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>>64935126
>Cortez defeated 80000 aztec with 160 conquistadores
Do retards actually believe this

>>64935141
To be absolutely fair, modern discussions of Cortez and his expedition tend to downplay or actively ignore the gigantic army of natives the conquistadors had backing them up because then it would be necessary to explain that the Aztecs were widely hated and that the weirdos with thunder sticks, metal clothes, and a "God" were considered an improvement.

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>>64935126
it was only possible by making alliances with a shitload of other natives to fight the aztecs together
one major example off the top of my head was the tlaxcalteca; the spanish empire went on to reward tlaxcala with special treatment relative to other less supportive states, although this privilege was eroded over following centuries

>>64935126
is that what they teach you in school zoomer?

>>64935126
through God all things are possible
but god will not be on your side

>Frog poster
>Makes retarded thread

>>64935126
>80.000 Aztecs
Either the Aztecs had logistics matching the Napoleonic era, or the Conquistadors were lying their asses off.
Given that Bernal Diaz del Castillo describes days-long battles with double-digit casualties causing the Injuns to withdraw, and for the larger-scale engagements with the Aztecs later on, declines to give hard numbers, only descrivbing them as 'Vast', I doubt the Aztecs ever broke 20 k on the field, and only under very unusual circumstances.

160 Spaniards, a few cannons and tens of thousands of native allies actually. The Spaniards were simply the shock troops.

>>64935126
They both had very similar logistics networks. Once Cortez burnt his ships to avoid being put on trial as a mutineer, he relied entirely on the local tribes for food and put his own quartermasters in charge of keeping his personal units supplied from resources the natives scrounged up for him

>>64935162
Don't forget displacing and/or killing the existing priestly caste and telling the local warlords that this new god was only interested in them showing up once a week to say "hey, thanks for everything homie" instead of stabbing themselves repeatedly in the dick with stingray spines and giving the priests all their nice stuff/cute daughters. The third part of which admittedly went off the rails in a few years down the road.

Does anyone else think Cortez's conquest is weirdly similar to Hannibal's italian campaign?

>Be Cortez/Hannibal
>You want to conquer this mighty empire
>You don't have the power of a supreme ruler and some people back home would rather see you in chains that heading an invasion
>You boldly dive into the enemy heartland with a superior but smaller army
>Since you cannot win with this small army alone your strategy is to break apart the alliances of the enemy and turn disgruntled subjects into allies

But this strategy only worked for Cortez. Unlike the romans who gave many benefits to their allies in exchange for their allegiance, the aztecs only offered barbarity, becoming human sacrifices and subjugation.

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>>64935162
>then it would be necessary to explain that the Aztecs were widely hated and that the weirdos with thunder sticks, metal clothes, and a "God" were considered an improvement.
Retard Alert! Retard Alert! Gay Retard spotted in thread no. 64935126. Personnel are advised to treat the retard with caution to avoid being infected with his brain-dead faggotry.
The Aztecs weren't "widely hated". They were dick-heads to be sure, but the only ones who really hated them were the Tlaxcaltecas and their allies. City-states that were actually subjects of the triple alliance weren't making their decision to rebel because of Aztec cruelty or anything like that; they made that decision because they thought if they back Cortez against Tenochtitlan, they'd be able to benefit from it materially, mostly in reduced tributes. This wasn't some romantic rebellion against an oppressive evil, it was pure political opportunism, plain and simple

I mean he started his campaign with only those 160 men after intentionally burning his only supply line, there was no plan, he improvised his entire campaign (which was illegal by his own laws btw). It didn't matter if Aztecs outnumbered them 1:1000 when Spaniards could raise armies, gather intel and secure resupply solely based on YBW and aura farming, it was one of the most brutal historical blackpills.

>>64935126
you're thinking of pizzaro and the incas. Cortez had significant numbers of local troops as well.

The Incas had real big problems with spanish cavalry, to them it was like fighting actual irl monsters and their first engagement with the spanish was getting ambushed by the spanish who trapped and slaughtered thousands of inca soldiers using surprise and extreme violence. This gave the spanish a sort of aura of being invincible and they would rout any time they tried to fight them. Combine this with the fact that even if they had suicidal morale, many fold more incas would have to die to bring down 1 spaniard, and psychologically they were shot, none of them wanted to be fodder and get killed so maybe someone else down the line will eventually bring them down.

>>64935162
>everyone hated teh aztecs
gay r/history meme. besides the tlaxcalans. the other allies were opportunistic. this was a classic tactic europeans would employ across the americas to great effect; convince 1 chief to work on their side against an enemy chief just so screw him over in the end.

>show up
>destroy your means of retreat
>immediately meet perhaps the one singular only individual on the entire planet that can act as a translator
>seriously what are the odds of that bullshit, one of the first guys they run into just happens to know Spanish
>step into political powderkeg
>manipulate the entire political situation to wind up on top every time
>win every gamble

it's fucking ridiculous. Anyone who claims God didn't directly cheat so Cortez would win is full of it. No, I refuse to believe this man basically stepped onto what might as well have been an alien planet, found the one guy who could help, immediately dissected the political climate of nations and cultures he had zero familiarity with and no means of truly comprehending, and did everything right to not just come out alive but totally dominate. "Oh yeah he had so many natives as allies" as if that isn't even more insane, the man basically kicked off a balkan racewar on steroids and didn't die in the process. Yeah he managed to hearts and minds so hard he got entire empire toppling army, sure, yeah, whatever dude.

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>>64938128
>immediately dissected the political climate of nations and cultures he had zero familiarity with and no means of truly comprehending
Not even close to the truth. Cortez was getting manipulated about as often as he was manipulating others. Most of his dealings with the Totonacs for example were just him lying to everyone he met while they also lied to him. Then there's all the shit that went down in Cholula, which was basically just the Tlaxcaltecas using him as an attack dog to punish the city for back-stabbing them. So much of what happened during the conquest was just the result of him improvising constantly to try to work both sides against the middle. The fact that this didn't blow-up in his face is downright providential, just like you said.

