You're Dead to Me - The Aztecs

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Travel back to the land of the Aztecs to discover that they’re not that dissimilar to the Tudors, but with more human sacrifices.Greg Jenner is joined by comedian Joel Dommett and historian Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock to ask just how much food can be traced back to the Aztecs? Was cannibalism really a respectful process? And at what age were Aztec children expected to contribute to the family? It’s history for people who don’t like history! Produced by Dan Morelle Script by Greg Jenner Research by Emma Nagouse assisted by Josh DanielsA Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a history podcast for people who don't like history, or at least people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. I love me some medieval poetry but it's better if it's got gratuitous fart gags in it. In every episode I am joined by an expert historian with a head full of

fascinating facts and an A-grade comedian with a smart mouth and nice hair and today we're jumping back 500 years sharpening our sacrificial knife and preparing to eat roast iguana as we get to grips with the Aztec. Joining me to fill in the blanks in your memory banks are two lovely guests. In History Corner, her Twitter account describes her as a historian and human sacrifice enthusiast, worrying. Hopefully that's only a professional interest. She's a leading Aztec specialist. In fact, she's the leading Aztec specialist in the UK's the leading Aztec specialist in the UK she's from the University of Sheffield it is Dr Caroline Dodds-Pennock hi Caroline how are you I'm all right you've got laryngitis for the laryngitis but I'm going to press on well thank you for battling on we appreciate it and in comedy corner making a triumphant return to the podcast having

smashed it with the Spartans he's the best loved Joel in the land apart from Billy Joel sorry but you can't you can't argue with Billy Joel. I don't. I don't argue with him at all. There's actually one other Joel Domet in the country. Did you know that, Greg? Is he better than you? Well, I messaged him on Facebook because that's what Facebook's for.

And I said, hello, your name's Joel Domet. My name's Joel Domet. Let's go for a Nando's. And he just messaged back saying no. Where's the fun in that? His loss. Well, I think you've given away the game there. In Comedy Corner, it is the wonderful Joel Domet.

So, what do you know? This is the segment where I summarise some of the things that our listeners might know about the Aztec. And I don't think we know that much, really. So, the Aztec are, in pop culture, you're thinking pyramids, you're thinking gold, you're thinking big chunky statement jewellery, there's the sacrifices, there's the jungle, you're probably thinking Indiana Jones being chased by a huge boulder after nicking a fertility statue from a booby-trapped tomb, which actually wasn't an Aztec tomb but never mind. You might be imagining dudes running around with elaborate headdresses, maybe you're thinking of

the Aztec zone on a crystal maze. If you're a ch with elaborate headdresses. Maybe you're thinking of the Aztec zone on a crystal maze. If you're a chocoholic like me, maybe you're thinking of Montezuma's chocolate shop. BBC impartiality clause, other chocolate manufacturers are available. Dr Caroline, first and foremost, why are you an Aztec specialist?

Did you just sort of start at the beginning of the course directory and go, hey, Aztecs, that'll do? No, there weren't that many Aztec courses when I was a student and I would have been an Anglo-Saxon specialist, surely, if I started it at the beginning. That's me told. That's why she's here.

Honestly, it was just a childhood interest that never really let go of me. I mean, who doesn't love temples and human sacrifice? And it just seemed so fascinating and exciting from when I was really small and I just carried on with it. Joel, have you got any Aztec knowledge? Kind of a little bit. Basic, obviously. I do genuinely remember in primary school doing quite a lot of Aztec stuff.

We did, I think the only two things that I can really remember from primary school is we did Romans and Aztecs. I remember sort of the big sort of pyramid-y things and then the human sacrifice stuff and stuff like that. And I also went to Mexico with this program, Joel and Nish versus the World. And we went to the Tarahumara tribe,

which was like, I genuinely don't know where it was but we were really deep far away from from where planes land basically they've been sort of messed over as a people throughout history everyone who's sort of come over there has tried to sort of change them and given them the maddest diseases and And as a result, they just went further and further into the hills until they were basically so far in the hills that nobody can reach them. Except for you. Except for me and a crew of television people. Hello.

There you go. Well, I mean, that's fantastic. Let's look at the Aztec. Just can we have some basics? How long ago are we talking? What is an Aztec? How big is the Aztec Empire? So the Aztecs are in central Mexico from about 1325. We're talking about the people of the city of Tenochtitlan is what you're usually talking about and the empire that surrounds it. They're about contemporary with the Tudors. People think of them as a kind of ancient culture, culture but actually they're quite modern people don't think of them as being contemporaries which I find really interesting and you're talking about a sphere of influence of something like 200 220

square kilometers which is about the size of the UK so quite large but only five or six million people so much more dispersed in terms of the population imagine how great that would be five or six million people how much easier it'd be to get to work there was only six million people in the uk you wouldn't have any bus drivers would you sometimes when i'm in like really heavy traffic the other day i went to watch the avengers movie right and then i was in really heavy traffic on the way home and i was like oh i think thanos had a point we could get rid of half these people that'd be fantastic get home so much quicker all right so we're five minutes in and already we're advocating the wiping out of half of all humanity that's good start great so the aztec um essentially you say they found their sort of empire in 1325 which is

