[exotic music] ♪ ♪ >> Nimoy: The Aztecs, rulers of a mighty Mexican empire; they built magnificent cities, composed sensitive songs and poetry. They fashioned a society that was as rich and as complex as the transcendent works of art they produced. Yet they were committed to a religion in which their gods drove them to kill thousands in human sacrifice. From their shadowy beginnings as a small, wandering tribe, the Aztecs transformed themselves into the most powerful and fearsome civilization in the Western Hemisphere. Their mysteries still intrigue us. Why did the Aztecs practice human sacrifice? What evidence points to cannibalism in Aztec rites and rituals? And why was it performed? And how could the mightiest empire of the New World be destroyed by a small group of Spanish conquistadores? Discover the answers to these and other mysteries as we explore the wonder and magic of the Aztecs. >> "Some say that the Indians were born of springs of water. Others say that they were born of caves or that their race is that of the gods." --Father Diego Duran. >> Nimoy: The Aztecs cast their mighty shadow across an empire stretching from northern Mexico to what is today Guatemala. They ruled over 10 million subjects, dominating a far-flung kingdom of city-states. At the height of Aztec power, between 1300 and 1500, their capital was the largest city in the world. But today that city is no more. Who were these people-- so brilliant in the arts, so fierce in battle, and so fanatically devoted to their religion of human sacrifice? To this day, their exact origin is lost in the shadows of time. >> [speaking Spanish] >> One of the points specialists are still arguing about is where the Aztecs really come from-- whether the group was already settled in the Valley of Mexico or if they came from the north. These questions are still unanswered. >> Nimoy: Despite the scholarly controversy, Aztec legends relate that they first emerged from a supernatural place called the Seven Caves. From there, they journeyed to Aztlán, an island city in the middle of a lake. It is from Aztlán that they took their name, Aztec. From Aztlán in the year 1116, they began an epic 200-year odyssey. But what drove these wanderers, who, like the Israelites of the Bible, saw themselves as a chosen people searching for their promised land? According to Aztec legends, the command to set forth came from their tribal deity, Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and god of war. As the tribe wandered, the high priests carried an effigy of Huitzilopochtli with them. When their god spoke, they obeyed. But how did he communicate with them? >> Supposedly, this image actually spoke to them in their language, but spoke through the medium of the priest. And then the priest would transmit this message, and the original message was, "Now you must leave Aztlán. You must migrate to the south. And you must obey my commands, but I promise you this great destiny. I promise you the world." >> The Aztecs felt that they were the people destined to maintain the cosmos and to see that the sun would have enough energy to fight his way across the sky and that the earth had enough nutrition to bear the crops. And they felt that they could only do this by making offerings-- and mostly blood offerings. >> Nimoy: According to Aztec belief, the human heart was the most precious gift which mere mortals could offer to the gods. The ritual of human sacrifice was not an act of murder, but proof of their devotion. >> The basic rationale for it was that the sun literally subsisted on human hearts and human blood. They were feeding the sun to maintain the universe. They felt it was an obligation for the good of their community. >> Nimoy: During their epic journey, the Aztecs would sometimes settle for a time and work the land. To promote fertility, they worshipped the rain god, Tlaloc. Strangely, their belief in Tlaloc would inspire even more extreme forms of human sacrifice. >> The rain gods were conceived as infantile dwarfs. So in the cult of Tlaloc, it was considered particularly appropriate to sacrifice young children up to the age of five and six. >> Nimoy: The Aztecs believed that to obtain the blessings of Tlaloc, the young victims must shed tears before their sacrifice. >> And this apparently was a form of what they call sympathetic magic. The tears of the children would bring down the tears of the sky, namely the rain, which they were always so anxious to promote. And then they would sacrifice them in the usual fashion by tearing out their little hearts. >> Nimoy: After a 200-year odyssey, the Aztecs reached the Valley of Mexico. There, at the hands of a neighboring tribe, they suffered a humiliating defeat. They were forced to retreat to the swamps of a tiny island in a vast lake. It was here that their priestly oracles commanded them to search for an eagle perched upon a cactus. This sign, they said, would mark the end of their quest for a homeland. At dawn, they glimpsed a mighty eagle upon a prickly pear cactus. They named the spot Tenochtitlan. Finally, after 200 years, their journey had ended. >> Nimoy: By 1324 A.D., the Aztecs had finally reached their promised land: an island in the middle of a lake. In this most unlikely of sites, they would somehow build Tenochtitlan, one of the most awesome cities the world had ever seen. But how