Archaeology Of Conquest: Unearthing The Great Temple Of The Aztecs

America was the continent no one knew was there. When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, he thought he was in an outlying region of Asia. Instead, he landed in a new world where people had lived for 20,000 years. There were two great empires, the Aztec Empire in Mexico and the Inca Empire in Peru. The Aztecs ruled all Mexico from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts and ruled it harshly. The Inca Empire was even more amazing. The Incas called it Tahuantinsuyu, the Land of the Four Quarters, and it stretched for nearly 5,000 kilometers along the high Andes Mountains from Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south. The Aztecs of Mexico also lived in a high mountain region, the Valley of Mexico. Like Tahuantinsuyu, the valley was always under threat from erupting volcanoes. Both the Aztecs and Incas built their empires by conquering the surrounding peoples, and both were sun worshippers. After explorers found that America was a new continent, the Spaniards who followed Columbus discovered what an amazing world it was. There was gold, there was silver and jewels, there was a vast territory full of jungles, mountains and rivers for the Spaniards to explore. There were millions of people for Spanish priests to convert to Christianity. The Spaniards were not like the British or the French or the Dutch when it came to empires. Those people were interested in trade. The Spaniards were traders, but they were far more empire builders in the sense that a Spaniard who went to the New World wanted an estate. He wanted to be a lord. The conquest was successful because they had fire weapons, they had horses, and they knew the tactics of war. The Indians were not playing a war. They were not familiar with the kind of war the Spaniards were familiar with. The ancient Mexicans were used to conquer and find people to sacrifice to their gods, but they weren't used to just kill people for the sake of killing people. They had two different and opposing ideas as to what war was. It's only after Columbus gets to the Americas, the New World, but in many senses an old world, a world where there are already major civilizations that have come and gone and where major civilizations of the Incas and the Aztecs offered new opportunities, the fast buck, if you like, of getting out the gold and silver that these people had already mined and purified. And that became some of the motivation for further conquest and expansion. Aztec myths told how the Aztec race originated in Aztlan, the white land in northwest Mexico. In about 1168, the Aztecs left Aztlan and began a long journey to the Valley of Mexico. Other peoples in Mexico were afraid of the fierce and bloodthirsty Aztecs and often made them move on. Sometimes the Aztecs fought as soldiers for local tribes. They believed their sun god, Huitzilopochtli, kept their world in existence to preserve the world and to make sure that Huitzilopochtli had the strength to rise every morning. The Aztecs sacrificed thousands of people and offered him their hearts. Behind us is the great temple of the Aztecs. The left-hand side is the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the tribal god of the Aztecs, the god of gold. The temple of Huitzilopochtli is recognized by the sacrificial stone called Texcatl in Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs. Human sacrifice had different versions and it was carried out in several forms. The most common way of human sacrifice was to extend the victim on the sacrificial stone, stretching the body, touting the chest, so that the priest could insert the sacrificial knife and get the heart out. Huitzilopochtli had told the Aztecs that they would found a city at a spot where they saw an eagle perched on a cactus plant. It seems that this happened in the year 1325 on the shore of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. Today the national flag of Mexico marks this event. The flag has an eagle and cactus image at its center. The site of the Aztec city Tenochtitlan, the place of the prickly pear cactus, was marshy and full of reeds. But the Aztecs were determined to survive. To grow enough food, they built floating garden islands called chinampas. These were made from water plants and mud from the bottom of the lake, held in place by walls of woven reeds. Eventually, the Aztecs found that almost anything would grow on the chinampas. Xochimilco is known as the floating gardens area by tourists. In fact, the name Xochitl in Nahuatl means flower. The local inhabitants cultivate different flowers and the people sell the flowers to different flower shops in Mexico City. In Aztec times, this area was important because it actually fed Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. People