I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.
When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day. Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.
Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.
They’ve also recently discovered a lost Native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa It rivals the size of Cahokia, which was very large as well.
I’m just going to like….stop this post right here, because there is lots of misinformation here. First of all “no rational layout to European cities at the time” like what??? Like the Romans hadn’t been using the grid system literally hundreds of years before the Aztec Empire rose to power? Like Barcelona (one of the most famous grid layout cities in the world) wasn’t being rebuilt literally around the same time the Spanish were conquering the Aztecs? Like the Laws of the Indies governing town construction and explicitly specifying a grid layout weren’t a thing? Like most British and French towns, many of them going back to Roman times, aren’t built on a grid system? Quite frankly, I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about when you say that European city planning had “no organization” and “no rational layout”. Seriously, have you ever been to or seen a major European city or ruin in your life? Pompeii? Rome? Constantinople/Istanbul? Anything?
Europeans were not “stunned” by the concept of a grid layout city when they started conquering Latin America (and btw, “Europeans” didn’t conquer Latin America…it was basically just the Spanish and the Portuguese, which is why practically all of Latin America speaks one of the two languages); they’d been living in and building cities on a grid system for literally thousands of years by that point.
Also, sanitation and aqueducts. Alright, this is where I just…get really mad. Like, seriously:
Roman Aqueducts? The Roman baths at Bath/Aquae Sulis, in Rome, and all around Europe? Indoor plumbing, intricate latrine and sewer systems, etc etc? No one?
Again, this was not new technology that the Spanish and Portuguese were “discovering” when they conquered the Aztecs. The Spanish would not have been surprised when they wandered into Tenochtitlan. Awed, maybe, because of the size and scale of things, but this would not have been unknown technology to them. They had tons of aqueducts at the time too; the Aqueduct of Segovia (one of the most well-known and best-preserved Roman aqueducts), Los Milagros, Les Ferreres…there are aqueducts and ancient sewer systems scattered across the Spanish countryside that were used and maintained by the Spanish from the times of the Romans.
“Tenochtitlan had a working sewage system [implied: unlike those dirty European cities].”
Again: see Rome. Also see Venice and most other Italian cities. Since we’re talking about the Spanish invasion/colonization of Mesoamerica, we should probably talk about the Romanization of the Iberian peninsula, which has its own Wiki page and I have helpfully linked (said link goes straight to the subsection on Roman civil projects in Spain). Barcelona had an intricate and expansive sewer system that dates from the Roman times and was expanded during the Medieval era. Merida actually used its Roman-built sewer system until less than 50 years ago because it was that effective and efficient at siphoning away waste; incidentally, Merida is considered a UNESCO World Heritage site because of its exceptionally well-preserved Roman ruins and is touted as “an excellent example of a provincial Roman capital during the empire and in the years afterwards.” So yeah, again: effective aqueducts and sewage systems were not anything new to the Spanish and Portuguese men that conquered Mesoamerica and South America.
Also, again, this was the Spanish conquering the Aztecs, not the British. Most of them had never seen London to begin with. The closest approximation they would have had at the time would have either been the recently rebuilt Barcelona or Madrid, which yeah, also didn’t hold a candle to it. It would be more accurate to compare Tenochtitlan with Paris, Venice, and Constantinople. The soldiers that went over to Central and South America would have been awed, because yeah, they would have never seen anything like it, because the closest approximation any of them would have been able to see probably would have been Seville (I’ve been; it’s very beautiful, and boasts some very grand buildings and cathedrals). But again; this wouldn’t have been completely out of the imagination of the Spanish; Cordoba once had a population of nearly a million residents only a couple of centuries before the Spanish conquest. Were the Spanish amazed at the work, effort, and beauty of the city of Tenochtitlan? Yes, the same as any country hick gaping at the magnificence of the country capital he’s visiting for the first time. Was it necessarily anything new or completely novel? No.
“Filthy, disease-ridden colonizers” Okay first, you try wandering around camping for months on end without the conveniences of modern tech and tell me you wouldn’t be a little dirty. Two, the “colonizers” were no more disease-ridden than the indigenous people; the indigenous people had no immunities to the diseases that the Spanish/Portuguese brought with them, while the colonizers had no immunities to the diseases native to the Americas. Smallpox and influenza, while deadly, never posed a danger to the Spanish like it did to the native populations. So again: it’s not necessarily that the Spanish and Portuguese were disease-ridden, it’s just that the native populations did not have the same immunity to such diseases like they did.
Finally, the whole “incredibly unsanitary Medieval Europe”/‘sanitation and hygiene didn’t exist in the Middle Ages’ is a widespread ahistorical myth. It’s just not true. There are pockets of various civilizations where sanitation and hygiene was not a priority during various points of time, but to pretend like Medieval Europe was just backwards, disgusting, and unhygienic across the board is both a gross oversimplification and pure ahistorical bullshit. I understand that it’s a very widespread myth, but understand that said myth is largely due to the historical revisionism of the people of the Renaissance (who wanted to see themselves as ‘more enlightened’ and ‘more forward thinking/looking’ than their ancestors) and the Victorians, who presented a view of the Middle Ages that was both rose-tinted and looked down upon (since the Victorians as a society wanted to see themselves as the pinnacle of civilization).
We have quite a lot of historical proof via health codes and regulations, art, treatises, discussion, personal diaries, and other various forms of evidence that people bathed regularly and had better hygiene than the pervasive myth of the “gross and unsanitary Middle Ages” would have us believe. See here, here, here, and here for more information, plus here for a bunch of links to articles and historical evidence. For more on public sanitation, check this JSTOR article.
This is not to put down the extraordinary accomplishments of the Aztecs, Incans, Mayans, and other Central and South American tribes and empires, nor is this to diminish the brutal and inhumane treatment of said peoples by the Spanish and the Portuguese, but it is ridiculous and revisionist to pretend like Europe was backwards and stupid and just in awe of every little thing they saw the non-white cultures doing when they conquered them.