what 700 years ago yes um although that's not the founding of the empire that's the founding the city the empire they only really come to power about 100 years after that so only about 100 years before the spanish arrived they're quite a new empire who did they take over from so it's a sort of um what's the word it's not so much an empire in the way we might understand it where you sort of take over loads of territory it's more cities fighting to be supreme and be at the top of a tribute pyramid yeah in charge of the region and so in the early 1400s the triple alliance of three cities of which Tenochtitlan is one um sort of fight it out for who's going to become dominant they negotiate and Tenochtitlan comes to prominence so it's at that point that they're they become the head of a kind of pyramid

that stretches across most of central Mexico. Tenochtitlan is the capital city and it's massive. How much bigger is it than London at this time? Because we think of London as time being busy, but actually we're talking about a much bigger city. We do think of London as being one of the biggest cities, but actually this is maybe five times larger. It's almost certainly the largest city

any of the conquistadors have ever seen, which is amazing. Reasonable estimates for the population are somewhere between about 150,000 and 700,000. I would come down at about a quarter of a million in 13 square kilometres. So it's a really bustling kind of place. So London's like 50,000 people,

which is now like Tunbridge Wells. Seville is bigger actually, London's like 50,000 people. Yeah. Which is now like Tunbridge Wells. Yeah. Seville is bigger, actually. It's about 60,000 at that time. But Tenochtitlan, a quarter of a million people. And that's the capital city. But there are other people outside that as well, living in the suburbs, commuting in. It's not just the capital.

It's kind of, it is the place where the Aztecs, by which we mean the Tenochtitlan, the people of the city of Tenochtitlan, the people who dump, those are the people we mean when we think about the Aztecs. Don't they call themselves Aztecs, by which we mean the Tenocca, the people of the city of Tenochtitlan, those are the people we mean when we think about the Aztecs. Do they call themselves Aztecs? They don't. So we call them Aztecs. We call them Aztecs. And there is some suggestion in some of the sources that maybe they called themselves something like that because they came from a place called Aztlan.

They are the people of Aztlan. That's where the word Aztec comes from. Sounds so like Azkaban. It does, doesn't it? So Harry Potter right now. And it's got, well, it gets even more like that. It's a kind of seven caves and seven tribes come out of seven caves in this place of the white Terrans,

you know, in Azklan. It is really, well, it's a mythical history, actually. Yeah. And you can't disentangle those things in Aztec culture, the myth and the history. And so they come from Aztecland, and that's where the word Aztecs comes from. They would have called themselves either the Tenochtitlan,

the people of the city of Tenochtitlan, or Mexica or Mexica Chichimeca, the people of Mexico. Which is where we get Mexico from. Exactly. Mexica becomes Mexico. It's dreadful. It's impossible to Google for Mexica because you just get Mexico for everything.

That's fair enough. How are they building this whacking great city then? If they're a relatively new power, is it slave labour? Or do they all do a sort of busy weekend and go, come on, let's all build a massive city? They have a labour service. So it's a really communal, collective kind of place. So each district, each Calpulli, as they're called,

they send a certain number of men for a certain number of days, essentially. So you have all this communal activity. It's a society where people have communal obligations. And building aqueducts and roads and temples is one of them. There are also slaves, but they're not mostly used in that way. So everyone has to do their bit essentially it's like so it's like it's sort of communism in a certain way right is that what it is yeah it is basically collective activity that was the way it's kind of collective um and that

filters all the way down so they have communal grain stores um people share um share the workload at a local level we have have land that is owned locally. And if you get a piece of land to work, you don't own the land, you own the fruits of the land. And if you don't work it, then someone comes and warns you that you have to. And if you don't work it for another year, for another season, then they take it off you and give it to somebody else. It seems like a very good way of living.

Do they write? They do write, but it's pictographic writing. Some of it is phonetic. There's a big row. So what do you mean by pictographic? Do you mean like hieroglyphs? It's somewhere between pictures representing things and hieroglyphs. So it's a pictoglyph system is what it's called.

It's where images represent concepts rather than words. So a picture of a temple is a temple. But then there are some concepts. So a flag means 20, for example. And it's starting to develop phonetic elements, but they're not fully developed. So when Cortez arrives, because his name sounds like coatl, which is snake, his name glyph is a snake.

Wow. That's very fitting, though, isn't it? So it's a kind of adaptive language. Slithering Serpentine Cortes needs to be a series. Serpents were honoured, though, in Aztec culture because they're all about blood and rebirth because of the shedding of the skin. OK, all right.

And the pyramids, I mean, Joel, when you went to Mexico, did you run up any pyramids and do the Rocky Balboa leap and punch in the air? No. Even when we went to Peru, we didn't go to what's the place that everyone goes to in Peru? Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu. We didn't go there. We decided to go up a mountain sort of fairly near, but that was much higher.

