well done. Join us next time for another snappy history lesson.

Speaker 1 And if you're a grown-up and want to learn more about the Aztecs, listen to our episode of You're Dead to Me with Professor Caroline Dodds-Pennock. Thanks for listening.
Bye!

Speaker 1 This was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4. Dead Funny History was written by Jack Bernhardt, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch and Dr.
Emma Nagoose.

Speaker 1 It was hosted by me, Greg Jenner, and performed by Malianne Rees and John Luke Roberts. The script consultant was Professor Caroline Dodds-Pennock.

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