>>64938128
that's pretty based I just assumed the flu killed them off

>>64935126
Literally every person the Aztecs ever met showed up to help, because the Aztecs were eating their children.

>>64936393
>>64938122
>You weren't noble you were just opportunistically taking the "opportunity" to have less of your children eaten by homosexuals

>>64936393
>>64938122
Reality is mixed. Yes they didnt like the sacrifices of their own peoples for what was a foreign god in their own cultures in cases but they saw an easier life with the Spaniards who just asked for what would be rather basic worship for an Amerindian and a basic material taxation.

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>make retarded bait thread full of lies on /his/
>get insulted and thread dies
>immediately go and remake the same retarded bait thread full of lies on /k/
https://archived.moe/his/thread/18372498/#18372498

>>64942109
I see this happen on a weekly basis, and they're usually about Aztecs like this one. There's people on /his/ who can notice what he's spouting is bullshit myths so those threads die fast, here they get 200+ replies and last a week

Aztec are gay
Spaniards with few men, little material were able to turn the natives against them. There was outsider advantage due to no preconceptions against them. But still it is clear the Spaniards were the world's greatest Aztec slayers per capita.

>>64935126
The Aztecs were savages in their cultural practices even by local native standards. There was a story about how the Aztecs were expelled from their original lands, when they asked for the hand of the daughter of a local king in marriage to their main god. What they really meant by that however was to skin her alive and "divinize" her by having a priest wear her skin as a suit and thereby play-act the part of the god Xipe Totec. This obviously triggered a violent conflict and led to their aforementioned expulsion and later Aztec exodus to what would become Tenochtitlan. They also, on an annual basis, sacrificed children to their rain-god by either cutting their heads off or by carving out their still beating hearts in the hopes that the more the children cried in agony, the better the harvest would be and the more it would rain. The rationale being that the felling of agonized children's tears pleased the rain god the most. The Spaniards simply offered the non-Aztec peoples like the Tlaxcala a better deal in that they would not have to have their young men be sacrificed upon Aztec altars anymore in endless "Flower Wars".

>>64936319
Not really retard.
Cortez had many native allies and didn't have his homeland invaded at same time

>>64935126
He had the gift of will to power, like Netanyahu

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>>64935126
>>64935141
>>64936101
>>64937046
>>64938075
OP is making shit up.

The expedition launched with ~500 Conquistadors, not 160, and got waves of reinforcements over the course of the expedition, like when Cortes convinced Narvaez's forces (which was sent to arrest him) to defect to him instead

In total across the whole expedition there were more like 2000-3000 Conquistadors. And of those, around 2/3 to 70% of them died, contrary to OP saying none of them did. See pic from "When Montezuma Met Cortes" by Restall, which alongside his "7 Myths of the Spanish Conquest" are mandatory readings on the topic

Then on top of that you have the hundreds of thousands (Restall says tens of thousands in this excerpt but elsewhere he says if anything 200,000 is perhaps too low a figure) of soldiers from local Mesoamerican city-states and kingdoms which Cortes and his expedition were allied with, and the smallpox outbreak which devastated the Mexica of the Aztec capital and caused general political chaos (enabling many of the aforementioned alliances). Finally, there were also porters, slaves, cooks, etc accompanying both the Conquistadors and local armies who would have had to fight on occasion, and I don't think (though I'm not certain) that either the 2000-3000 or 200,000+ figure includes them

>you're thinking of pizzaro and the incas
I don't know much about the fall of the Inca but even there I know it took actual decades to fully conquer the Inca rump state and Pizarro benefitted from a Inca civil war

>>64935165
Actually even within a few decades Tlaxcala's rights were violated some, see page 80 here: https://archive.org/details/tlaxcalainsixtee0000gibs

>>64936015
Hassig in "Aztec Warfare" argues that the Mexica alone could field an army of 40,000. When drawing from allied, subject, and vassal cities and towns they could obviously do more. IIRC the largest combined Aztec army we have records of is of 700,000 soldiers but that's probably a romantic exaggeration

1/?

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>>64947405
cont:

>>64935162
>>64936119
>>64937046
>>64941603
>>64941610
>>64941619
>Once Cortez burnt his ships

He never did this, that's something later retellings added. The original sources say the ships were scuttled, and even that is disputed by colonial court documents which state Cortes's captains dismantled them to salvage and reuse the nails etc from the ships. See pic in desuarchive.org/his/thread/16822183/#16822899

> the Aztecs were widely hated and that...a "God" were considered an improvement.

Firstly, Moctezuma II mistaking Cortes for a god is another thing invented in later retellings, Cortes is very explicit in his letters that Moctezuma II saw him as human, see pic in desuarchive.org/k/thread/64881947/#64887279. Other Mesoamericans might have seen the Conquistadors as supernatural but that's also often disputed.

Next, as >>64936393 and >>64938122 say the idea that the Mexica were widely hated and this led to Cortes getting allies is mostly a misconception. Sacrifice was a pan-mesoamerican practice that everybody in the region did, and like other big Mesoamerican powers, the Aztec Empire's political system was (mostly, obviously this is generalizing some) that of a hands-off hegemony, not a oppressive imperialist power, as seen in pic related from Hassig. It was that hands-off, loose political system that enabled opportunistic side switching, since subject states retained their own sense of political identity, agency, and interests, which left them with both the ability and motive to defect.

In particular, it was common in Mesoamerica for subjects to pledge themselves to another state (since subjects mostly kept their independence anyways, they weren't losing much by doing so) to help them take out their their collective capital(s) or rivals, so that state which pledged themselves would gain or retain their political status in the new kingdom or empire they helped prop up. That's pretty much what happened with Cortes.

2/?

