# Chinampas - Ancient Aztec farming method



## DebInFL (Dec 1, 2016)

Today I learned about the chinampas outside of Mexico City and elsewhere in Mexico. I found this completely fascinating. The Aztecs were absolutely brilliant at solving problems and making what they had work for what they needed. 

https://www.dw.com/en/mexicans-turn...gardens-to-revive-mangrove-forests/a-48939312


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## chicois8 (Aug 8, 2009)

About the only thing the Aztecs were absolutely brilliant was stealing ideas from neighboring tribes and collecting victims for sacrifice...If they were around today the terms thugs & bullies might apply...

It is possible that around 20,000 people were sacrificed a year in the Aztec Empire. Special occasions demanded more blood – when a new temple to Huitzilopochtli was dedicated in 1487, an estimated 80,400 people were sacrificed.
https://www.historyrevealed.com/eras/medieval/how-many-people-did-the-aztecs-sacrifice/

IMHO if they were so brilliant their empire would have lasted at least 200 years...


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

To be fair lots of other groups did human sacrifces all the way down t Peru. I think the Aztecs probably were doing more of them than the other groups and for that reason many hated them..but still, the Mayas also had human sacrifces.. They say a few but then who knows..
The Inquisition in Europe did some pretty awful stuff too in the name of God so t is difficult to be the first one to throw a stone..


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

DebInFL said:


> Today I learned about the chinampas outside of Mexico City and elsewhere in Mexico. I found this completely fascinating. The Aztecs were absolutely brilliant at solving problems and making what they had work for what they needed.
> 
> https://www.dw.com/en/mexicans-turn...gardens-to-revive-mangrove-forests/a-48939312


I agree that the floating islands for agriculture were /are very interesting, the Aztecs’ penchant for human sacrifice notwithstanding. Thanks for the link.


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## TurtleToo (Aug 23, 2013)

Thanks for the link, Deb. I couldn't watch the video, but the article was interesting. I'd be interested in seeing the Veracruz project, which must be fairly well along by now if they've been able to keep to schedule (Feb 2017 to Dec 2019.) 

.


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## DebInFL (Dec 1, 2016)

chicois8 said:


> About the only thing the Aztecs were absolutely brilliant was stealing ideas from neighboring tribes and collecting victims for sacrifice...If they were around today the terms thugs & bullies might apply...
> 
> It is possible that around 20,000 people were sacrificed a year in the Aztec Empire. Special occasions demanded more blood – when a new temple to Huitzilopochtli was dedicated in 1487, an estimated 80,400 people were sacrificed.
> https://www.historyrevealed.com/eras/medieval/how-many-people-did-the-aztecs-sacrifice/
> ...


I don't know why you have to bring negativity into what was meant to be a positive thread, but if you want to talk about extinct tribes, let's talk about how Christopher Columbus used to organize hunting parties to slaughter native people by the hundreds, or the Trail of Tears in the US ordered by our current so-called president's hero, Andrew Jackson, or maybe the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans by the British when they were stealing their land and murdering their people. Don't even get me started on "manifest destiny," and all the diseases we brought across the country that made dozens of NA tribes extinct. 

Being a brilliant civilization does not preclude also being cruel, does it, and being civilized evidently does not preclude us even now from being mean spirited.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Yes the chinampas were a great idea and made a lot of sense for people living on a lake.. The milpas concept versus monoculture is also a great concept. Wether the Maya or the Aztecs were more advance n some ways that the Spaniards who came and took over.
I love to visot the Santo Domingo ex convento where they have art from the Mixteca and Zapoteaca and thr Spaniards at the time of the conquest.The difference between the cultures is fascinating and the Spanish one was not as nteresting as the indigenous ones.. IMHO.

The Zapotecs and the Mixtecs also had been conquered by the Aztecs . The Aztecs were empire builders and were pretty amazing at organizing the groups they had taken over. They did it in very little time and their influence was huge.. I like the story about the relay runners from Vera Cruz bringing fresh fish to the elite over night or just about.. Amazing featwhen you know the lay of the land. The Spaniards were amazed by Tenochitlan , it must have been a sight to behold. 
It is said that Moctezuma bathed several times a day when the European did not bathed ntil 300 years later.. They were a smelly and filthy bunch in comparaison to the indigenous elite.

Palenque had bathrooms and running water centuries later Versailles did not..


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

It is like rural people everywhere, before modern technology, they all devised ways to make the best of what they had got, from strip farming in Europe to the _andenes_ of South America. As for the murderous approach, the European conquerors brought a lot of that along with them, what with the Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America to the British, French, Dutch, etc. in North America, etc...