could a city built on a small island hold a population that would soon swell to 1/4 million people? Using the simple but ingenious method of pounding stakes into the lake bed and then lashing them together with reeds, the Aztecs poured in mud and rocks to literally build themselves more land. They expanded their small island into a vast 2,500 acres. When the Spanish conquistadores first saw the Aztec city in 1519, they were amazed. >> There in the center of the lake was this gleaming white city. It was something they had never seen before. And for us, we could almost imagine as Dorothy looking at the--you know, at Oz for the first time. It was far larger at 1/4 million people than any city they had ever seen in Europe. >> Nimoy: By the 1500s, Tenochtitlan was a teeming metropolis. It held twice the population of London or Rome. Elsewhere around the world, at the height of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci had invented a rudimentary tank; in Germany, Martin Luther tries to reform the Roman Catholic church and is excommunicated; while in Japan, the performance of Noh drama had reached the height of its popularity. The creation of Tenochtitlan demanded a skilled army of thousands of craftsmen. Yet how the Aztecs performed this formidable task of construction remains a mystery. For though the Aztecs used the wheel for their children's toys, they put it to no practical use. Without the wheel or beasts of burden, how could the Aztecs build on such a monumental scale? Experts theorize the answer lies in the ingenious concept of the city itself. Like Venice, Italy, Tenochtitlan was crisscrossed by an intricate network of canals. Could the Aztecs have used thousands of canoes to move the tons of materials needed for the city's construction? However Tenochtitlan was completed, the Spaniards were awed by this surprisingly modern city. >> When they got closer to the city and began to walk down the causeways, they were astounded at how clean the streets were in the city. In fact, refuse was taken out of the city daily. They were astounded at the reuse of everything. They were master ecologists, the way everything was so carefully painted and ornamented and how orderly Aztec life was. >> Nimoy: To precisely determine the exact days for planting and harvesting, the Aztecs established an accurate calendar, systematically charting the heavens. Aztec medicine was also highly sophisticated, with over 100 herbal remedies for specific ailments. As impressive as the Aztecs' scientific achievements, however, was their creative genius. To an extraordinary degree, they viewed every aspect of life as an opportunity for creative expression. >> Aztec society is known for its militarism, its interest in human sacrifice, so that there's a tendency to look at all Aztec life as--brutal. But in fact, there was an Aztec--a rich Aztec tradition of poetry, of music, and of drama. >> Nimoy: Surprisingly, many of the most sensitive Aztec poems came from the most unlikely composers: the battle-hardened warriors. >> "The gold and black butterfly is sipping the nectar. The flower bursts into bloom. Ahh, my friends, it is my heart. I send down a shower of white frangipani flowers." >> Nimoy: The Aztecs produced a dazzling variety of sculpture, breathtaking in its austere beauty and awesome power. Researchers have been astounded that the Aztecs used only primitive stone chisels to create these monumental works. Yet for all its life-affirming splendor, Aztec culture was also steeped in a cult of death. Even the city's most remarkable architectural achievement, the great temple, had a dark purpose, for here in the inner sanctum of shrines to the gods Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli were bloody receptacles containing hearts of sacrificial victims. And in the shadows of the temple, another even more startling ritual was performed. >> Nimoy: By the 1500s, the Aztecs dominated most of the surrounding city-states and governed an empire of over 10 million. Despite the Aztecs' agricultural genius, the capital of Tenochtitlan could not support itself economically. To survive, it required the tribute of conquered peoples. >> [speaking Spanish] >> I believe the Aztecs are an example of a warring people par excellence. Their world was structured around war. The young men knew that the only possibility they had to leave the harsh life of farming, carrying stones, working to build the temples and palaces, was to be skillful in war. >> Nimoy: Surprisingly, the goal of Aztec warriors was not to kill their enemies in battle. Instead, the Aztecs believed they had to capture them alive to sacrifice them to the gods. >> I think the scale and scope of human sacrifice in Aztec culture was probably the greatest of any known culture. But I think there's been a lot of misunderstanding about it. There was nothing sadistic or savage or barbaric as we usually define it. It was just a religious obligation that they took very seriously. >> Nimoy: Scholars have been surprised to discover that to the Aztecs and their neighbors, death by sacrifice was more honorable than death in battle. In fact, the sacrificial victims went willingly. >> And in return, the captive was promised a world-- an afterlife in a world with the sun himself. He would live as a king in this world of the sun. >> "May his heart not falter. May he