>64947425
>>64935162
>>64936119
>>64937046
>>64941603
>>64941610
>>64941619
cont:

That's pretty much what happened with Cortes. For more info see pastebin.com/h18M28BR and arch.b4k.dev/v/thread/640670498/#640679139 and desuarchive.org/his/thread/16781148/#16781964 and desuarchive.org/k/thread/64434397/#64469714 + the other posts I link to within that /k/ post and the two posts of mine directly preceding that one

Also, by virtue of what I just said, to slightly correct >>64938122 and to reply to >>64936319 and >>64938128, Cortes was being manipulated and used by local kings and officials as much or more then he was using them to divide-and-conquer. >>64938855 already brought up a Tlaxcala example, but another is that Ixtlilxochitl II of Texcoco sided with Cortes to take the throne in that city after he previously lost a succession dispute where the Mexica backed a different heir.

As can be seen with the Cholula massacre even Tlaxcala was using the Conquistadors opportunistically and wasn't just siding with them out of resenting the Mexica or to be free of their aggression. Conversely, you COULD argue that Ixtlilxochitl II or the city of Chalco partially sided with Cortes out of resenting the Mexica, but a more likely reading is that Ixtlilxochitl II just wanted to seize power for himself. And for both resentment would have come secondary to opportunism since both (per most sources) only switched sides after Moctezuma II died and the Mexica were ravaged by smallpox, making them vulnerable and meaning they had more to gain and less to lose by switching sides anyways (as even if they stayed loyal and won, by then the Mexica might have later collapsed or faced rebellions anyways and causing Texcoco and Chalco to lose status and tax income)

If anybody is really interested I can clarify more about the specific motives each state/king had for allying with Cortes and how much of it you could pin on resentment vs opportunistic motives for each

3/?

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Battle of Cajamarca
>Belligerents:Spanish Empire | Inca Empire
>Commanders and leaders:Francisco Pizarro | Atahualpa
>Strength:106 infantry,62 cavalry,four cannons,12 harquebuses | 3,000–8,000 guards
>Casualties and losses:1 slave dead; one wounded |2,000-3,000 massacred 7,000 captured

>>64935126
Their conquest was ALL about strategy and tactics as a political level playing on divisions between different factions and faultlines. Read more.

>>64947439
Cont:

>>64945849
No, not really.

Everything you described were things other Mesoamericans also did. The Mexica just likely did it at greater scales (100s to 1000s a year) because they were the most powerful and therefore had the most opportunity to, since most victims were captured enemy soldiers.

Also people freaking out about the story where the Mexica sacrificed the Colhua princess is ironic since in context, that story was meant to present the Mexica as victims: Keep in mind there's a few versions of this so the details do differ a bit, but in the versions I'm most familiar with the Mexica didn't "trick" the Colhua king Achitometl, they were following the orders given to them by the Mexica patron god Huitzilopochtli, who told them to ask for her in hand and marriage, and then only told the Mexica after he wanted them to sacrifice her.

It was Huitzilopochtli's goal to cause a diplomatic incident that would get them ejected, because Huitzilopochtli was a war god who wanted conflict, and because the Mexica were not yet at the promised land where Huitzilopochtli foretold they would found Tenochtitlan. The incident was one of many hardships the Mexica went through where they got blamed for a problem and had to flee from place to place before finally ending up on the island where they would found Tenochtitlan.

Also, the entire thing is apocryphal and probably never happened even if flaying sacrifices were real: As I mentioned it involves their god talking to them, there are also witches and magic undead hearts being thrown into lakes, etc. It's a myth, also as evidenced by the fact that the way Huitzilopochtli told the Mexica to ask for the princess should have made it really obvious she was to be sacrificed, so it being a surprise to him at all is weird: This makes a lot more sense if this is an oral narrative being recounted to an audience where the audience would be immediately clued into the twist even if the characters in the story aren't

4/?

>>64936319
>Does anyone else think Cortez's conquest is weirdly similar to Hannibal's italian campaign?
Not in the slightest, retard

>>64947789
>>64945849
cont:

Finally, there are versions where the princess isn't sacrificed at all and instead marries into the Mexica royal family, births children, and then dies of old age.

See also >>64947425 and >>64947439 re: the Mexica being hated. Not that they were some beloved benevolent group, but there's not much evidence they were particularly resented more then most big military powers in history were. I'm not gonna say there's zero evidence, admittedly some versions of those migration narratives DO present the reasons the Mexica get ejected as being their fault and present them as being disliked even before they became a major political power, but the entire series of events is still highly suspect as a real history rather then as legend, and a fair bit of the dislike in those narratives is still rooted in the fact they had a reputation of being militaristic even from early on: So it's still not from them being oppressive to their subjects or from doing sacrifices other groups didn't do.

It's >reddit, but see also reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1ejmsu4/one_of_the_top_ten_biggest_blunders_in_history/lggrtq5/

Also, Flower Wars were (according to most sources, there is some dispute here) something largely limited to Mexica conflicts against Tlaxcala and its allies, it wasn't something the Mexica employed widely, certainly not on existing, already conquered subject states, though we do have documentation of that happening as a mutially-arranged thing to cement alliances and political marriages. Keep in mind Flower Wars also had legit gepolitical and military utility, see: https://desuarchive.org/tg/thread/97008953/#97015784

>>64947598
Cajamarca wasn't a battle, it was the Inca Emperor's ritual and diplomatic envoy getting ambushed and massacred while they were unarmed.

You might as well call 9/11 the "Battle of the Twin Towers"

>>64947603
see
>>64947439 , Cortes was being used as much as he was using them

5/5 for now

I new Mexoanon would show up and I'm glad

>>64935141
Have you ever met a mestizo? I absolutely believe it. He probably could have done it with 20 men.

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Why do you think Macuahuitl are so much more well known then other Mesoamerican weapons?

