Aztec Benefits

When people think of the Aztecs the first thing that comes to mind is human sacrificing, but there is so much more to this whole group of people than the sacrifices that played a minor part in their life style. While it’s always important to learn about every aspect of a whole society, history should highlight the more positive aspects included in the Aztec’s society. These positive aspects should overrule the small blip in their history that is human sacrificing that everyone seems so hung up on. The Aztecs as a people were scientifically and technologically advanced with advances made in record keeping, farming, and time. They had well run market places, beautiful cities, and a flourishing empire that was the second largest empire in the
Western Hemisphere at that time. Finally, their society was generally a warm, yet strict society that appreciated their traditions while all the while not being particularly negative. This all means that history needs to highlight all the accomplishments and positive features of the Aztec society rather than all the negative.
The Aztecs turn out to be extremely technologically and scientifically advanced in many different areas.
One area this was shown in was their farming techniques. The Aztecs developed a system fir irrigating agriculture called chinampas which were floating islands that rested on reed frames anchored to the bottom of their lakes. With the thousands of acres of these chinampas the Aztecs could produce lots of their main crop, corn. They also created terraces which were steps that descended down a hall to control the flow of water and keep their crops from flooding. These processes proved to be efficient and helped them make an abundance of corn to create tortillas out
of.
Another area they were quite advanced in was their method of telling time. They had two different forms of time counting that they used simultaneously, the tonalpohualli and the xiuhpohalli. The tonalpohualli counted days based on a 260-day cycle and the xiuhpohalli used the calendrical system counting 365 days, which regulated the recurrent cycle of annual seasonal festivals. These two systems of time would then align every 52 years with their first days of the year landing on the same day which created their century. Lastly, the Aztecs turned to writing and record keeping to keep on advancing. They used pictographs to communicate through writing and these pictographs either represented ideas or the sounds of syllables. Also, created for writing and record keeping was paper made from strips of bark from fig trees that were pounded on wood. These then led to taxes being able to be collected, lawsuits recorded, having merchants able to keep their accounts, and having maintained land registers. All these advances led the way for the Aztecs to thrive in other areas of their life including market places and cities.
As quoted from document A, “the Aztecs created one of the two most powerful empires in the Western Hemisphere prior to the coming of the Europeans…”.
This clearly states that the Aztecs created a prosperous empire with thriving cities that even the Spanish described as legendary. So even before the Europeans arrived in the Americas there were already active people who were flourishing and doing things like farming, painting, fighting, singing, and so much more. These people were the Aztecs, who have accomplished many things and have also been credited with having thriving, well-functioning cities and markets. In document N, the conquistador who wrote the document spoke of how he had been to many different places and has experienced many different market places, but none of them compared to how great the Aztec marketplace was. Then also in document F, pictures or drawings of the advanced cities of the Aztecs are shown. These photos show how the Aztecs expanded and advanced their cities and at one point their capital had a population of about five times the population of London. All of these sources point to the same conclusion that the Aztecs progressed and advanced as a people greatly as shown in their cities and their
marketplaces.
Lastly, while the Aztec’s way of life and their society wasn’t something that was great or amazing, it still was a positive aspect of their society. The home life of the Aztecs was warm as well as well disciplined, the parents were close to their children while bringing them up strictly. Children get life-like toys and are assigned tasks at the age of 3 three. Then three years later, at age six, they are given domestic responsibilities and they go to school when they reach 15. Their parents along their journey of growing up counsel and guide them towards honorable careers. Marriage is then expected for boys at 20 and girls at 16 and the marriage is arranged by the families. However, the kids do get a say in their life by having the opportunity to guide their parents. There are then many things expected of the young, Aztec men, as shown in document P. Their expected to leave everything they know and exert themselves while facing hardships so that they may be able to accomplish something. Their expected to do anything they can or face anything they have to do something worthwhile.
Also, included in the Aztec society is all their rituals and traditions that they upheld and believed fully in. For example, on the eve of a wedding ceremony the bride is carried to the groom’s home on the back of an old woman down a path lighted by women carrying burning pine branches, as stated by document O. Several different rituals are described in document Q, all having to do with what happens after a child is born. These include everyone rubbing their joints with ash when seeing a new child believing it strengthened their joints and leaving a fire burning for four days and not taking anything out of the fire as to not take the good luck away from the child. This shows that the Aztecs were a superstitious people that kept to their traditions and rituals as to not suffer any repercussions they believed in.
Aztecs, as a whole, were a positive people which was shown through their advancements in farming, record keeping, time, marketplaces, cities, and society. They proved themselves worthy of being perceived as having a positive culture despite being most recognized by their human sacrificing. There was much more to this group of people than what most see and most of what is positive about them is overlooked. The biases that surround most of the things people learn about the Aztecs forces the opinion that they are a negative people. However, they provide many more positive aspects than negative when looking at everything they have to offer. The Aztecs flourished in their way of life and this is seen in so much of their society as long as one remembers to look past whatever may cause them to be blind and see the Aztecs for who they really were.