>>39657988>in huts and shit.No, not at all. By the time the Aztec empire existed the region already had class systems, monumental archtecture, etc for almost 3000 years. Even 1700 years before the Aztec there were already cities with 100,000+ people. The Aztec were basically in Ancient Mexico's Classical Antiquity like Greece and Persia
Pic related shows two scenes of an Aztec noble homes, for instance. Though obviously commoners had much simpler houses, usually single room buildings made of daub, wood, or adobe, sort of like the houses a medieval peasant would have
>what's that picture fromI don't know the source of that, sadly, but I have tons of other artistic recreations I do, this is a page from a Museum catalog, see the file name for more info
While i'm happy to post more images and more questions here, in case the thread 404's, I have an art drive, a mega drive with book scans links to more resources, etc here:
https://boards.fireden.net/v/thread/472659997/#472705378>>39657980I mean, moist people in central mexico have at least partial Nahua (the actual culture the core cities of the Aztec empire belonged to) ancestry, and there's still millions of native nahuatl speakers in mexico, msotly in more rural areas. Same goes for the Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Purepecha, etc.
But to answer your question, in Mesoamerican politics even cities part of a larger empire retained their own political identitity and interests, so when the spanish showed up you had them all trying to use the spanish to their advantage and taking out their rivals or dominant cities, not realizing that spain would be oppressive and imperialistic.
You can read more about that in a pastebin I did here:
https://pastebin.com/h18M28BRPlus the intial smallpox epidemic alone killed 1/3 of the entire region, and the continued spanish occupation only caused further outbreaks which then ended up kiling 95%, so by the time the native city-states realized they made a mistake it was too late.