Like part of it is obviously that the Aztec are the best documented and most well known Mesoamerican civilization and the Macuahuitl is one of their most prevalent weapons in depictions and accounts, but the Tepoztopilli and Atlatl are also depicted about as frequently

>>64947425
>>64947439
Post your gun with timestamp spic

>>64949510
Don't have one

I'm also not hispanic, i'm just obsessively autistic about Mesoamerican history

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>>64935126
Because the Aztecs were one powerful warlord family that stayed in power by feeding the masses human flesh in their "sacrifice" ceremonies. Only that family had to be toppled and it went back to being a structureless band of tribal savages still eating each other but in less organized manners. They didn't have a large standing army, they had bands of headhunters that they'd pay to go out and capture outside tribes to be enslaved and eaten. Those bands didn't get paid to fight to new scary god-like invaders, who were really just doing a policing action when they saw the godless savagery going on. The Spaniards first order of business was banning cannibalism which is why they toppled the Aztec leaders. They were invited as friends but they didn't accept it, they were offered human meat and were disgusted and killed the savage demons. Good on them. They did accept the lolis though, those are some good historical accounts.

>>64949530
There's so much incorrect bullshit in this post I'm not even sure where to start

>Because the Aztecs were one powerful warlord family

I mean, I guess in the sense that there was a royal line/family in Tenochtitlan and the title of king/emperor stayed within that family? But this is true of like almost any historical state that had a king/queen. Nothing about the Mexica political system was particularly extra dynastic, to the contrary being Tlatoani was technically an elected position even if in practice all the elected candidates came from the same royal family

>that stayed in power by feeding the masses human flesh in their "sacrifice" ceremonies

No. Cannibalism was part of some specific rituals, not an integral part of statecraft or the Mesoamerican diet. You could argue that sacrifice in general was a not insignificant aspect of demonstrating state/military power and establishing control, but the exact significance of that is debated and it's not like Mesoamerican states lacked administrative officials, systems of laws, judges, courts, and other aspects of establishing power and order

>Only that family had to be toppled and it went back to being a structureless band of tribal savages still eating each other

What are you even fucking talking about here. The region had cities, writing, and formal governments going back thousands of years. And clearly this didn't happen unless you think cannibalism was still a major thing in the early colonial period

>they had bands of headhunters that they'd pay to go out and capture outside tribes to be enslaved and eaten.

No, they didn't. Are you getting your history from fucking Apocalypto?

>>64947405
>ike when Cortes convinced Narvaez's forces (which was sent to arrest him) to defect to him instead
Nat 20 speech check jej

>>64950351
>the special pozole
>not an integral part of statecraft or the Mesoamerican diet
See, now you're just lying to us. Anybody that's done their reading on the subject knows you are lying. At best you might be able to sway some low-information types. And nice attempt to shift the goalpost from 'Mexica' to "all meso Americans"

>>64950429
He's Mexican and they go on damage control when you point out the fact that they ate all those daily "sacrifices." You don't just kill hundreds of people and toss out the meat when your population is too large for hunting to sustain and you're too retarded to figure out animal domestication. They also had no metal tools so those stone buildings came after Spanish arrival. Look up the date of Spanish arrival and the dates the pyramids were said to be built. Whoops, they forgot to revise that!

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>>64950429
I didn't say they didn't do cannibalism, of course they did. But it wasn't a major part of how they cemented political authority, hell even sacrifices in general may not have been, let alone cannibalism specifically.

>>64950867
>They also had no metal tools

Sure they did, bronze and copper were used to make hatchets, adzes, styluses for lapidary work, fishooks, sewing needles, etc, alongside war-axes and spiked maces as weapons, and ceremonial or luxury tools like tweezers/tongs, knives/cutlery, bells, axe-monies etc.

Pic related shows bronze items excavated from Yautepec

>>64951003
>>64950867
Also I'm not Mexican, see >>64949514

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>>64951003
>>64950867
>>64951008
And here's a deer antler and bronze (for the tip) stylus/burrin for metal engraving

>>64947804
people like you are the reason why I still visit this god-forsaken Christian knitting forum.

Great write.

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>>64947598
>The Battle of Cajamarca, also spelled Cajamalca[4][5] (though many contemporary scholars prefer to call it the Cajamarca massacre),[6][7][8] was the ambush and seizure of the Incan ruler Atahualpa by a small Spanish force led by Francisco Pizarro, on November 16, 1532. The Spanish killed thousands of Atahualpa's counselors, commanders, and unarmed attendants in the great plaza of Cajamarca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca

>>64951211
>scholars
aka multi-generational copelords
kek

>>64947789
Why were mesoamericans (and now their ancestors) so retarded barbaric? Like a straight line from violent inca/aztec human sacrifice to the cartel shit we see today.

Would it have been different if protestants made it to the Americas first?

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>>64935126
Test.

>>64951022
>>64951003
>>64949530
>>64947804
cont:

>>64951267
Firstly the Inca aren't Mesoamerican so I can't comment on them

Anyways,I know jack shit about modern Mexico but my understanding is that the states with highest Indigenous ancestry like Yucatan and Oaxaca tend to have lower rates of Cartel violence, actually. I really don't think there's any sort of deeper cultural or genetic aspect that ties modern Cartel stuff to Mesoamerican practices, but if there were I couldn't tell you since as I said, modern Mexico isn't my area of expertise so I know nothing about how the Cartels work, and I find haploautism genetics stuff to be boring and don't know anything about it either.

This isn't a satisfying answer, but there's no anthropological consensus on why sacrifice was so prevalent in Mesoamerica either. Like, theologically, most Mesoamerican creation myths involve the cyclical creation and destruction of humanity and/or the world, and the gods often gave their own lives, blood, or underweight hardships to create that new humanity/world, so there's a thematic connection between the idea that life, rebirth etc comes from death. But I assume you want a pragmatic, utilitarian answer behind why that theology would have been developed to begin with.

As I allude to in >>64950351 and >>64951003, some have proposed that human sacrifice was a way to cement political authority and power, for example this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17159.epdf , but as I stated there's not a consensus on that being "the" reason. I can tell you that sacrifices were probably a show of military power since (at least for the Mexica and probably other Nahuas/"Aztecs") the plurality of sacrificed victims were captured enemy soldiers, but that may be less applicable to say the Classic Maya who AFAIK mostly sacrificed captured enemy nobles/rulers.

