Don’t be mistaken…

tlatollotl:

pendulum-sonata:

…When the Spanish arrived to the continent (especifically to what is known today as Veracruz) and met the mesoamerican cultures they had a wide arrange of knowledge and structured civilization in sharp contrast with the “savages” they expected to find

• Among the many, many accomplishments are:

• A full written system based on hyeroglyphs (I.e. the Dresden Codex)

• Irrigations systems based on channels collecting rain water and aqueducts, and hidraulic systems to avoid floods

• Agriculture, particularly the Chinapas (the so-called “floating gardens”)

• Arquitecture, not just the pyramids and religious art, but had a complex layout to their major cities (plazas, playgrounds, merchant districts etc.)

• Mathematics and Number system based on 20 numbers who already had their equivalent to the zero number.

• Astronomy and as such a full understanding of space and time (i.e. The Calendars, they understood the cardinal points)

• Medicine (They already extracted the active principle of aspirin)

• Philosophy and a dualism-based thought system

• Education available for ALL the social strata, even the women (women could reign too btw)

• Indentured Servitude (Yes they had slaves, like almost all ancient cultures had, but it was NOT hereditary, they could buy their freedom and have possesions of their own, couldn’t be sold without their consent)

I could honestly be here all day, but those are the most significant ones, also these do NOT refer solely to the aztecs, they were developed by ALL the cultures that thrived on the Mesoamerican lands.

No, not all cultures in Mesoamerica developed these things. For instance, chinampas were limited to the Aztecs. You would be hard pressed to find those floating gardens in Oaxaca Valley or Guerrero.

Not all Mesoamerican cultures had school systems, either. That, too, was largely limited to the Aztecs. You would be hard pressed to say the Caxcanes or Maya had a similar school system.

We know who has writing and who doesn’t and we know who has true writing and who has pictographic writing. Only the Maya, Epi-Olmec, and Zapotec had true writing which could be read independently from memorized knowledge. The Aztecs, Mixtecs, and Teotihuacan had pictographic writing that acted as neumonic devices to recall already memorized knowledge.

Not everyone used irrigation systems that used channels, either. The Teuchitlan culture in Magdalena lake basin of Jalisco did not use said channels.

I could also go on about the differences between Mesoamerican cultures. The only commonality you can say about Mesoamerican cultures is that they lived in Mesoamerica. The line is drawn there because there will always be exceptions to such blanket statements.