Univerzitet u Istocnom Sarajevu

Seminarski rad

 Student: Nikola Maletic

Sub-themes:
I – Tenochtitlan
II – Origins of the inhabitants
III – Misinterpretation
 I

The population of Aztecs, to this day, remain some of the most historically mysterious people.
Their culture, as well as technology and architecture were way ahead of their time, compared to
the rest of the globe in that period. The capital city of the Aztec Empire, which was called
Tenochtitlan, was built on the southern part of a complex of lakes high up in the Valley of
Mexico. It was a real show of how advanced the Aztec architecture was in that time. The city
was built on the pond of fresh, drinkable water, which was separated from the rest of the valley
using a huge ten-mile long dike made of stone and clay, which stopped the salty water coming
from the south of the valley and mixing up with the fresh water. In the middle of the fresh-water
part, the people connected two mud banks and made it into an island on which they built the city.

Rather quickly, Tenochtitlan became one of the most populated cities in the world, and by the
end of the fifteenth century it is estimated to have had five times the population of London or
Seville, and it was much larger than any European city of that time. As the documents and the
witnesses have said, to view Tenochtitlan from the distance was rather mesmerizing. The
travelers had to pass through densely populated surrounding lands, and use one of the three
possible entrances in order to enter the city. One of the travelers, and chronicler Bernal Diaz had
written an impressive description of the city and it’s surrounding. He described the city of
Iztapalapa, which was near the capital, and his travels through the populated areas around the
capital. As amazed as he was, he wanted to see the heart of the Empire, and so, when he finally
arrived into Tenochtitlan, and was welcomed, his diaries and letters home reflected how stunned
him and his crew were by the beauty and the culture of the city of Tenochtitlan. Diaz was
impressed by the architecture, and the fact that the city was built on an island, and it was
surrounded by water from all sides. Bernal Diaz was amazed by the view from the top of the
temples of Tenochtitlan, from where he could see far in the distance, him and his crew could
observe the water and the entrances into the city, as well as the two enormous volcanoes on the
periphery of the lake. Besides the architecture of the Aztecs, Bernal Diaz was amazed by the
people of Tenochtitlan, and how ahead and culturally advanced the people of Tenochtitlan were,
in comparison to the people of Europe at that time. But the thing that amazed Diaz the most, was
the Market place of Tenochtitlan, which he could not help but write essays back home about. The
size of the Market place was something that was never seen before, and the fact that people were
selling literally everything you could ask for surprised every traveler who came into
Tenochtitlan. Bernal Diaz had troubles even describing what the Market place was like, as he
had not seen anything even remotely similar. The city of Tenochtitlan was destroyed by the
Spanish conquestadors, and Mexico City was built on the ruins of the city of Tenochtitlan. The
Spanish conquest meant destruction for what was considered by many the most beautiful and
blissful city people have ever built.
 II

Besides the fact that in the past, the origins of the first humans in America were a rather
controversial topic, the modern day science and technology helped solve the mystery with the
use of some substantial evidence. There were many theories on how the first inhabitants arrived
in North and South America, but nobody anymore doubts the scientific fact that the majority of
native people in North and South America are the descendants of much earlier emigrants from
ancestral homelands in northeastern Asia. However, there were some doubts about the later-
proven theory which had to be clarified, such as the fact that people who emigrated from Asia to
America, obviously did not possess the technology to travel that far over the sea. This
phenomenon was later explained and justified by implying that, in that time, there existed a land
bridge between northeastern Asia and America which was called Berengia. This land bridge was
approximately about one thousand miles wide, and it was not very long, in fact it was much
wider than it was long. However, the land bridge started gradually diminishing as soon as the
geological era known as the “Wisconsin Glaciation”, had kicked in, which meant the melting of
the giant icebergs and rising of sea levels, about 80,000 B.C.. The sea levels slowly started
rising, and even though the process was very slow, it started forcing the inhabitants of the area
further away from the sea. The process lasted a long time, and none of the people actually ever
noticed it due to the short human lifespan, but the Berengia land bridge which connected Asia
and America was eventually totally under water, and the two continents were separated. The
people who lived on the subcontinent Berengia, and were forced to gradually retreat, were now
stuck on the new continent with no way of going back to their place of origin. Much more
controversial topic of discussion is when the people had actually moved to the new continent,
and approximately how many were there when Columbus arrived. It was believed all the way
until 1940s that the Native people of America had migrated from Alaskan portion of Berengia
down into the rest of the American continent no more than 6000 years ago. It is now recognized,
and proven with substantial scientific evidence that remains of human communities in South
America can be traced back to at least 13,000 years ago, and at least 6000 years before that in the
North America. The size of pre-Columbian population of America had also been misinterpreted.
In the 1940s, the conventional belief was that the entire hemisphere in 1492 had little more than
8,000,000 inhabitants, and about 1,000,000 people around the region of present-day Mexico.
However the most recent studies have suggested that the numbers were actually immensely
larger, claiming that the entire hemishphere consisted of around 145,000,000 inhabitants of
which about 18,000,000 inhabited the area of present-day Mexico.
 III

The recent scholarship has only now started exposing the fact that throughout the centuries, the
number of Native American victims has been vastly degraded. The distorted statistics, as well as
the lack of moral code towards the Native victims are, however, not a new thing in the American
history; the practice has been going on ever since the first Columbus’ arrival. However, the
disrespectful degradation of number of victims with purpose of nullifying the responsibility has
not been the only malpractice of the new community, but the overall misinterpretation of the
historic facts. Even though the research of this kind barely ever makes it into the textbooks, it is
proven that for example the Native American people were already well-established residents of
plains, mountains, forests, foothills, and coasts throughout the Western Hemisphere by the time
the people of Europe were scratching their first carvings onto the cave walls in the Dordogne
region of France and northern Spain. It is also well established that the population of America far
exceeded the population of Europe and Russia combined at the time of Columbus’s first voyage.
Unfortunately, ever since the conquest, the native peoples of Americas have had their national
history willfully misperceived and misinterpreted. The historical ethnocentrism has traditionally
distorted the views of native American past. And while Aztecs and Incas still get some historical
respect and recognition, even though their religious rituals are always mentioned, and often
branded weird, the rest of native people are generally viewed as barbaric tribes. There was
apparently nothing worth of mentioning that could be of interest to the modern reader. And even
though that the substantial evidence shows that the cultures of the pre-Columbus America were
often generally way ahead of their European contemporaries, the land which they inhabited was
often called “Unopened Land”, “Wilderness”, or “Empty Space”. The misinterpretation just
further continues into the later stages of the society, when the slavery at the hands of the
invading British was termed as “Population Recruitment”. In the literature, Indians were often
referred to as “Stone Age Savages”, and their attempts to defend their land were deemed the
“Instances Of Turning Ferociously On Europeans Who Have Attempted To Civilize Them”.
Professional eminence presented no reason to avoid the blatant racism upon referring to the
inhabitants of the pre-Columbus America, some of the most famous writers, many generations
later, still referred to the native societies like animals or inanimate objects. The victims were
treated as a mere statistics and numbers, and distorted and disrespectfully degraded at that. By
deception and disrespect, certain historical myths were created which worked in favor of forever
hiding the truth. As the time passed by, the misinterpretation strayed further and further from the
truth, which eventually meant even more injustice for the native inhabitants of the American
lands.