were able to use the canals to transport their woods as well as people. On the 8th of November, 1519, 400 Spaniards led by Hernán Cortés marched along the pass between the twin volcanoes Popocatapetl and Laztacuatl to reach the Valley of Mexico. They were amazed by what they saw. By this time, after two centuries, Tenochtitlan had grown from a small settlement into a magnificent city with nearly 300,000 inhabitants. Three giant causeways built over the marshes connected the city to the shore. Each causeway was over four kilometers long. Each was wide enough to take 10 men riding next to each other. One Spaniard, Bernal Díez del Castillo, described this magical sight. When we saw all those cities and villages built in the water, and these great towns and pyramids and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision. Indeed, some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream. Later, when the Spaniards explored Tenochtitlan, they saw the beautiful jewelry and other objects made by Aztec craftsmen, and visited the huge markets where they could buy all sorts of food, herbs, medicines, wood, paper, feathers, shells, and other supplies. The Spaniards also discovered a great deal about the Aztecs. They were intensely curious, particularly the priests, about the Aztec way of life and the Inca way of life, about their customs and their history, everything to do with them. They learned the languages. Partly it was to understand them in order to convert them to Christianity, but the result for us, of course, is an exceptionally detailed record. In fact, the Aztecs, and perhaps the Incas too, are the most comprehensively recorded ancient people in the world. And it's all due to the Spaniards and their intense curiosity. It was not surprising that the Spaniards wanted to possess this amazing civilization. But it was not going to be easy. Cortes and his men were marooned high in the mountains of a strange land. There was no one to help them if the Aztecs turned on them. They could kill the Spaniards and no one would ever know what had happened. Cortes had only one choice. If he captured the Aztec ruler, the great speaker Moctezuma, he would have power over Moctezuma's subjects. The surprising thing was that Moctezuma helped Cortes carry out his plan. There was a prophecy in Mexico that the god Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, would one day return to reclaim the Aztec empire. Moctezuma believed this prophecy. He also believed that Cortes and Quetzalcoatl were one and the same. It was history's greatest case of mistaken identity, and Cortes made the most of it. Moctezuma did not resist when Cortes took him prisoner. The great speaker agreed to swear loyalty to the king of Spain, build a church on the temple tower in Tenochtitlan, and give Cortes great quantities of gold. Unlike their ruler, Moctezuma's Aztec subjects had realized that the Spaniards were not gods. They were human and they were dangerous. The Aztecs rebelled, and a huge crowd of them came to Moctezuma's palace to demand that he throw out Cortes and his men. Moctezuma tried to calm them down, but they threw stones at him. Shortly afterwards, Moctezuma died. Now there was only one thing for Cortes to do. He had to get out of Tenochtitlan, and he had to get out fast. Almost all the Spaniards were injured, and many died as they fled from Tenochtitlan across one of the causeways on the night of the 30th of June, 1520. Afterwards, the Spaniards called the night of their escape the Night of Sorrows. It was a terrible defeat for Cortes, but he was a very determined man, and nine months later he was back. Now nothing was going to stop him from capturing Tenochtitlan and defeating the Aztecs once and for all. This time Cortes had allies, 100,000 Mexicans, who were subjects of the Aztecs and wanted revenge on their cruel masters. The Spaniards had built ships on the lake and equipped them with guns. These guns pounded the great Aztec city for days on end. The siege of Tenochtitlan began in early June, 1521. It lasted seven weeks. Finally, on the 13th of August, Tenochtitlan, or rather its smoking, blood-stained ruins, fell into Spanish hands. In 1521, the Spaniards called Tenochtitlan New Spain. It was the end of the Aztec empire, and it was the beginning of New Spain. The conquest of Mexico and the news of the great wealth it contained caused great excitement in the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, inspiring other Spaniards to emulate Cortes' phenomenal success. One of them was Francisco Pizarro. Ten years older than Cortes, Pizarro was almost 60, a considerable age for his time, when he embarked on his own ambitious quest to reach and conquer the Inca empire, which lay well over 3,000 meters high up in the Andes mountains. It would be another extraordinary, though costly and