Technically 10/? even though my last marked post was only my 5th one in the thread

test

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>>64949514
>Don't have one
with all due respect mesoanon, you need to get one ASAP, if not for your personal safety, then at least to establish some internet cred and prove you're not some kind of liberal coastal pussy. Ideally you should arrange for a cartel to smuggle an FX-05 Xiuhcoatl into the country, but failing that, at least obtain a reasonably priced and reliable handgun.

>>64949514
>Don't have one
Then you have no voice here. That's literally all I needed to know about your posts.

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>>64935126
>Meanwhile in north america

>>64953204
the scraelings finally brought the norse expansion to an end. but it's an interesting what if scenario if. did a norse sailor get some scraeling pussy? the world will never know.

>>64953217
>somehow navigate a trillion miles from home through brutal cold and rough seas in scrappy little boats and form a colony
>colony gets completely wiped out because you immediately started raping and pillaging the locals and pissed them all off
The norse were simultaneously so smart and so fucking retarded

>>64938122
>we're very proud of flaying alive the Culhua princess but it never never never happened

>>64936015
Wooden clubs, stone knives and "enchanted" jaguar pelts turned out to not be so effective against tempered steel and an immunity to cowpox

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>>64951544
>>64951267
cont

Anyways, I also have to object to calling them barbaric: I know you were likely just asking about why sacrifices were common, and I did go ahead and address that, but if I can be a bit pedantic, to me "Barbaric" implies some sort of senseless or lawless violence, which wasn't the case: These were urbanized political states with formal governments and systems of law: Tenochtitlan for example had both local "municipal" courts and judges for each of the city's capulli districts, and then a series of "state" appellate courts above those. There was a public education system with schools for both commoners and nobles, both poetry/songs and rhetorical public speaking were valued, with the ideal expectations for noblemen was to be intellectuals or artists as well as warriors

Even sacrifices had (in theory) strict rules around who was sacrificed, when, how, and why: The primary deity impersonator sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca in the Toxcatl festival for example had to meet multiple pages worth of specific physical and mental requirements to be selected for the role, and had to live as the god for months prior to their sacrifice, going around preforming duties and tasks such as pilgrimages to specific shrines and ritually marrying other deity impersonators. Sacrificed enemy soldiers also allegedly lived with their captor's family in the weeks, months, or years leading up to their sacrifice and were mourned as family after their death. Obviously some of this is probably romanticized, but there's also archeological evidence backing some of it up (EX: the Huey Tzompantli skull rack excavations show foreign victims lived in Tenochtitlan for extended periods of time before they died and were in disproportionately good health)

Even the Spanish objected to calling them barbaric or savage, as seen in pic related: Many Conquistadors, Friars etc compared the Aztec and other Mesoamericans (and Andeans) to the Greeks and Romans as "civilized pagans"

11/?

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>>64955895
Cont:

>>64954790
See >>64947789 and >>64947804. The whole incident with the Colhua princess probably DIDN'T happen, but even if you assume it did, the reason her father was angry wasn't that the Mexica did sacrifices, so did the Colhuas, it was that he thought he was giving her as a political marriage, not as a victim. Nothing about the incident backs up that the Mexica were hated for their sacrifices or for being oppressive

>>64955368
They had a lot more weapons then just simple wooden clubs, see >>64949359.

They also didn't wear Jaguar pelts as armor. The most basic form of armor used by the Aztec was stuff or padded cotton gambeson vests and tunics. Elite soldiers had thick cloth full body warsuits or skirted tunics worn over that, with the cloth covered in a layer of feather mosaic made from tens or hundreds of thousands of feathers, with the arrangement of differently colored feathers making different patterns. The "Jaguar" theme of Jaguar knights was just the feather mosaic design making a pattern of jaguar spots, combined with a wooden helmet (which alongside bamboo or wooden shields were covered in feather mosaic, precious stone/metal inlays, etc) sculpted to look like a Jaguar head

There is one relatively late account which states that commoners who achieved the right to wear Jaguar themed equipment had to make do with lesser quality warsuits made from actual Jaguar fur instead of feather mosaic, but these almost certainly still be full body processed suits (like a fur coat or mittens), not a unprocessed raw hide worn like a caveman, and I'd wager the fur was merely replacing the feather mosaic, and would still be attached to a thick cloth base (with also the gambeson worn beneath it).

There's also accounts talking about warsuits made from flayed human skins (though it's possible it was just the feather mosaic design emulating a flayed skin), and skirted tunics with metal plates/"mail" over it instead of feather mosaic.

12/12 for now

>>64955909
mesoanon, can you give me a starter list of books? I'm fluent in spanish if it helps.
Also, any authors or internet people you would recommend AGAINST on the topic?

>>64936393
Even injuns as far way as the Mayans or Tepehuans had issues with the Aztec. The Aztecs basically acted like the vatniks of the time, but were rich. They were literally just northern savages that migrated down to Mexico and bastardized Teotihuacan/Mayan/Purepecha culture and combined these into an ultra violent expansionist military power. Their religious ideology was extreme and primarive even for pre-columbian culture. They were basically if a bunch of trashy asshole bumpkins came into wealth and used that to build an empire and harassed the neighbors they copied their culture from. Nahuatl is a Uto-Aztecan language with roots in Utah.

If you could send a signal to any location in the world which place would you choose to send it to, and what would you say?