Pyramids are pretty much exclusively for religious purposes. The one in Tenochtitlan has two temples at the top, one to Huitzilopochtli and one to Tlaloc. So that's the god of war and the god of water, which are basically the two foundations of the civilization, war, sacrifice, tribute and agriculture and fertility and so on from rains and things like that. And you mentioned gods. I mean, Aztecs, do they have lots of gods? Do they have just a few? How many gods in the pantheon and how do they worship them? What's the religion? Loads, loads of gods. I couldn't give you a number because there are so many of them and so many of them have different aspects. And people argue about whether one god has two aspects or whether it's two gods.

OK. And so there's just loads. Yeah. There's gods for... Like the Romans, like the Greeks. I mean, the idea of functional gods with their own little purview, their own little ministry. And some of them have large purviews, like the god of water, and some of them have small purviews, like the god of pulque, which is alcoholic drink. Hello. OK, let's hear more about that god.

The god of alcoholic drink. Yeah, so there's a god of pulque. Pulque is a cactus drink. You don't really get it over here because unlike where tequila is distilled and so it keeps really well, pulque is fermented and so you have to drink it fresh. You basically chop the top off the cactus and you can make pulque in it. It's a milky, kind of bitter drink.

Well, we've talked a little about religion. We've talked about pyramids. It's time to talk about what we've all come for, human sacrifice. Oh, yeah. I mean, we look at the Aztecs and kind of go, wow, crazy, barbarous, violent, but there's a logic to it. Joel, what do you think the techniques are

for human sacrifice in Aztec culture? Well, I can remember it's very probably quite stabby. It feels like it's quite stabby. I remember it's on top using those pyramids, I suppose. And then the blood, does the blood run into something? I'm imagining the blood running into, like down the pyramid into something cool. But I may be getting it confused with one of the Blade movies. It's a very easy mistake to make.

Yeah. Caroline. Yeah, I think that's a Blade movie. I knew it was Wesley Snipes. The sacrifice on the top of the temple is right there. Okay. But the thing is right there. But the thing is, there were actually lots of different kinds of sacrifices.

But the most common one is to sacrifice someone on top of a pyramid. You would lean the person back over the altar. Now, when we talk about sacrificial altars, you imagine a kind of big, flat table. And often that's how they're shown in popular culture. But you're actually talking about a small stone, more like a kind of tall coffee table. And you have five priests. Four of them hold the arms and legs and stretch the person back so the chest is stretched right in the air. And then the fifth person uses an obsidian knife

to cut the heart out from under the ribcage. Obsidian is glass, isn't it? It's volcanic glass. It is a kind of volcanic glass. It's the sharpest substance in the world, sharper than a scalpel. Wow. Wow. I was reading recently. So they don't have steel, they don't have iron, but they've got something better, really.

Well, it's better for sharp cutting. It's quite bad for, for example, cutting through armour because it shatters if it comes in contact with steel. And was the person being sacrificed complicit? Were they happy with being sacrificed, being picked, or was it like a horrible thing to be picked? Theoretically, they were happy. Sign here. So people believed when they were being sacrificed

that it was for a greater cause. It's a bit like martyrdom, actually. It's quite like martyrdom, and that you're going to a better place. Yeah. martyrdom actually it's quite like martyrdom and that you're going to a better place yeah that said the sources suggest that some people went happily leading and heralding their cities and sort of glorifying their cities and and shouting triumphantly and other people were dragged to kicking and screaming and that's exactly what you would expect Joel can you guess what a who a to some Huay Tzom Pantley means or was?

Brexit means Brexit. I mean, my pronunciation is probably quite poor, but... Brexit means Brexit. I'm trying to do it phonetically. The Huay Tzom Pantley is an enormous skull rack. And Caroline can tell us a bit more. But in my head, I'm imagining like a spice rack in your mum's cupboard full of, you know, herbs and spices.

But this is a massive rack of skulls. Have the skin removed, maybe? Are they just the skulls? Just the skulls. They were just the skulls. Now, though, probably, originally they would have just put the heads on. Okay, so there would have been flesh,

there would have been eyes, and then they would have been eaten by the birds. And you're talking, they're impaled by the spikes. It's that kind of rack. So it's a huge rack of skulls. Wow. You into that? At the minute, it sounds like sort of the backdrop

of like an Iron Maiden set. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? It's kind of, it's very heavy metal. It sounds great. This weekend, I'm going to see Slipknot live. I'm kind of expecting... I'm a huge Slipknot fan. Who knew that maybe Slipknot were slightly obsessed with the Aztecs?

