Aztec City

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 99, 16 May 1941, Page 5

Aztec City

LANT cultivation in some form or other was known in the Americas (in pre-European times) from the present Canadian border as far south as Central Chile. The almost complete dependence on cultivated plants, however, was restricted to mountain areas from Mexico to Bolivia and a wide variety of some of the most useful domestic plants known anywhere in the world contributed to the highly organised and in part highly urbanised economies characteristic of the great empires, of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru, Without apparently exhausting the soil resources on which their economy depended, they yet achieved a complexity of culture and an efficiency of production which meant the existence of opportunity for the development of a richer material and immaterial culture than ever known to the comparatively more primitive Maoris or still simpler gatherers. B: You mentioned the word " urbanised." Do you mean urbanised in the European sense? / A: Indeed I do. The Incas had large cities with amenities equalling or surpassing many European cities of the 15th century. We have good estimates of their population but the capital of the Aztec empire in Mexico in a similar situation was @ metropolis of some 300,000 souls, B: Why that’s larger than Wellington! A: It is indeed. Despite the fact that they had no mortar, their skill at cutting and fitting stones enabled them to build most substantial roads and buildings. Among the buildings were large granaries where surpluses from those parts of the empire which had more abundant harvests in any years could be distributed to other areas not so fortunate. -(Winter Course Talk: "Science and Society-The Primitive and Economic World." Discussion between K. B. Cumberland, M.A., and A. H, Clark, M.A,, 3YA, April 30.)