>>64956817
Primitive chichimec bastards. They were so self-conscious about their low origins they had to retcon old Tula as being "actually nahuas, not otomi at all", inventing the Toltec myth as it is usually presented

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>>64956712
I struggle with giving introductory book suggestions because the way I got into Mesoamerica was going directly from online posts by other hobbyists and researchers, to then reading specialized academic papers and book chapters: I skipped the step where people tend to read more generalist/introductory books

I have this WIP booklist me and my friends have had on the backburner for years but as you can see it's very WIP still and the intro section is especially unfinished, though the Conquest section is basically done, aside from the fact that we're going to remove Broken Spears and switch it out for something else, and maybe we'll add 1-2 books on Spanish conquests in Guatemala/the Maya regions or West Mexico since currently the section is very fall of the Aztec centric when there were decades (in some areas centuries) of campaigns and conquests after that

I'd also mostly defer to the booklist on /r/Askhistorians. I know >Reddit but it's a good resource. I'd also recommend binging a lot of the posts and responses there from users, there's tons of good information. On Youtube, Ancient Americas, ArtsQ, Azlanhistorian, and Matt Gush all do consistently good content too

It's only 20ish pages long but https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol22/iss2/2/ is also a solid starting overview, but I can't vouch for other publications by the same author/university since even if this specific PDF is good, there's a whole thing where Mormons try to argue the Mesoamericans were a lost tribe of Israel and I'm not sure other publications by them steer clear of that or not

If you can read Spanish though then that opens the door to tons of primary sources that don't have english translations, sadly though I don't have a master primary source list put together yet, though that's something I want to work on at some point. And i'm not sure jumping right into Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Juan Bautista Pomar, Chimalpahinin's etc works is where you should start anyways

13/?

>>64955909
>>64957473
cont:

>>64956817
>>64957409
The Uto-Aztecan language family is centered in the Southwest US, but that doesn't mean that the Nahuas directly migrated from Utah or Arizona down into Central Mexico, the spread and development of Nahuatl was much more gradual then that, and there's some recent proposals which put Nahautl or Proto Nahuatl as being in Central Mexico as early as the Classic period.

Anyways, I've said it elsewhere in the thread but there's really not much evidence the Mexica were especially violent or hated by Mesoamerican standards, they were just the biggest military power. See >>64947425 , >>64947439 , >>64947789 and >>64947804, or my posts in this thread: https://desuarchive.org/his/thread/15894100/#15898614 : The myths (and again, these may be entirely myths) where the Mexica were hated and ejected from place to place is framed as mostly being the result of misunderstandings or as a result of their military prowess, not from doing sacrifices more then other groups or being uniquely oppressive or brutal in their rule or the way in which they waged war.

Like, you could certainly make an arguement that it suggests they were disliked, and the version of the Tizaapan ejection by the Colhuas where they were kicked out due to cutting off people's noses could be argued is an example of them being disliked for brutality, but it was the Colhua king who ordered them to do it, they just were so successful at it it apparently intimidated the Colhuas (or something, really he whole event doesn't make much sense, like stuff with the alternative princess flaying version also not adding up if you think about the details, which is why I think both are apocryphal in addition to the supernatural elements), hence my interpretation of it really just being that they were especially militaristic/good at warfare, especially since we know in later conquests the Mexica weren't particularly prone to doing total warfare or anything.

14/14 for now

>>64935255
Many such cases! Sad!

>>64936319
No.

>>64936393
>romantic rebellion
>pure political opportunism
Sounds like it was neither purely one way over the other but a mix of both influencing the motivations and decisions, and ultimately the outcome.

>>64935126
>Green Berets parachuting in and training locals up that are hostile to your enemy anyways

Except you conveniently resemble prophecies about gods returning, and can back it up with new tech, scary beasts and hardasses. A gifted orator and diplomat translator in Malinche with a gigantic grudge didn't hurt either.

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>>64935126
I have a mestizo Filipino friend with conquistador Spanish blood who took an ancestry test and found out that Hernan Cortez and one of his Aztez slave brides were very distant ancestors of his. Apparently his family were eligible for Spanish citizenship and even royal titles but noped the fuck out because it meant that they had to pay
taxes to Spain, which is fucking retarded

>>64935141
They had the support of the tribes who didn't enjoy the human sacrifices. But the k/d of some Conquistadores is like 1000:1

>>64960626
Based rebelious Mestizo siding with Indios rather than Spaniards.

Horses.

>>64959504
cont:

>>64960254
Correct, though I agree with that anon that opportunism was the more primary motivating factor for most states which allied with Cortes.

To give a more detailed breakdown like I said I might in >>64947439

>Cempoala: An existing subject state within the Aztec Empire belonging to the Totonac culture/civilization. The earliest state to ally with Cortes, but AFAIK did not stay allied long term and didn't participate much, if at all during the siege of Tenochtitlan. Complained about onerous Mexica taxes and other harsh treatment, but this seems to have mostly been a sob story to get the Conquistadors to help them attack their rival Totonac city of Tzinpantzinco which they lied about being an Aztec fort to Cortes.

>Tlaxcala: An independent, unconquered Nahua (like the Mexica, so "Aztec" in a cultural/linguistic sense, even if not politically a part of the Aztec empire) state in an adjacent valley to the Valley of Mexico where Tenochtitlan/the core of the Aztec Empire was at). A frequent target of flower wars by the Mexica, seemingly to wear it down for full conquest. Likely actually resented the Mexica and allied with Cortes to be free of Mexica aggression, but also likely opportunistically used Cortes to sack Cholula and to put it back within their sphere of influence after it recently switched from being a Tlaxcaltec to a Mexica ally

>Texcoco: A secondary capital within the Aztec Empire (at least within some model's of the empire's structure), the head of cities and states belonging to the Acolhua Nahua subgroup, who were on the eastern side of the Valley of Mexico). A specific Texcoca prince, Ixtlilxochitl II, previously lost a succession conflict to take the throne in Texcoco, in which the Mexica backed a competing heir. After Moctezuma II's death, the smallpox outbreak, and the Conquistadors and Tlaxcalteca re-entered the valley to start the siege, Ixtlilxochitl II and his followers in some Acolhua cities/towns switched sides.

15/?

>>64961571
>>64960254
cont:

>Depending on your view, he was motivated either to re-take the throne in Texcoco, or to elevate Texcoco's status to be the top capital within the empire, or to shake off Mexica influence in Acolhua affairs. Note, however, that he only switched sides after the Mexica were weakened and vulnerable, rather then prior to then like say Tlaxcala, which suggests a particular opportunistic motive, though there are some accounts which claim Ixtlilxochitl tried to ally with Cortes earlier and just wasn't able to. The rest of Texcoco and many other Acolhua cities stayed loyal to Tenochtitlan and/or only switched sides when beaten and forced to.