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## xolo (May 25, 2014)

While this topic is a fascinating subject and I know Citlali works with indigenous people, all this talk seems to echo indigenismo, which was the policy of the SEP for about 60 years. There are still 68 indigenous languages spoken in Mexico with 364 variants which represent about 6% of the population. For almost all of the last 500 years heavily discriminated against including the revolutionary governments of the 1920s and 1930s (they were some of the worst offenders), but somehow still around much more than in the USA. BTW, the Spanish were heavily in North America, not just because of California, etc, but also because Mexico (the country) is in North America. I had to comment because it is my study area and I just passed by qualifying exam and went ABD and am just getting my fieldwork underway in Mexico.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Contratulation Xolo..What kind of field work are you starting and where? 

The varients are a real ***** to learn a language... here n Chiapas the vocabulary changes from Village to village and it is a real handicap to learn how to speak a language.. You can kind of figure out what the meaning is.. but to speak you have to stay in the same place until you can speak that varient, otherwise forget it.. I am mostly forgetting it.. May be if I coud spend one year in one place, I could finally learn something..


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

On the subject of mass murder, it would be interesting to note how many civilians were slaughtered by the U.S. in the middle East during the past ten years.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

I found a couple of on-line references to chinampas that mentioned that they may have first been developed in Teotihuacan. Unfortunately, my computer is being temperamental today and won't let me provide links to the articles.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Yes , you are right Isla Verde, I meant to say Teotihuacan, Who knows what the people from Tenochitlan did.. I was just reading about the influence of Tenochitlan on Tikal and had Tenochitlan on my mind..


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

citlali said:


> Yes , you are right Isla Verde, I meant to say Teotihuacan, Who knows what the people from Tenochitlan did.. I was just reading about the influence of Tenochitlan on Tikal and had Tenochitlan on my mind..


I think you had it right the first time. Tenochtitlán was the impressive Mexica (Aztec) city-state the Spaniards encountered in what is now Mexico City. Teotihuacan had already been abandoned several centuries prior, and no one knows for sure which group of people built and inhabited Teotihuacan at the height of its glory and its influence, which extended throughout Mesoamérica.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

ojosazules11 said:


> I think you had it right the first time. Tenochtitlán was the impressive Mexica (Aztec) city-state the Spaniards encountered in what is now Mexico City. Teotihuacan had already been abandoned several centuries prior, and no one knows for sure which group of people built and inhabited Teotihuacan at the height of its glory and its influence, which extended throughout Mesoamérica.


For some reason, I can't copy the link to an article that clearly states that in what had been the "parte lacustre de Teotihuacan" remains of chinampas have been found, which existed centuries before the Xochimilco chinampas were created. This information comes from the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas. Póliticas, Económicas y Sociales.


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## chicois8 (Aug 8, 2009)

When DebInFL wrote this line :
“”The Aztecs were absolutely brilliant at solving problems and making what they had work for what they needed.””
I guess I saw red, the Aztecs again INHO were just vagabonds looking for some place to settle, probably were good warriors...
These floating gardens were being used over 100 years before the Aztecs arrived on the scene...Here are some examples of this subject on Wiki:* 
So to say the Aztecs were:”” absolutely brilliant “” is absurd. They invented nothing.

[Although different technology existed during the Post-classic and Colonial periods in the basin, chinampas have raised many questions on agricultural production and political development.... 
After the Aztec Triple Alliance formed, the conquest of southern basin city-states, such as Xochimilco, was one of the first strategies of imperial expansion. Prior to this time, farmers maintained small-scale chinampas adjacent to their households and communities in the freshwater lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. The Aztecs did not invent chinampas but rather were the first to develop it to a large scale cultivation...
The earliest fields that have been securely dated are from the Middle Postclassic period, 1150 – 1350 CE.
The Aztecs built Tenochtitlan on an island around 1325.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Sorry I am making it more confusing that it needs to be.. I was reading about the influence of Teotihuacan on Tikal..

Yes Tenochitlan was the Aztec capital and the ruins can be seen right there in the center of Mexico City

I thought they new very little about who were the people who buildt Teotihuacan and did not know about the chinampa being found near there.

It is fascinatng how we keep learning more about those civilizations and how influences of the cultures around could be seen . 
t is pretty mind blowing to think that the people from around Mexico city ended up down in Guatemala and influence the building there or how people from Guatemala ended up around Mexco cty and left traces of their culture there.. After all they had to walk to go from one place to another and it is an awful long way even in a car today..

Isla do you know if there were chnampa at the lake in Guachimontones.? saw the ruins about 15 years ago and it struck me that they may have been chnampa there at one time.. Do you know anything bout that?


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

citlali said:


> Isla do you know if there were chnampa at the lake in Guachimontones.? saw the ruins about 15 years ago and it struck me that they may have been chnampa there at one time.. Do you know anything bout that?


