Tenochtitlan in 1519

[wnylib]

8. In a college Spanish course, we read some of

the original Spanish descriptions of Tenochtitlan. The Spaniards were awestruck by the city and compared it to Venice due to the city's waterways for travel, which also had roads beside them for land travel.

The zoo was maintained by the royal family, as well as an institution for people born with physical disabilities.

They had a class system maintained by different schools by class to train people in skills and general knowledge needed for their class. Only the upper classes of priests and royals got a complete education. Class divisions extended to clothing, similar to European sumptuary laws that regulated clothing by class. Upper clsses wore soft, refined cotton while lower classes wore a coarser cotton cloth.

Interestingly, though, the emperor was required to marry a woman from the lower classes.