I love that idea. According to one Spanish conquistador, he estimated 130,000 skulls. That seems too many. In fact, he didn't estimate. He claimed he'd counted them, which was really funny because obviously he didn't. I mean, that is... That would have taken you a while, wouldn you a while that's such a great person like that's one of those people who's just like yeah you know you know the classic liar in your friends yeah you've always got one friend at

school who's always just like yeah yeah totally i actually scored from the halfway line last night it was me i hit that hit the crossbar yeah it was amazing uh no one was there to see it but um yeah counted it 130 000 skulls count every one of was amazing. No one was there to see it, but yeah, counted it, 130,000 skulls, counted every one of them. No one else was there. And what are the skulls for? It's part of the sacrificial ritual.

Okay. We're not sure exactly what they're for, but presumably it's at least partly to show how impressive and terrifying

the Aztec gods are. Yeah. To intimidate people who come to the city, to show how they're honouring the gods. Look at all these sacrifices we have given them. People did think it was a massive exaggeration, but actually only last year, I think it was last year the news came out about it.

They've been excavating since about 2014 a massive tower of skulls that they found in Mexico City. And it is actually a huge it's different to what we'd imagine not these crossbars that the spanish had depicted but a huge like a cement tower with all the skulls embedded in it wow it is like something out of the movie isn't it it's really it's really chilling yeah but almost almost impressive i mean it is very it's very impressive um in kind of the literal sense that people would be very struck by it. Sure, yeah.

But it is also pretty terrifying and I think that is part of the point. Is there a little bit of cannibalism? There is some cannibalism, but it's on quite a small scale. There have been some really funny, I shouldn't say that academic work is funny, but there was some work that said that they were committing sacrifice for cannibalism and there just isn't enough of it for that to make sense. but there was some work that said that they were committing sacrifice for cannibalism. And there just isn't enough of it for that to make sense. But it does mean I've got some wonderful tables of statistics about how much flesh you can get off people's bodies that I give to students. Bloody hell.

They love that. It's really interesting to think about that. But in reality, cannibalism happens only on a very small scale. In reality, cannibalism happens only on a very small scale, and it's part of a really interesting, quite intimate ceremony where the captive lives in the district of his captor after he's been captured in war. They're responsible for looking after him and feeding him, and there's a ceremony they go through where the captor says, you are as my son, and the captive says, you are as my father. And then the captor takes his captive to the temple on the day he's going to be sacrificed and after he's sacrificed he takes the body home and the best bit which is the thigh the tenderest bit is sent to the tlatoani the ruler for him to eat and then the friends and family of the captor consume the rest of the body in ceremonial cannibalism. The fascinating thing is that the captor doesn't participate.

He stands apart and he's covered in white and he honours the sacrificial victim. And also it's kind of a reminder to his family that he might die as a sacrifice in someone else's city. Oh, OK. So it's a really fascinating example of, we think of sacrifice being this big thing that happens on temples, but actually people are experiencing it in their homes as well. Let's move away from slightly gross cannibalism and move on to food you might have heard of and would like to eat.

Joel, I'm going to fire some foods at you and you have to guess which one of these does not come from the Aztecs. So, odd one out. So, here is your list. Tomatoes, corn, potatoes, avocado, quinoa, chocolate, chilli peppers and turkey. Which one did not come from the Aztecs? Oh, I don't know. I feel like quinoa. Oh, he's done it. Have I really? Ding, ding, ding. That is good. We get that from the Inca. That's the Peruvian Inca. So that's slightly further south. Everything else comes from Aztec food. And that's introduced into Europe by the conquest of the Spanish.

It's interesting, isn't it? Avocado is an Aztec word, is it? Nohatl word? Yes, derived from Nohatl, the Aztec language. Xocolatl is also from Nohatl word? Yes, derived from Nohatl, the Aztec language. Xocolatl is also from Nohatl. So we actually get quite a lot of words and tons and tons of our food from the Aztec world. I mean, try and imagine Italian cooking

without tomatoes or peppers. Or potatoes even, yeah. Or potatoes, not just things like chocolate, but squash, all beans except soybeans come from the Americas. And they also eat lizard, they eat chihuahua, newt. Anything else that's not on that list? Pond scum, basically. Pond scum, right.

Remember, they live on an island in a lake, so there's a lot of stuff, small-scale stuff, that they get from the water. So the pond scumum the water weeds so they sort of fish that out and drink that chew it what's what's the yeah you can cook it okay and and maize maize is the really really yes a corn and maize yeah yeah maize is what we think of as sweet corn but it's used like like we use wheat yeah so they make tortillas out of it they make a paste that they can just eat while

they're on the go or working you know you keep it in a pouch yeah you eat your paste fascinating that drink was made from corn yeah like corn starch now of course is used in loads of products as well these days and we get that from the Aztecs so yeah but that came about from the America through yeah through violent conquest isn't it so it's it? So it's what colonialism does for us, obviously, is that we get to have nice food and they all died. Hooray. Let's look at the lives of ordinary people. A newborn Aztec baby arrives in the world. What is their childhood going to be like? And does it differ if they're a girl or a