Your instincts were correct!


https://www.guachimontonesoficial.com/chinampashttps://www.guachimontonesoficial.com/chinampas


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

The link does not work..

Here is another one re Guachimontones and the chinampas where they say they predated Tenochitlan by several centuries..sounds like Chicois was right on that one.

Now I want to go back and see the site, from the pictures I can see they did a lot of work.. When we visited archeologists were working there and the site was not nearly as built up. One of the archeologists gave me a bunch of obsdian arrows and knives . They were hundreds of them all over the place.

Funny I never thought to google the information back then and I forgot about it later on.. There was a nice balnerio there at the time, I just have to go back.. they said back then that they were going to have a museum in town.. Time to go back..


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## chicois8 (Aug 8, 2009)

I live about 20 minutes from Guachimontones and visit all the time. In town is a very good museum with recreation of a shaft tomb... At Guachimontonest here is a new cultural center with beautiful displays...Free entrance Mondays and Tuesdays although the cultural center is closed Mondays and if you have a handicapped ♿ plackard entrance is free any day and you are allowed to drive up to the site...


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

chicois8 said:


> I live about 20 minutes from Guachimontones and visit all the time. In town is a very good museum with recreation of a shaft tomb... At Guachimontonest here is a new cultural center with beautiful displays...Free entrance Mondays and Tuesdays although the cultural center is closed Mondays and if you have a handicapped ♿ plackard entrance is free any day and you are allowed to drive up to the site...


I get there with visitors every couple of years. It changes a lot from one visit to another. There was a show and tell in Guadalajara with Phil Weigand's wife about 10 years ago. He was the US archeologist who first recognized the significance of the unique round structures on the site.


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## mattoleriver (Oct 21, 2011)

How about this link, is this the one?

https://www.guachimontonesoficial.com/chinampas


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## DebInFL (Dec 1, 2016)

lagoloo said:


> On the subject of mass murder, it would be interesting to note how many civilians were slaughtered by the U.S. in the middle East during the past ten years.


Or for that matter, how many innocent Palestinians have been slaughtered by the Zionist Israelis (Zionists worked with Hitler in WWII, btw) in their quest to annihilate the race and steal their lands.

Or how many innocents have been slaughtered by the cartels, for that matter, or gangs or any other set of hatred-filled psychopaths.

The human race, whether it was created or a result of evolution, reflects its maker, does it not? We're talking about a deity that destroyed entire cities and finally wiped all but one family from the face of the earth with a flood. How can we be anything but cruel and murderous? If we evolved, we did so by killing each other so that only the strongest and most intelligent survived.

We are the most dangerous animals of all.


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## chicois8 (Aug 8, 2009)

I am in contact with Phil's wife Acelia Garcia Weigand via Facebook, I live about 3 blocks from the Ocomo Palace where Phil explored, CDMX has archeologists working at the site...I'm hoping to built a small museum in Oconahua someday..


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

U can see that t is time for another visit, , by the look of the puctures a lot has happum..ened in the last 14 years and it is a very pretty area .. 

yes it is fascinatng to follow what happens in the ruins that are being explored, it is like a long relenovela.. I go back to Tonina on a regular basis and there s always something new ..

Chicois you pucked a nice area to live in..Hope you do the museum, sooner than later, I do not have a whole lot of time left, so hurry up and let us know!


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## GARYJ65 (Feb 9, 2013)

DebInFL said:


> Or for that matter, how many innocent Palestinians have been slaughtered by the Zionist Israelis (Zionists worked with Hitler in WWII, btw) in their quest to annihilate the race and steal their lands.
> 
> Or how many innocents have been slaughtered by the cartels, for that matter, or gangs or any other set of hatred-filled psychopaths.
> 
> ...


That would be if Christian religions were the only ones.


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## Stevenjb (Dec 10, 2017)

I saw a YouTube recently where a female researcher - Danielle Nierenber - went around the world and talked with farmers, all women (women represent 43% of primary farmers in the world and yield the largest crops) - and discovered their use of worms in farming, and the storage and saving of ancient grains.


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## xolo (May 25, 2014)

citlali said:


> Contratulation Xolo..What kind of field work are you starting and where?
> 
> The varients are a real ***** to learn a language... here n Chiapas the vocabulary changes from Village to village and it is a real handicap to learn how to speak a language.. You can kind of figure out what the meaning is.. but to speak you have to stay in the same place until you can speak that varient, otherwise forget it.. I am mostly forgetting it.. May be if I coud spend one year in one place, I could finally learn something..


Thank you! Tell me about variants! My study language is Otomanguean and most verbs are irregular and many have two forms, which form you use depends on what pueblo you grew up in. Just a result of languages without literary, standard forms and 500 years of abuse. Colonial times ended but they live on... 