>Huextozinco: A Nahua state located in a pass connecting the Valley of Mexico and the Valley of Tlaxcala, it was frequently fought over by the Mexica and Tlaxcalteca and flip flopped between being aligned with either of them. DESU I forget the exact time or specifics with how it allied with the Conquistadors and Tlaxcalteca for the siege, but I believe it was only after Moctezuma II died, smallpox broke out, and the latter two started to plan to re-enter the valley of Mexico to besiege Tenochtitlan. That timing suggests an opportunistic element, but Huextozinco's status as a frequent target could also lend itself to having resentment towards the Mexica

>Chalco: A Nahua state within the Valley of Mexico, notably one of if not the last states within the valley to fall to Mexica conquests, IIRC only being conquered into the empire in the 1470s. Only switched sides to join the Conquistadors, Tlaxcalteca, and dissident Acolhuas after Moctezuma II's death, smallpox etc, suggesting an opportunistic motive of only switching sides when there was less to lose and more to gain from doing so, but they did said defection fairly readily without much negotiation, which might suggest they held onto some resentment or had less loyalty due to being relatively recently integrated into the empire

16/?

>>64961575
>>64960254
cont

>Xochimilco: A Nahua state within the Valley of Mexico. Only switched sides to join the Conquistadors, Tlaxcalteca, dissident Acolhuas etc after being beaten by them and forced to after intially staying loyal and fighting with the Mexica, at least in some accounts. Clearly didn't defect due to resentment

There's other states which switched sides as well beyond these, or which I alluded to, such as the Acolhua ones loyal to Ixtlilxochitl II, but these are the ones I know enough about to clarify on their potential motives. As you can see I think the timing of when states switched sides is pretty informative of their motives: If they switched sides only after the Mexica were weakened, then to me that suggests their motive was more opportunistic, since that implies:

1. They weren't jumping at the opportunity to defect,
2. And as already common in Mesoamerican politics for states to opportunistically try to secede or launch coups when their capital was weakened or politically destabilized, and
3. Especially for states already within the empire and within the Valley of Mexico, it would mean their potential benefits from the Mexica bringing taxes in and their status/influence from being aligned with the Mexica or having political marriages with them would have been jeopardized anyways, leading to them having less to lose and more to gain by switching sides at that point

However, I suppose you could argue that states could have resented Mexica rule and simply didn't feel they could get away with switching sides until after the Mexica were weakened, but then you'd have to ask what Mexica rule was even being resented for when Mexica rule was generally hands-off as I mention in >>64947425. I simply don't think the resentment (at least resentment beyond not liking having to pay taxes) angle lines up for most states, especially not as a primary motive, especially given the frequency of opportunistic side switching in Mesoamerican politics

17/18

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>>64961578
cont:

>>64960267
>>64960813
>that are hostile to your enemy anyways
>who didn't enjoy the human sacrifices

See >>64947425, >>64947439, >>64947789, >>64947804, >>64961571, >>64961575, and >>64961578 : Sacrifice was a pan-mesoamerican practice everybody did and the idea the Mexica were widely hated (at least more then any militaristic capital people owed taxes to was) by their subjects doesn't really hold water. The alliances between the Conquistadors and local states was mostly the result of political opportunism.

>prophecies about gods returning
Most, if not all of these are retroactive revisionism to make Spanish rule seem more pre-ordained

>Malinche with a gigantic grudge didn't hurt either.
It's not even clear Malinche was born within the Aztec Empire. As far as I know there's no evidence or assertions she held a grudge against the Mexica, though if you have a source to the contrary let me know, I haven't dissected or looked into this as much as I have the issue of the motives of why local states allied with Cortes

>Tribes
These were city-states, kingdoms, empires, or towns/villages beneath them, not "tribes". Cities, writing etc goes back in the region nearly 2500-3000 years before the arrival of the Spanish, and what was considered a large, medium, or small settlement within the Central Mexico and Castilian Spain was fairly similar

EX: Teotihuacan was a large city in Central Mexico from 1000 years before the Aztec, during the late Roman period, and it rivaled some of the largest Roman cities in size and infrastructure, with 100,000+ denizens, nearly all of whom lived in fancy compounds akin to Roman villas with dozens of rooms, open courtyards, waterworks systems and painted frescoes being used as apartments, and the city covering an area larger then Rome itself, see also pic for comparisons between the Ciudadela and Colosseum

Or how Tlaxcala was nearly the size of the largest Castilian cities, and was ruled via a formal senate.

18/20

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>>64961646
>>64960267
>>64960813
>Cities, writing etc goes back in the region nearly 2500-3000 years before the arrival of the Spanish

See pic

19/20

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>>64961653
>>64960267
>>64960813
cont:

>and what was considered a large, medium, or small settlement within the Central Mexico and Castilian Spain was fairly similar

See pic

20/20 for now

>>64961578
Mesoanon, did the Mexica and other mesoamerican peoples have written language and records? How do we know what we know about them? You have ignited a thirst for knowledge in me.

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>>64961660
Cont:

>>64961719
The Maya had a true written language, it has a character for each spoken syllable in the spoken language, alongside also having logograms (glyphs that represent whole words or concepts). Other Mesoamerican written scripts vary in complexity and depending on your definition might only be "proto-writing"

Olmec is entirely undeciphered so we don't know what's up there. Epi-Olmec/Isthmian is also mostly undeciphered, but it seems to use subglyphs representing sounds to form word glyphs like the Maya script which suggests a similar heavy phonetic competent. The Teotihuacano script is also-also mostly undeciphered and how it works is debated a lot, I don't remember enough to clarify. The Zapotec script isn't quite as "complete" as Maya and is mostly logographic, and lacks articles, prepositions and conjugations, but has verbs

Aztec and Mixtec is primarily pictographic (IE: rather then having specific characters or glyph, it is more based on imagery and iconography that can be "read" in a semi consistent way if you know the meaning), but they, especially Aztec, still have some phonetic components like rebuses or visual puns that tie into the spoken languages (EX: the suffix -tlan in Nahuatl means "place off", but it sounds like "tlantli", tooth, so you can draw/write the city of "Atlan", place of water/near the water, like this: aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/atlan-mdz53r). Technically you CAN write full sentences out using the Aztec script with this way, but it was never historically used that way

There were both inscribed stone inscriptions (and likely painted murals with writing or pictography) on monuments and architecture, as well as manuscripts, scrolls, and books (all are often called Codices), made from deerskin or paper, tho the books were single long sheets folded over itself like an accordion rather then being multiple sheets bound to a spine. Painted vessels/ceramics also often had writing or pictography on them

21/?