boy? So we think of the Aztecs as being quite brutal we think of all these grand rituals but actually they're very loving towards their children when a small baby is born the whole family gather around and touch it and kind of welcome it into the family and and it's it's really small children is quite clear are tolerated in Aztec culture they're given a bit of license that most people don't have but once they're weaned so once they start eating maize they are then under obligations to the god of maize and to their communities and they start having to contribute you hear accounts of small children going to the market and having to pick up grains and things like that life is very different for boys and girls once children are weaned boys go with fathers and girls go with mothers so women don't

do all the child care even if you get divorced the boy children go with the dad and the girl children go with the mum it's really interesting and they had divorce they did have divorce they tried to discourage it but you could get divorced and we know it was a real possibility because people draw up marriage contracts to say what would happen to the staff if they got married it's so fascinating, isn't it? It's just kind of like different things happened in different parts of the world without knowing that that was happening in other places.

It's like they had divorce. They probably didn't call it divorce at the time, but of course the Spanish call it divorce. And they're much more tolerant of it than the Spanish at the time or the British would have been. Yeah, of course, yeah. Because you don't want... I think it's because you don't want a community that's at each other's throats all the

time if people are going to do things together marriage will do that be well organized and you know have communal activities you you have to accept yeah that relationships might end yeah so they organize for that and they also go about making sure everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing so coming back to, boys and girls are educated. They have universal education. It's the only pre-modern culture I know that has universal education. So where boys get more education in warriorhood, things like that, both girls and boys go to a thing called the Kweka Kali, the house of song,

where in the evenings they learn songs and stories about their mythical past and their history and so on, and rhetoric and philosophy and religion, all those things. Wow. So if they've got divorced, they must also have marriage. Yes. And obviously marriage is a hugely important part of it. And I'm happily married, you're happily married.

Joel, you're soon to be happily married. Soon to be. Do you want to hear about Aztec wedding customs? Because last time we talked about sparsing customs and they got quite weird quite quick. Yes. So I'm hoping less weird. Caroline, can we hear what a wedding ceremony would be like?

The woman would be dressed in a large cape and she'd be carried on the back of an older woman, probably one of the matchmakers who made the pairing, carried to the house of the husband-to-be. And then there's a fascinating reciprocal ceremony where it's about setting them up as a partnership, really. The mother of the bride dresses the son-in-law-to-be in a cape. She feeds him mouthfuls of food.

And the mother of the groom does the same thing for the bride okay and then they tie their clothes together into a knot they literally tie the knot that's nice um and there's lots of other things so the bride is very um adorned and so on um and then which i think is amazing does she wear feathers she does she gets feathers, glittery face paint, like iron pyrites. So it's really sparkly. And it's a moment where the community all kind of come together. And that's the moment where you become liable for paying into the communal grain store, for doing communal labour service. And also, if you're poor, you get given capes from the communal store from your community to set up

your household so it's like they see this marriage as the the beginning of being an adult but also the beginning of your contribution to the community any of that sound applicable to the the domit wedding it's actually a massive coincidence because it sounds just like what we've planned we're doing it we can't i can't wait i can't wait for my you're doing feathers you're doing for my mom to feed me whilst i'm going down the aisle while your partner is carried by an old woman yeah it's all it's all on the list actually i think maybe we might have had a uh aztecian wedding planner i think we might have they're very affordable here yeah yeah we're having a um human for our uh meal can't wait so apparently the thigh is the best bit

so uh we've talked about marriage we talked about um women and men coming together um we i guess need to talk about warriors we've mentioned warriors already going off um joel you do a bit of combat stuff. I know you enjoy martial arts. And in this show, Joel Nish vs. The World, you often fight people, usually children. Usually children. That's the worst part of it.

Basically, I'm not very good at fighting. I'm not a very combative person. You're a very nice man. Yeah, I just don't like the fight and stuff. So they can't obviously put me against someone who's good at fighting. So they tend to just put me against the children who still defeat you yeah it's I think the show should be genuinely called Joel goes around the world and fights children it's not quite as catchy slightly problematic I'm not sure Twitter would like that yeah I think actually probably do better than

the world ironically but I mean what is warrior training like or what is warrior combat like for an Aztec warrior? What kind of weapons? Are they using obsidian? I mean, we've heard they don't use steel. What kind of weapons are they wearing? What kind of armour? They wear cotton armour, so sort of padding.

And they would have shields as well, often wooden shields. And then, yeah, the weapons are made from obsidian. So you would very often have something called a macuahuitl, which is like a big club with bits of obsidian stuck into it. Like a mace? A bit like somewhere between a mace and a sword. So it's a longer blade, more pieces.

And it is sharp, but you sort of hit people over the head with it. Yes, but actually you don't hit people over the head because as a warrior, what you're trying to do is to take captives for sacrifice. So most of Aztec warfare is about cutting people in the legs to try and make them fall over so you can drag them off the battlefield.

It's not very lethal. That's interesting. It's quite interesting, isn't it? So there's a whole other technique of warfare which is you're trying to maim rather than kill. It puts them at a massive disadvantage against the Spanish. Yeah, the Spanish. Who are trying to kill them?

