[HN Gopher] 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec empire
___________________________________________________________________
3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec empire
Author : simonpure
Score : 270 points
Date : 2025-02-05 15:40 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl)
| m0llusk wrote:
| Inspiring in many ways, but also troubling. These people would
| have used fire for heating, cooking, and crafting, but there is
| no smoke. Depictions of ancient peoples that delete critical
| elements are troubling, distracting, and misleading.
| ferfumarma wrote:
| > To mark the ending of the 52-year cycle, all fires in the
| Basin of Mexico are extinguished and then lit again from a
| single source, in what is called the New Fire Ceremony.
|
| So the renders are probably from right after the ceremony.
|
| Troublesome, distracting, misleading problem solved.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Brother, just wait til you hear they didn't even bother to
| render each of the individual pieces of hay that made up their
| beds.
| precur wrote:
| Discussed previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37365215
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973229
| marstall wrote:
| stunning! though curious about the sewage situation.
| viciousvoxel wrote:
| Sewage was taken out of the city by boat via the system of
| chinampas, i.e. canals cutting through the man-made patches of
| reclaimed land within the lake. Almost all of this was
| destroyed/filled in under Spanish occupation and is likely one
| of the major factors in the spread of disease and decimation of
| the native population.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| That is tragic. Europeans, with inferior civil engineering
| skills but superior military weapons, decimate a civilization
| instead of transferring and absorbing their technology and
| then take a few hundred years to catch up. It's a tech lesson
| that some of us still fail to understand.
| threatripper wrote:
| Fascinating how some road paths have endured the centuries.
| sayrer wrote:
| Yep. You can see it on the map in the Museo Nacional de
| Antropologia. El periferico ("the ring highway") and other
| major roads follow the old causeways. I have been there many
| times in my life, maybe 30 or 40.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| The thing thats wild about Tenochtitlan, as the story goes, is
| that the Aztec people discovered it themselves, and no one really
| knows who originally built it!
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You're thinking of another city, very likely Teotihuacan.
| Tenochtitlan was built from scratch by the aztecs. (Either that
| or please give sources for your statement).
| viciousvoxel wrote:
| Parent is probably thinking of Teotihuacan which is nearby.
| We do know who built it but there is relatively little know
| about them (compared to the Aztecs). The ruins of Teotihuacan
| were discovered by the Aztecs and they were mythologized, for
| instance even the name "Teotihuacan" is the Aztec (Nahuatl)
| name for the city meaning "the place where gods were
| created."
| ks2048 wrote:
| Maybe they are referring to the fact that the Mexica came
| from elsewhere and founded the city and there were already
| other people/cities in the area. It seems the Valley of
| Mexico has been inhabited since around 12,000BC, so not
| surprising there isn't history of the first people there.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Nope. It was just an honest mistake see response from
| parent.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| oops yes, definitely was thinking of Teotihuacan.. My bad!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| T-something. Those names are easily confused for me as an
| English speakers.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| You think some mysterious people or aliens built something as
| technologically complex as a planned urban city, with a clear
| grid, subdivided districts with schools and commercial
| centers... that facilitates the application of human labor,
| commerce, worship and education and then gifted it to some
| other people who somehow knew how to use and maintain that
| technology?
|
| To most Americans today, who have no idea why their country
| works the way it works, and would rather tear it all down, I'm
| sure the actions of the last few generations might seem alien.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Well first of all, I got the city wrong so its really not
| applicable here.
|
| But also more broadly, your point is basically why
| Teotihuacan is so interesting to me! Not because of aliens,
| but because its fun to think about how the Aztec/Mexica
| people were as displaced from the origins of that particular
| place as much as we are!
|
| But yes absolutely with you: even more so than attributing it
| to a particularly American decadence (which is a little too
| pat/editorial column to pass my sniff test, but ymmv), the
| whole impulse to Ancient Alienize things seems to me to be a
| kind of mystification which sustains, ultimately,
| racist/colonial stereotypes of ancient non-white people. It
| clearly serves to sustain a certain idea of civilization,
| rather than overturn or disrupt it.