blood-stained adventure, and one in which history would repeat itself with fateful accuracy. For Pizarro, his motives had already been shaped to a large extent by knowledge of what Cortes had done. He was filled with the stories of how it was possible to go to a place that had a major state-run organization, but to take it over using Spanish technologies, the horse, the sword. There was knowledge of the area from visits to the coast of Peru the year before. This empire was called Biru. Pizarro renamed it Peru. And he set out with 180 men and 37 horses in the summer of 1531. For seven weeks, the Spaniards struggled through the freezing mountains and along the narrow passes. The air was so thin it was difficult to breathe. But at last, the Spaniards reached Cajamarca. There they met ambassadors sent by the Sapa Inca Atahuelpa, who had recently won a civil war with his brother. Atahuelpa was willing to meet Pizarro, but at this stage, he had no idea why the Spaniards had come into his empire. Soon, though, he was going to learn. And the lesson was a terrible one. In the empire Atahuelpa ruled, everyone, including Atahuelpa himself, had to follow strict rules about the lives they would lead. A son whose father was a farmer was also a farmer. And worked on the terraces cut into the steep mountainside to produce maize, potatoes, fruits, and other foods. A craftsman's son was also a craftsman. Girls became housewives like their mothers. All Inca men served their mita, or public service, between age 25 and 50. This meant serving in the army, building temples, or working in the gold and silver mines. Atahuelpa's life, too, was arranged for him in advance. Like all members of the royal family, he was trained to fight in war, read Quechua, the Inca language, perform religious rituals, and learn how to read the quipus on which the records were kept. Made of knots and twisted fibers, mixed with pieces of colored wool, a quipu could contain an amazing amount of information. You had a reader, called it to read what was there. You could read off an entire campaign, all the casualties, how much it cost, how far they went, all from these knots. But the Spanish accounts are the first accounts of the sort that we would call accounts, descriptions, reports, observations. Only members of the royal family and the Inca nobles were allowed to know the secrets of astronomy. But its purpose was not scientific. The Incas observed the stars and planets so they could organize their calendar and work out the proper time to plant crops. One of the instruments used by Inca astronomers was a specifically shaped stone called the Intihuatana, or the hitching post of the sun. One of them can still be seen in the Inca fortress of Machu Picchu, which lies over 2,000 meters up in the high Andes. For many centuries, Machu Picchu was a lost city. The Spaniards never found it, and it was not discovered until 1911. Machu Picchu was also a place to live. Food was grown on its terraces, which had more than 3,000 steps. There were houses and a temple built of stone. The Incas were very clever builders. They could fit blocks of stone together exactly, without any mortar to keep them in place. But it was a very tough life living so high up in the mountains. The Intihuatana at Machu Picchu was probably used to study the movements of the sun, the moon, and planets like Jupiter, Mars, or Mercury. You have to stay overnight because you have to get up very, very early in the morning before the sun rises. As long as it's not misty, you will see the sky turn pink and orange. And there's a ridge opposite the Intihuatana, and the sun strikes over this ridge at about six in the morning in December, which was midsummer. And like a laser beam, it strikes directly on this Intihuatana. It's the most magical sight. From this, Incas and a prince like Atahualpa, who was trained in astronomy, would observe movements of the sun and the moon and some of the planets. The Andes are one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world. There are mountains rising to 6,000 metres, snow-capped peaks, and then the land falling down towards the coast. You're also near the equator, so the sun is amazingly strong. And that creates very large differences. Daytime temperatures can be very hot, but nighttime temperatures fall below freezing. And in fact, the climate changes more during one day than it changes during the year. But nonetheless, you've got very dry seasons when very little can be grown unless you get irrigation, and wet seasons when crops can be grown. And as you walk up the Andes, you find it more and more difficult to breathe as the air has less and less oxygen in it. Although like the Aztecs, the Incas worshipped the sun, they did not perform human sacrifice nearly as often. Usually, they sacrificed llamas, guinea pigs, cocoa leaves, maize, and