I'm going to kill you. And they're like, would you mind lying down over there? Yeah, it's probably much more of an issue than stuff like the Spanish. Yeah, the Spanish, yeah. Because the Spanish are like, I'm going to kill you. And they're like, would you mind lying down over there? Yeah, it's probably much more of an issue than stuff like the guns. People overemphasise the significance of guns. But actually, the Spanish didn't have that many guns when they encountered the Aztecs, maybe 20 or 30. And there's a thing called the Flower War. Joel, do you know what this is?

The Flower War? Yeah, have a guess. Oh, it sounds wonderful, though. It sounds like sort of my mum's a garden designer so it sounds like something my mum would sort of do at the local garden centre. Sort of horticultural battle. Maybe you get there and you don't get there

early enough and someone else wants the flowers that you want. A flower war happens at Wyvail. Caroline, is it as lovely as that? Sadly not. The flowers are a metaphor for the spirits of warriors. And so it's a war designed solely for the purpose of taking captives for sacrifice. Some people have argued about whether it actually existed.

I think on balance it probably did. OK. But, yeah, you basically, it's almost like a team sport. You kind of agree that you'll come out to a battle at the same time with another city because you both want captives to take and that might be why they left the Tlaxcalans and a few other groups the Tepanecs most notably not under Aztec influence because you don't want to have to trek 30 days to get to the nearest enemy if you want some sacrificial victims you want somebody nearby yeah that you can just have a quick flower walk.

It kind of sounds like what happens in school with the rival school. Everyone has a rival school and they're like, oh my God, lunchtime Tuesday, we're going to meet up in the playing fields and we're going to have a massive fight and it never happens.

Everyone always talked about it happening. And our local school is called Marlwood, sort about it happening. And we had our local school called Marwood, sort of the enemies. And we were like, oh, we're going to meet up with them. We're going to fight them. Everyone's going to fight them on Monday playing fields. And it never happened, unfortunately. Unfortunately?

I mean, you don't sound like you were a warrior, really. I had a mace with some glass in the end and I was ready. You were ready. I was ready to take out my legs. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you do like fighting chilled. Yeah, yeah in the end and I was ready. You were ready. I was ready to take out my legs. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you do like fighting chilled. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Everything I've learned.

Maybe you could go back there and now you're a grown man. We've talked already about you running 32 miles, 34 miles, which is a long, long, long way. The Aztec Empire is quite large and messages have to be sent and they're sent by runners, aren't they? There's a sort of relay system. Joel, would you fancy being in a little relay system it wasn't as long as that how many miles are we talking between two and five miles that's doable isn't it not bad not a bad amount so you jog out of tenochtitlan with your little message yeah and you go five miles and you

pass it to your mate and you pass it and they pass it and they pass it and eventually it's gone 100 miles yeah is that how it happens So each one does like their own little leg and it's like a sort of relay and it goes eventually to that same person. So what do you know at the beginning of the show, we talked about gold. They don't have steel and they don't have iron, but they do have gold, don't they?

They've got lovely shiny gold. Do they use it as currency or is it just for making shiny things? They don't have currency in the way we'd understand. It's a barter system. Okay. Gold is one of the common media of exchange in gold quills, Is it just for making shiny things? They don't have currency in the way we'd understand. It's a barter system. Gold is one of the common media of exchange in gold quills. But no, it's not a currency. And actually, it's not even valued as much as things like beautiful feathers and so on.

They do use it for masks and artwork and jewellery. But feathers were more valued. That's so interesting. It's used in medicine because... So one of the names for gold is tonatu equital which means basically sun excrement excrement of the sun sun shit yeah wow and that leads you into all of these avenues about how you might use it that relate to the sun so one use is for medicine and the dust or shavings of gold were eaten by people who had hemorrhoids or skin pustules.

And that's because Nanahuatzin, who was the god who became the sun, it's a great tale of sort of the poor boy who's done good. There are these two gods. One is glorious and wonderful and one is poor and covered with pustules. And he is the one who is the bravest jumps into the fire and becomes the sun so the idea is it it's a sympathetic magic you know he he had all these pustules and he became the sun so if i eat the gold which is the sun shit then i will be cured of my hemorrhoids and wow and so was that partly why the Spanish were kind of interested in them? Because they had loads of gold but didn't know the value of it? Oh, definitely.

Yeah. Gold is absolutely a big focus for the Spanish. Yeah. You know, there are all these jokes in indigenous American texts about how they would eat the gold if they could. You know, that it must be so essential to them and they must want to eat it. They're really sceptical, the indigenous people, about this value.