|
| Either way, its an important point, and happy to be your
| punching bag so you can make it!
| ecocentrik wrote:
| Thank you for giving your statement more context. :)
|
| Asking the question: "How could they have done that?" is
| not dissimilar from asking "Why didn't we do that?" so
| occasionally truly curious individuals do step through the
| self-soothing cultural narrative.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The thing thats wild about Tenochtitlan, as the story goes,
| is that the Aztec people discovered it themselves
|
| Considering that the Aztecs were a recent conquering group, the
| southern extremity of their ethnicity, that isn't surprising at
| all, whether or not it's true.
| tempodox wrote:
| This is so awesome. I want a time machine to go visit there, if
| only as an intangible ghost.
| xandrius wrote:
| I think I'd only go back as an intangible ghost, unaffected by
| disease, needs and danger.
|
| Basically I'm imagining a VR with an immersive window to the
| past, not actually going back.
| ks2048 wrote:
| I'm reading a book about the Aztecs now (Fifth Sun). The meeting
| of the Spanish with the Mexica has to be the most epic event in
| human history. Tragic what was lost. Kudos to the artist for
| this.
| elnatro wrote:
| Not to the future victims of the Aztecs.
| oskarkk wrote:
| Thank god the Europeans have never killed anyone.
| elnatro wrote:
| They weren't doing human sacrifices at that time at least.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| You can read a first-person (colonial) perspective from someone
| who was there.
|
| "When I beheld the scenes around me, I thought within myself,
| this was the garden of the world. All of the wonders I beheld
| that day, nothing now remains. All is overthrown and lost."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_con...
| ioblomov wrote:
| Also check out Alvaro Enrigue's fictionalized account _You
| Dreamed of Empires_. Vividly told from the perspectives of the
| principals, it makes for unforgettable reading...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127938747-you-dreamed-of...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Cahokia is another interesting place.
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| Looks like a scene from some of the ages in the old Myst PC game.
| winslett wrote:
| Do all of these comments seem like they are AI generated to
| anyone else?
| zamadatix wrote:
| We've long passed the point where I can tell a good AI comment
| from a real one at a quick read through of a comments section.
| It's only the blatantly bad ones (blocks of listicles we delve
| into) which stick out like a sore thumb. That said, I think
| that says more about how good AI has become than it hints all
| the long established accounts in this thread using one just
| because they could.
| lastdong wrote:
| With AI assistants on our phones, it can be hard to tell the
| difference, and people often use it for completeness or
| clarity. Blind AI rephrasing has a cost though, sacrificing
| your personal voice, and often resulting in overly enthusiastic
| and repetitive sentences.
|
| (re-reading this, it sounds just like AI!)
| tecleandor wrote:
| > (re-reading this, it sounds just like AI!)
|
| That's what an AI would say!
| lastdong wrote:
| ;)
| ecocentrik wrote:
| The presence of a comprehensive urban plan for all of these
| cities, with a clear grid subdivided into districts is extremely
| impressive. By contrast most European cities were organic and
| unplanned mazes.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The grid is still visible in Mexico City today. All the canals
| you see in the reconstruction essentially became the streets as
| they were gradually filled in.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I much prefer the street layout of European
| cities to grids. I don't think the grid is particularly
| impressive; just a sign of a particular urban organization.
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| What type of layout do these use?
| noelwelsh wrote:
| It's basically a tree.
| staplung wrote:
| Not to undermine what they did in any way but one thing the
| Mexica had that favored a strong grid with central planning was
| that each new bit of the city was built on land that had to be
| created from scratch. If you're going to build a new
| "neighborhood" from the lake, might as well make it
| rectangular. To some extent, they didn't even have to dig their
| canals, just leave bits of the lake _not_ filled in (though
| there is more to making canals than just digging a ditch).
|
| Having said all that it certainly seems that ancient Meso-
| American city builders of all stripes were really into grid-
| tastic cities, at least for the monumental cores with the
| temples, ball courts etc.