other food, gold and silver ornaments, carvings, or feathers. Even so, they were just as superstitious as the Aztecs. The Incas were terrified of anything unusual, particularly in the sky. They were very sky-conscious. An eclipse of the sun was a terrifying experience because they thought a giant puma was gobbling up the sun. So in order to make it go away, they would shout and scream, bang drums, bang tins, make a terrible racket. But superstition was not confined to ordinary Incas. Atahualpa and the royal family were also affected. They were haunted by a prophecy of the Inca wise men who foresaw three great disasters. Plague, war, and the destruction of the Inca Empire. The plague was a smallpox epidemic. The war was the war between Atahualpa and his brother, Huascar, as they fought to inherit the throne. But what about the third prophecy? When and how would the empire be destroyed, and who would destroy it? Not the Spaniards, or so Atahualpa believed, because when he met Pizarro in the town square at Cajamarca on the 15th of November, 1532, he did not act like a ruler who was facing disaster. The Sapa Inca arrived in a litter smothered in brilliantly colored feathers of tropical birds, and carried by 80 of his nobles. 5,000 warriors accompanied him. Pizarro's priest, Father Vicente de Valverde, approached Atahualpa and demanded that he become a Christian. The Sapa Inca looked at the Bible Valverde gave him, but after a few moments he threw it on the ground. Valverde turned pale with shock. He demanded that Pizarro attack the Incas there and then, even though most of them were unarmed. This is what Pizarro had planned all along. He had hidden his soldiers in the streets surrounding the square at Cajamarca, together with a large gun. Now he gave the signal to fire. The gun boomed out, echoing around the square, and the Spaniards rushed in and began stabbing and slashing with their swords, and firing their muskets straight into the crowds desperately trying to escape. Meanwhile, Pizarro rushed up to the litter, grabbed Atahualpa by the hair, and pulled him to the ground. Atahualpa's hands were tied, and he was pushed through the struggling crowd into a nearby house. When night fell over Cajamarca, over 6,000 Incas lay dead in and around the square, and Atahualpa was Pizarro's prisoner. The Spaniards thought that Atahualpa was an ignorant barbarian, but that wasn't true. Soon Atahualpa worked out a plan to gain his freedom. He made Pizarro an astonishing offer. A ransom made up of a room full of gold and two rooms of silver. When the rooms were full, they contained treasure worth about three million pounds. Now Atahualpa naturally expected Pizarro to let him go, but Pizarro could not do that. He realized that the Incas would obey any order Atahualpa gave them, and that might include killing all the Spaniards. No, Pizarro decided Atahualpa had to die. It was the only way. Pizarro already had the excuse he needed. During his imprisonment, Atahualpa had ordered the death of his brother and rival, Huascar. His orders were, of course, carried out. This made it possible for the Spaniards to accuse Atahualpa of murder and condemn him to death. Atahualpa was executed in the square at Cajamarca on the night of Saturday, the 29th of August, 1533. At the very last minute, he agreed to become a Christian and so escape the horrific death of a heretic being burned at the stake. Pizarro, who had wept when Atahualpa pleaded with him for his life, ordered all his men to attend the funeral. In the next few years, the Spaniards conquered both Mexico and Peru and so bought to an end the Aztec and Inca empires. Inca and Aztec gold, silver, and other treasures helped to make Spain the richest and mightiest power in Europe. But there was more to the Spanish conquest than getting rich. A new Spanish city, Mexico City, was built over the ruins of Tenochtitlan, so obliterating the once beautiful Aztec capital. The Aztecs and Incas were converted to Christianity. Many of the Aztecs' holy books were burned. Churches replaced the ancient temples. Human sacrifice was forbidden. Both Aztecs and Incas were forced to work hard for the Spaniards on farms or in the mines. Before the Spaniards came, they had been used to a fairly leisurely life and thousands of them died. More thousands died from European diseases, smallpox, typhus, typhoid fever, because they had no natural resistance to them. The Nahuatl language of Mexico survived. So did Quechua in Peru, as well as some of the ancient customs and the markets. But very little else was left of two once great civilizations. There would be other European empires in the world. The British, the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese. But none of them destroyed the peoples they conquered so thoroughly or so cruelly as the Spanish empire in America.