Why do Europeans value gold? Is it because it's rarer to them? And so why is it still valued today? Is it because it's still rare or is it yeah it's still very rare and it's chemically uh sort of not very reactive it's quite soft it's easily used in you can easily shape it it's hugely rare very very valuable the egyptians had lots of gold but the aztec obviously had huge amounts of it and silver too they had a reasonably large amount of it some silver and vast quantities but no so they had quite a lot of gold yeah far more silver not not just in the aztec region but in the regions outside it's really in bolivia places like that where the

silver is but we think of the spanish having this sort of river of gold coming from the americas but actually the amount of silver massively outweighs the amount of gold it causes them huge inflation yeah it crashes the sp Spanish economy because they have so much silver turned up that suddenly everything devalues because there's too much money. So it's really funny. The Spanish Empire goes from being the wealthiest in Europe to suddenly having financial crisis

after financial crisis. It's also because they're really terrible at managing their money and their trade policy and they borrow huge amounts from people in places like Genoa and Italy and so people are already even before Cortes gets to the Aztecs or when they're just in the Caribbean people are saying every bit of gold that comes into Spain is going straight out again into the pockets of bankers you know we've got no money and this is before the gold even starts coming

really they're just in massive debt. Let's talk about the most famous emperor, because actually we're recording this in 2019, and 500 years ago, almost to the month, really, Cortés, the Spanish conquistador, arrives in Mexico and meets this glorious, powerful emperor called Moctezuma. Moctezuma is what we tend to call him for ease. His actual name was Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. That is a we tend to call him for ease. His actual name was Motecuzuma Shokoyotsin. That is a lot harder to say.

Yes. So we go with Mokhtizuma because it's close enough to the original, but still usable. And sometimes he's known as Montezuma. That's the traditional is Montezuma. And now we say Mokhtizuma. Yes, Montezuma is the traditional one, but that's like an anglicised version of a modernised version. So we tend not to use it. Well, I try to make people not use it.

And he is like the big daddy. He rules this empire. He's super powerful. He has got two wives, 150 concubines. Is that right? A load of kids? Well, he's certainly got 150 wives or concubines. It's not quite clear whether they're wives. I think he can only have one principal wife. Oh, okay. So the person who he does the real ceremonies of marriage with, the person you commit to, but then he has lots of other wives or concubines or mistresses or

because the Spanish... Yeah. Well, although there is a question about whether they then support each other and look after each other's kids, but only the children of principal wives are properly significant, if that makes sense. But because Aztec culture isn't dynastic in the way European culture is, you don't just inherit power. Being in the position of being in the palace already makes you in a position to kind of do well in life.

The Aztec are destroyed by the Spanish. You say Cortes turns up and initially tries to negotiate, then it turns into a horrible war. How does such a mighty empire result in so many millions of deaths? Two things I would say. One is that it's not just this handful of conquistadors against the Spanish. There actually are lots of allies of the Spanish quite early on to the Tlaxcalans, who we mentioned a couple of times. First they fight against the Spanish, then they ally with them. So by the time Cortes gets to Tenochtitlan, he has tens of thousands at least of indigenous allies. So it's kind of an it's infighting. A lot of this is infighting.

It's a civil war. Exactly. The Tlaxcalans, they slaughter lots of the Tenochtitlan when they get to the city because they've been at war with them for decades centuries maybe um the other thing is disease the indigenous americans have no immunity to european diseases and so wave after wave of european disease not just smallpox but flu measles mumps all kinds of things come and just wipe out civilizations because if there's no one to care for the people who are sick so more of them die and it's just devastating it's the worst thing about colonization i think is the disease part of it kind of weirdly war makes it a little bit more acceptable you kind of feel like people are going there even though it's not it's horrible

colonization there's people going over somewhere and colonizing via war is horrible but just by the fact that they're winning because they're just disgusting and dirty and disease-ridden just feels like so annoying like these wonderful people who live and just like love feathers like and yes they you know they sacrifice a few people but like 130 000 maybe but um you know the fact that they got wiped out by smallpox is just like feels so frustrating it's so horrifying tenochtitlan of course is a heavily densely populated area so it suffers from disease more than other places. And you're talking about maybe 90% in the first 10 years. I mean, imagine nine out of every 10 people you know dying in the next 10 years. Okay, so that's more than Thanos.

It's just unimaginable. It's just unimaginable. That is it. Sorry, that's not really comedy, is it? No, but history is horrible sometimes. It is just horrifying. The nuance window! Absolutely.

The nuance window! This is the part of the show where a historian gets to say something that's really important and powerful, and we listen for two minutes without interruption, and then we go, huh. So, are you ready, Caroline? Yeah, gosh, that was a bit of a build-up, wasn't it? Yeah, well, sorry, I don't want to put you on the spot, but, you know, this is your big moment.