| ajross wrote:
| That's sort of a simplification. _Medieval_ European cities
| were absolutely "planned," but generally as defensive
| structures. The nature of feudal government is that it
| discourages investment in big centralized "cities" and builds a
| ton of little forts for individual aristocrats instead. So by
| the time the economics of Renaissance trade effectively forced
| the cities on the governments, the floorplans were already set
| and things didn't fit.
|
| Tenochtitlan, in comparison, was purpose-built as the seat of
| an empire (and a recent one, in fact). The centralized
| authority was there from the start.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Indeed. European rulers did do a bit of planning when the
| chance arose. For example, Lisbon was rebuilt in a grid after
| the 1755 earthquake:
|
| > Keen to have a new and perfectly ordered city, the king
| commissioned the construction of big squares, rectilinear,
| large avenues and widened streets - the new mottos of Lisbon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
|
| Paris as we currently know it is the work of Haussmann.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa.
| ..
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Almost all inland Celtic "cities" of western Europe were built
| around strong fortifiable positions, aka oppida. They were
| definitely well planned for defense against tribal warfare and
| tribal invasions. Aztec cities (probably all cities) had
| similar root motivations---control and defend territory.
|
| Bibracte near Autun in Burgundy -- the city Julius Ceasar had
| to conquer -- is built at the top of a 900 meter hill;
|
| Pyrene/Heuneburg built on a rocky spur overlooking the Danube
| in southern Germany is considered the first real city north of
| the Alps.
|
| Titelberg in Luxembourg was built on a site easily defended on
| three of four sides and with plenty of space at the top.
|
| One interesting exception---Milan (Mediolanum). Like ancient
| Mexico City its defenses consisted of water; tributaries to the
| Po and surrounding marshes.
|
| Venice is even more like Tenochtitlan and a more radical and
| more "modern" version of Milan. The Venetia hit chased into
| their lagoon thanks to Attila and waves if Goths.
|
| You are right that Tenochtitlan had a much more obviously
| planned lurban structure. But the "organics" of Venice have
| their own logic, partly partly due to tides and winds but
| mainly due to a focus on commercial districts rather than
| religious/ceremonial districts.
|
| In 1500 both cities were very large: Tenochtitlan was close to
| 300,000 and Venice close to 200,000.
| scld wrote:
| This is what I want to explore with a VR headset.
| StepWeiwu wrote:
| For anyone interested in what the Americas looked like before and
| after Columbus, I highly recommend the two books, 1491[1] and
| 1493[2], by Charles C. Mann. I finish the first one and I'm half
| way through the second one and really openend my eyes. Great
| reads!
|
| [1]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491?ref=nav_sb_ss...
| [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9862761-1493
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Both books are great.
|
| Loved the revelation of planted food forests.
| bennyfreshness wrote:
| Also "The Conquest of New Spain" .. written as a first hand
| account by a soldier for Cortes.
|
| Obviously cruel and exploitative what the conquistadors did,
| but it's an example how fact can be sometimes more incredible
| than fiction.
|
| How a small band of soldiers got in way over their heads and
| had to bluff and bully their way through, or would have
| certainly been killed.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108490.The_Conquest_of_N...
| sho_hn wrote:
| Strongly second these recommendations. I enormously enjoyed
| them for both their information density, but also their
| extremely clear and proficient writing style. Absolute class
| journalism.
| atombender wrote:
| Also great is The Fall of Civilizations' episode about
| Tenochtitlan [1].
|
| The podcast is the work of a British historian named Paul M. M.
| Cooper, who's also published a book derived from the podcast.
| Each episode is really well researched, incorporating recent
| discoveries rather than uncritically repeating old tropes. No
| filler, no theatrics, just really well-told history, backed by
| real sources.
|
| Another excellent history podcast is The Rest is History [2],
| who also devoted an excellent (albeit much shorter) episode to
| the same topic.
|
| [1] https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
|
| [2] https://therestishistory.com/episodes/
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I'm not sure why there isn't more of an active association
| between so-called "Hispanics" in North America and the Aztecs and
| other pre-European cultural groups in the area. The current
| "Hispanics" are largely descended from the natives, I think?