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>>64962478
>>64961719
cont:

>>64961719
What kind of information tended to be written down depended on the medium. Monuments and architecture and art sometimes had inscriptions stating the date it was constructed/sculpted/painted or who the artist was, which king it was commissioned for or under, or who owned the piece, or even what sort of item or food the vessel was intended for: For example, there's a famous vessel from Rio Azul which has "chocolate" written out on it, meanwhile this https://the-past.com/feature/signature-style-the-artists-behind-maya-masterpieces/ talks about some pieces where we have artist's signatures (there's a really cool piece I found a while back I can't relocate now sadly where we know not just the name of the artist, but also that they defected to a rival kingdom).

Monuments also frequently features political records, like on day or year a new king or queen rose to power, was born, when a city got conquered, or lists of deeds a given king or what their political backing was to justify their rule (EX: the inscriptions on https://web.archive.org/web/20241109034346/https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/747591 describe the ruler's coronation and why he was the succeeding heir rather then IIRC his brother)

The dates of the births/deaths of rulers, wars, and other major political events or ceremonies were also common in codices (see pic for example for some events in a Mixtec codex): In general I think you can broadly say the surviving Prehispanic codices we have tend to be either such political records (which can include maps and depictions of migrations across them, though said maps tend to be fairly abstract, look up the Codex Xolotl or the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan), astrological and divinatory documents which include things like tables of star charts and can also sometimes recount mythical events, and finally tax documents, which are what they sound like.

22/?

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>>64962488
>>64961719
cont:

Motolinia also described codices which recorded when and how festivals occurred, of omens, and names of children or rites of marriages, I assume these would be similar to the divinatory/astrological codices we have. Pedro Martir de Angleria also stated some codices recorded the specifics of festivals/ceremonies, and also some which recorded laws or the "precepts of agriculture". Most sources seem adamant that written laws were not a thing for the Aztec (even if colonial sources on Texcoco claimed they invented written laws there, and despite Tenochtitlan having formal courts and judges), so I'm not sure how to reconcile that

As far as the agricultural codices, Angleria mentions astronomical codices separately from them, at least in the translation I have, so he's probably not just saying the astrological/astronomical codices were used in agriculture. There are some codices from the colonial period, like the Badianus Manuscript (pic), which details different kinds of plants and their use in medicine or sorcery, so it's possible that he's referring to codices like that and they existed before contact rather then just in the colonial period

Also seen in colonial period codices are land surveys/ownership documents and what are sort of censuses, as seen here: x.com/Majora__Z/status/1887327514806345758 , though it's unclear if this kind of codex existed before contact: Tax codices almost certainly did, the Codex Mendoza's tax section and the Matricula de Tributos likely reflect how those tended to look prior to Spanish contact, and it's possible, maybe even probable that such codices also had maps in line with the aforementioned the Codex Quetzalecatzin as seen in that tweet to aid in identifying which land plots or towns different taxes were owed from, but I think it's less likely the more detailed floorplans and land plot maps seen in say the Oztoticpac land maps or the Codex Vergara, also seen in said tweet

23/?

>>64935141
Most "common knowledge about war" is bullshit

Like for example the WW2 myth is still that Hitler who had 500 million people under him lost to Stalin who had 300 million people under him because Stalin had more men. And then Hitler's Army froze, but there was no winter on the Soviet side of the front or someting.

>>64935162
>>64935141
>>64935126
The real reason Europe was able to colonize the globe was monogamy. In all the colonies, only 80% of men would be able to get laid and this new regulation possibility made the 80% of men willing to fight their current rulers alongside the newcomers.

>>64962509
>>64961719
cont:

Lastly keep in mind that different civilizations tended to write down different sorts of things to different mediums: What I described with engraved inscriptions on monuments and architecture or written out words/names on those or art pieces like ceramics for example are mostly a Maya thing, though the Epi-Olmec and Zapotec also did it with inscriptions during the Preclassic and early Classic periods. By contrast since the Aztec couldn't write out full sentences normally, you don't see stone inscriptions or writing describing the use or artist of specific art pieces.

It's possible that painted murals though it's possible painted murals on architecture and the motifs on ceramics could have carried pictographic "writing", or that engraved pictography on stone could have, but there's only a few examples I can think of for the latter (for example, inscriptions at Chapultepec and Texcotzinco of names/dates of rulers), there's not many detailed surviving murals for us to tell for the former, and for the middle, despite us having a fair amount of painted Aztec ceramics, I can't think of any where the motifs/paintings are thought to depict detailed pictographic "writing"

I'll refer you to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/403pkw/why_did_mayan_writing_not_become_broadly_adopted/cys0f39/ which talks about why inscriptions on public monuments seem to be a thing for the Maya and in Preclassic Central Mexico, but not in Postclassic Central Mexico (TL;DR it probably comes down to the fact that there's more linguistic diversity in Central Mexico so you couldn't count on travelers and visiting officials to read the same written language wheras the Classic Maya script was largely shared across most of the Maya region, though I'm not sure how that intersects with the fact that there's like 30 different spoken maya languages and many aren't mutually intelligible)

24/24 for now

>>64962568
Thank you for the in-depth response! I'll have to do additional reading, what an underappreciated subject in history.

>>64957409
>Primitive chichimec bastards

We wuz tlātoanitzīn! Cuāuh bix nōatl!

>>64963692
Happy to help

If any other anons have questions feel free to ask