So, two minutes on the clock, starting now. Go. So, what I want to say is that it's possible everything we've just talked about is wrong. spot but you know this is your big moment so two minutes on the clock starting now go so what i want to say is that it's possible everything we've just talked about is wrong because the sources for aztec culture are so bad so weak and so flawed that almost everything i've said i have caveated some things but i could have caveated almost anything except probably what they ate um so you have this problem that the Spanish arrive and they destroy all of those wonderful pictographic documents

we've been talking about. There were perhaps 13 documents for all of central Mexico still remaining from before the conquest. None of them are from Tenochtitlan. And so what we have, where we're getting our picture of Aztec culture from, is Spaniards talking to surviving indigenous people or just making stuff up or misunderstanding or making observations that might be wrong and then added on top of that

is the fact that in the 1430s when the Aztecs come to power in the triple alliance, Ahuitzotl, the ruler, destroys all the documents and rewrites the history then. He creates this grand mythical history for the Aztecs, promoting the way that they are. So, of course, they're in charge and it was always destined that they would be in charge. And so he rewrites the past. So what we have is a past that has already been rewritten once

being told to people who really don't understand the language or know what's happening. And they then write that down in a patchy kind of way. And also nearly all of the informants are elite men. So what we're getting is an elite male perspective. The Aztecs, as we know, were obsessed with blood, but we don't know anything about menstruation, for example, because it wouldn't occur to friars to talk to men, to talk to the Aztec men they were talking to about menstruation. So the whole thing might just be me interpreting things wrong that were interpreted wrong by Spaniards that were made up by Aztecs. Wow. There you go. Ignore everything. Yeah. That's fascinating. I mean, that's the problem with history.

That is the problem with history, isn't it? Yeah. Historians complain about sauces all the time, but the Aztec ones really are spectacularly bad. Especially ketchup. Am I right, guys? Sauces, ketchup. Very nice. Cool.

That's why I'm here. Bring the big jokes. So what do you know now? here and bring the big jokes so what do you know now joel you have uh you've you've now got uh a little bit of a quiz oh yeah give me a quiz because you know you've been here you've heard some stuff we've had a an expert for you so let's see what you've learned oh okay go um i'm gonna i'm gonna get my stopwatch up again and i'm going to give you 60 seconds to answer 10 questions and they're hopefully relatively answerable so give it a crack 60 seconds on the clock

here we go name 3 foods we get from the Aztecs maize, tomatoes and rice no maize, tomatoes and not quinoa that'll do not quinoa.

That'll do. Not quinoa. Yeah, there we go. Chocolate will do. Chocolate. Chilies. Chilies. An Aztec wedding involved the bride being carried by whom?

The bride was carried by the father of the bride. Mother of the bride. Mother of the bride. Or the older lady, yeah. No, matchmaker. Matchmaker, okay. Matchmaker and being fed at the same time with a cake. That's all I remember. What did most people drink at a wedding?

We haven't talked about this, but have a guess. Oh, blood probably? No, chocolate. Chocolate. Not as gory as hot chocolate. Emperor Moctezuma had roughly how many concubines or wives? 150. Yes.

According to the Spanish source, how many skulls were in the Great Skull Rack? 130,000. Yes, too many skulls. What was the purpose of a flower war? A flower war actually meant gods, and it was gods having a war of gods or something. No, it was to capture enemies and to sacrifice them. Sacrifice them, something like that.

Yeah, I was close enough. Roughly how many years did the Aztecs have an empire? Oh. The nearest century. I don't know. I don't know. How long? About 500 years? 200 years roughly from 1325 to 1520. Not really. An Aztec war club

was made of what natural volcanic glass? Oh. What's it called? Something to begin with A. Oh. Obsidian. I with O. O. O. O. Shield. Obsidian.

Obsidian. I knew it sounded cool. What was the name of the Spanish conquistador who ended the Aztec empire? Cortes. Cortes. And the population of Tenochtitlan was five times greater than London. How many people was that, roughly? Oh, was it like 250,000?

Yeah, it was. Yeah. Very good. I think that's seven out of 10, which is very respectable. Not bad. They are tough questions. I could almost pass the GCSE with that, I think. No, but...

Damn it. That's basically key stage three, what I just learned. Sure, yeah. I'm his primary school staff, but it's all good. Thank you so much, Joel. Thank you so much, Caroline.

I hope you've both enjoyed coming in and chatting about the Aztecs. Caroline, if people want to know more about the Aztecs, what's the name of your book? Bonds of Blood, Gender, Life Cyclecle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture. It's all about sacrifice and all that sort of stuff. It's very interesting. And Joel, are we going to see photos of your bride with feathers and shiny face paint?

Yeah, she's going to have a cape and her dad is going to feed her or something, whatever happened. Awesome. All right. Well, that is the end of the podcast uh and so i have to now say thank you thanks to my fantastic guests joel dommett and dr caroline dodd pennoch from the university of sheffield join us next time for uh another thing that does history that's how it works really uh make sure to subscribe tell your friends click the like button all the stuff that you know how to do i I'm now just off to go and listen to NSYNC singing Tearing Out My Heart,

which will have a slightly different meaning suddenly. Anyway, until next time, thank you and goodbye. You're Dead to Me was a Muddy Knees media production for BBC Radio 4. The researchers were Emma Naguse and Josh Daniels, and the producer was Dan Morrell. Hello, it's Sophie Duker. Heidi Regan.

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