|
| I put "Hispanics" in quotes because it's pretty weird to be
| labeled by the language of your conquerors who don't even control
| anything in the area anymore.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The genetic background of Hispanics varies considerably from
| individual to individual, a lot of them are lily white by any
| visual measure and most of them have considerable if not
| majority European ancestry. In any case, culturally it's no
| contest; they have far more in common with European cultures
| than the Aztecs. Remember that most of them are Catholics, not
| humans sacrificing sun worshipers.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > The current "Hispanics" are largely descended from the
| natives, I think?
|
| You can generally divide most of the Americas into three
| categories: (mostly) pure indigenous ancestry, mixed ancestry
| (Mestizo is the common term), and (mostly) European ancestry.
| In regions where slavery was important, you also have
| significant groups of African ancestry, mixed
| African/indigenous ancestry, and sometimes Asian ancestry from
| post-slavery labor importation.
|
| In most of the Americas, the dominant ethnic group is mestizo.
| Greenland is the only country where indigenous peoples are the
| clear majority, and Guatemala is probably the only other
| country where indigenous comes closest to being a plurality
| over mestizo. (The degree to which modern people accept
| indigenous versus mestizo as a term varies from country to
| country).
|
| > I put "Hispanics" in quotes because it's pretty weird to be
| labeled by the language of your conquerors who don't even
| control anything in the area anymore.
|
| The vast majority of modern Latin Americans speak Spanish or
| another European language as their dominant language.
| miningape wrote:
| I think you put too much stock into the conquered / conqueror
| narrative. These are living breathing cultures which develop in
| their own ways beyond the interactions of their ancestors. The
| majority of the population is a blend between both, and even
| many cultural traditions are a clear blend of both (Dia de los
| Muertos being probably the most obvious).
|
| Most Hispanics I've spoken to about this see it all as apart of
| what makes them, them, not some artificial separation based on
| what modern politics thinks of the groups their ancestors were
| apart of. In another sense you cannot remove one part and still
| have the Hispanic people, and they also cannot reconstruct what
| has been lost.
|
| You can also see this with groups like the Cape Coloureds who
| have their own distinct culture from the black, white, and
| indian cultures which it grew out of.
|
| > who don't even control anything in the area anymore
|
| Note that they still speak Spanish and many are Catholic to
| this day - you can identify a lion by the marks of its claws so
| to speak.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| This seems like a very Anglo and anachronistically racialist
| take.
|
| Catholic colonial empires were characterized by a different
| ethos than, say, the Protestant English. The former involved a
| good deal of intermarriage (beginning with Cortes himself) and
| saw what could be described as cultural transfiguration and
| fusion. The latter tended to see the natives through the lens
| of Amalek (ask the Acadians about their experiences with the
| British). So, the distinction between conqueror/conquered is a
| false dichotomy, as Hispanic peoples are heirs to the heritage
| of both. And even where the heritage of non-Spanish origin is
| concerned, here, too, it is not quite so simple. After all,
| Cortes did not conquer Tenochtitlan with his merry band of men
| alone. He did so in alliance with the enemies of the Aztecs
| (e.g., Tlaxcalans, Tetzcocans, Cempoalans, Huejotzingans) who
| numbered in the thousands, and these do not include the
| historical enemies of the Aztecs, some of whom were conquered
| by them.
| blancotech wrote:
| I'm very impressed. It would be great to see similar maps
| reconstructions for other ancient cities like this!
|
| For those who want to see the before and after of Manhattan, I
| highly recommend reading Mannahatta
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5955328-mannahatta
| wlll wrote:
| There's a podcast I really enjoy that has an episode on the rise
| and fall of the aztecs, highly recommended:
|
| https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/12/16/episode-9-...
| NickC25 wrote:
| Very cool. I've lived in and spent a ton of time in Mexico city ,
| and this is really on-point. Would love to see more of these.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| The Reconquista had finally driven out the Moors from Spain in
| 1492 - 26 years before Cortez entered Tenochtitlan and began the
| dismantling of indigenous religion. The Spanish Catholics were
| the Wahhabis of the day.