But I'm not into language documentation at all, I did that for my MA and I thought I would die. I'm doing fieldwork in the intercultural schools that came into existence during a political opportunity window in the late 1990s at a time when presidential candidate Fox was saying things like he could solve the Chiapas issues with the Zapatistas in 15 minutes and made some agreements with indigenous activists in return for political support.

I've been invited into 8 different areas but right now I'm looking at la Huasteca and el Estado de México.

I hope you are doing well!


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos (Apr 17, 2014)

DebInFL said:


> I don't know why you have to bring negativity into what was meant to be a positive thread, but if you want to talk about extinct tribes, let's talk about how Christopher Columbus used to organize hunting parties to slaughter native people by the hundreds, or the Trail of Tears in the US ordered by our current so-called president's hero, Andrew Jackson, or maybe the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans by the British when they were stealing their land and murdering their people. Don't even get me started on "manifest destiny," and all the diseases we brought across the country that made dozens of NA tribes extinct.
> 
> Being a brilliant civilization does not preclude also being cruel, does it, and being civilized evidently does not preclude us even now from being mean spirited.


The facts are slightly different: "When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans."
https://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html

The Europeans were as ignorant of germs and infections as were the Indians.

It wasn't until late 18th and early 19th century that relationship to germs, sterile hands and instruments and infections were understood. Giving birth killed such a high percentage of women until 20th century because doctors and midwives used unwashed, uncovered hands to pull babies out, putting their germs directly into women's bloodstream.

A gunshot wound to abdomen was 100% fatal throughout history, mainly from gangrene if victim not killed by original shot, until a Swiss doctor using sterile instruments saved the first gut-shot patient ever in late 19th century.

Still, took a while for knowledge to spread. President William McKinley survived a bullet in 1901 that passed straight through his abdomen, but got gangrene because of doctor's probing for bulletwith bare fingers they thought had lodged in his body:

"McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan wrote of the week following the shooting:
'His hearty constitution, everyone said, would see him through. The doctors seemed hopeful, even confident ... It is difficult to understand the cheer with which they viewed their patient. He was nearly sixty years old, overweight, and the wound itself had not been thoroughly cleaned or traced. Precautions against infections, admittedly difficult in 1901, were negligently handled.'"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_William_McKinley

Big Popi David Ortiz got shot in his abdomen (through his back) Sunday. Doctors removed some of his small intestine and his gall bladder and his prospects are great. He would've been a dead man 120 years ago.

What you failed to note is that Western Civilization, though it acted as cruelly as every other civilization towards "the other" throughout recorded history, was the first civilization to end wholesale slaughter and slowly bring rights to everyone, the English ended slavery and the Atlantic slave trade - which still flourishes between Arabia and Africa by the way.

All of you so "heroic" and "outraged" by past atrocities of Western civilizations, I say you take your outrage to China, Iran, Cuba and Saudi Arabia and lecture them and demand changes to their barbaric practices we ended long ago. You're all stomping around like bulls how you wouldn't stand for what the West did long ago. Yeah? You would've stood up to the Inquisition? You would've traveled through the South demanding freedom for blacks? You would've shot down Connecticut whites in the Pequot War? 

So take all your bravery to Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba and leave the West to those of us who thank our ancestors for building the freest and most prosperous civilization in history, where even a person on welfare lives better than a multi-millionaire just a 100 years ago.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Never mind the ancestors and what they did. In our own lifetimes, the U.S. and others have done a good job killing civilians as well as "enemies" overseas. Our current barbarism is more effective than in the past since we have created advanced killing machines. When and if the U.S. is not the arms dealer for the planet and the killing ever stops, THEN we can pat ourselves on the back about being an "advanced" civilization.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Salmonella came to Mexico with the animals and killed a huge amount of people on a regular basis.. It is interesting to go and see the medecinal plants used in Chiapas ..The majority are for salmonella like the chichahua and many others , for stomach aches and problems after delivery.. right there you get a pretty good idea of what killed people going way back..


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Xolo 
I have a good one fore you .. an artisan In know who lives in San Pablito , Puebla just posted on face book that a maestro from the Sierra Norte, translated Le petit Prince in Totonaco for the kids at school.. How about that for a cross cultural event..Of course El Principito is very popular with the maestros so it may not be so strange but I wonder how it sounds in Totonaco..


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## xolo (May 25, 2014)

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> ...
> 
> The Europeans were as ignorant of germs and infections as were the Indians.
> 
> ...


If your point is that the Spanish had no idea that they were carrying serious diseases to the Americas that killed many people, you'll have to cite something about that, because I think they knew. Being ignorant about germs is one thing, but being unaware of what was going on around them, that is hard to believe.

If you want to apologize for Spanish colonial behavior, there are quite a few additional and important topics to discuss.


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