|
| Thought Experiment: If the Iberian Moors were still in power in
| 1518,would we today be calling Latin Americans "Arabs"?
|
| Similarly, popular opinion in Israel likes to call Palestinians
| "Arabs" because they adopted the language of their conquerors.
| bbor wrote:
| That's an interesting juxtaposition. I was going to comment on
| another (insightful!) comment here about how "the only
| indigenous-majority country is Greenland" brings up just how
| Americas-centric (plus the commonwealth...) the term
| "indigenous" is in the first place, and this is a great
| illustration of that IMO. Hopefully we can all agree that
| applying the term even to the British Isles gets really tough,
| and it gets downright impossible if you try to do it to
| somewhere like Palestine.
|
| And it's no mystery why it has such big sway today in
| commonwealth countries as opposed to the relatively-minor
| importance it has in Latin America... In case anyone wasn't
| aware, the British Empire (and early US!) were definitely the
| baddies. I just recently found this quote by Jacob Howard, the
| liberal abolitionist senator who drafted the first sentence of
| the US's 14th Amendment, that I think shows how deep the
| assumption of animosity ran: I am not yet
| prepared to pass a sweeping act of naturalization by which all
| the Indian savages, wild or tame, belonging to a tribal
| relation, are to become my fellow-citizens and go to the polls
| and vote with me.
|
| -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_M._Howard#Speech_on_the_...
|
| On another note: you likely know this, but Columbus only got
| funding for his voyage because the monarchs were doing their
| victory-lap after finally conquering the last stronghold of the
| Iberian Moors, Granada. So it's all quite connected, not just
| by chance.
|
| It's semi-common knowledge among nerds that the Islamic Golden
| Age isn't appreciated enough in western culture beyond "someone
| presumably was on the other side of the Crusades", but this is
| making me consider how the age of discovery's push for
| colonization might've been driven/inspired by a feeling of
| jealousy and inferiority compared to the rapid growth of the
| Islamic emirates...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "the only indigenous-majority country is Greenland"
|
| Mongolia? Kazakhstan? Kyrgyzstan? Korea? Indonesia?
| Madagascar? Egypt?
|
| Do the Greenlanders of today predate or postdate the Vikings?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > The Spanish Catholics were the Wahhabis of the day.
|
| I don't understand this comparison.
|
| > If the Iberian Moors were still in power in 1518,would we
| today be calling Latin Americans "Arabs"?
|
| This assumes the Moors would have ventured to the Americas in
| the first place. At the very least, they didn't have the same
| incentives as the Spanish to do so.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Similarly, popular opinion in Israel likes to call
| Palestinians "Arabs" because they adopted the language of their
| conquerors.
|
| That's not a practice imposed by the Israelis. The (genuine)
| Arabs, as you would expect, favored themselves. So, everywhere
| in their empire, social climbers claimed to be Arabs.
|
| When you read about the history of the region, the luminaries
| who appear tend to be Persians, but this is obscured.
| senderista wrote:
| Just as Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, etc. were "Arabized",
| in turn Turks and Mongols were "Persified".
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Spanish colonialism in the new world was largely an extension
| of the reconquista abroad. The Spanish crown used wealth from
| conquered territories to placate and balance the power of
| Iberian nobility. With the conquest of the canaries and the
| fall of Granada, the only obvious place to continue that system
| was North Africa, which would have brought the Spanish crown
| into direct conflict with the kingdom of Portugal.
|
| Then Columbus returned with news of a route to the indies that
| avoided the increasingly powerful Ottomans. The war machine
| just got pointed in a new direction until the realities of the
| new world eventually caught up.
|
| A moorish kingdom would not have had the same approach to the
| new world, even if someone had discovered it.
| jostmey wrote:
| Did the floating city actually have lots of trees?
| marc_abonce wrote:
| Yes, chinampas can have some types of trees on their borders.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa
| mkl wrote:
| (2023) 101 comments at the time, including from the creator:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973229
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-09 23:00 UTC)