long for the flowery death by the obsidian knife. May he savor the sweetness of the darkness." --Aztec prayer for sacrificial warriors. >> Nimoy: Presiding over these blood offerings were the priests, both male and female. What drove them to slaughter thousands? Surprisingly, the scholars believe these religious acts were intended not to display the priests' power, but to show their humility. >> [speaking Spanish] >> They would let their hair grow long, paint their bodies black, and at a ceremony in which they extracted a heart, they would let the victim's blood fall upon their heads in such a way that the sticky, dry blood, the skin and the dirt, symbolized the battle of man against his own vanity. That repulsive look showed much devotion. >> Nimoy: Human sacrifice took many forms. Perhaps one of the most mystifying to scholars was the act of flaying a captive and then wearing his skin. >> They really apparently developed surgical skills in dispatching their victims and then taking off their skins. And we have a number of images-- stone idols of the god Xipe shown actually wearing the human skin. >> Nimoy: The purpose of this strange ritual still mystifies scholars. >> What the exact significance of wearing the skin was has been very controversial, and scholars disagree. It seems to have had some connection with the promotion of fertility. >> Nimoy: Even the most forbidden of all human practices was viewed by the Aztecs as a sacred sacrament, for after death, the victim's limbs were severed from the body, stewed, and ritually eaten by the priests and the nobility. >> The victim was transformed, sacralized, as we say, into the godhead. And by ingesting small pieces of the flesh of the victim, they were ingesting into their own bodies the sacred essence. >> Nimoy: When the first Catholic missionaries viewed these startling rites, they were horrified, for they viewed them as a diabolical perversion of their own ritual of communion. The Aztecs, however, saw them as essential for the survival of their world. One rare ceremony, only performed every 52 years, was considered the most vital of all. As night fell, the high priests, dressed to personify their most powerful gods, ascended the highest hill in Tenochtitlan. At precisely midnight, one priest killed a captive and pulled out his heart. Then inside the victim's chest cavity, he attempted to kindle a fire. >> If the priest had failed to ignite this new fire, the universe would end. The stars would turn into monsters. They would descend from heaven. They would devour mankind. And that would be the end of everything. But if the fire flared up, then they knew there was renewal at least for 52 years. >> Nimoy: The Aztecs sacrificed to sustain their gods and to ensure the stability of the cosmos. Yet ironically, their very belief in the supernatural would lead to their annihilation. >> [speaking Nahuatl] >> "Proud of itself is the city of Mexico, Tenochtitlan. Here, no one fears to die in war. Who could conquer Tenochtitlan? Who could shake the foundation of heaven?" --Aztec poem, 1400s. >> Nimoy: By the year 1519, Tenochtitlan had attained the height of its power. It was here in the capital that their all-powerful king, Motecuhzoma II, resided in awesome splendor. The ruler, who would be later known as Montezuma, lived like a god because he and his subjects believed he was one. >> [speaking Spanish] >> You could not touch him. You could not look at him. Commoners could not have any contact with him. He thought he was a living god, and no one could turn their back on him or look him in the eye. >> Nimoy: Despite his grandeur, the Aztec empire was poised on the brink of destruction, for in the year 1519, the words of an ancient prophesy would come back to haunt Motecuhzoma. The prophesy told of the ancient god Quetzalcoatl, who was said to have departed Mexico on a raft of woven serpents. Curiously, Quetzalcoatl was said to have been white-skinned and to have worn a beard. Before he left, Quetzalcoatl had promised that one day he would return to reclaim his throne. The predicted year of Quetzalcoatl's second coming was to be the year 1 reed on the Aztec calendar. As fate would have it, that year on the Christian calendar was 1519, the very year Motecuhzoma received reports of strange, moving mountains seen in the waters off the Mexican coastline. The armada of the Spanish conquistador Cortés had arrived. Was this one of history's most remarkable coincidences, or had the ancient Aztec prophesy foretold their own destruction? As soon as the Spaniard landed, Motecuhzoma sent him lavish gifts. Ironically, the very gold intended to win Cortés' favor would assure Motecuhzoma's destruction. Motecuhzoma's ambassador asked Cortés why he hungered for a mineral the Aztecs called the excrement of the gods. Cortés' answer was surprisingly candid. >> We Spaniards suffer from a disease of the heart which only gold can cure. >> Nimoy: Whatever gold the Aztecs could provide him only whetted Cortés' appetite for more. To achieve his conquest of Mexico, Cortés would rely on a frail Indian woman he encountered named Malinche, for she spoke the Aztec language and became his interpreter. >> She became the mediator between Cortés and all of the Aztecs that he came into contact with. So she was--she was the communications link. Without her, he never could have succeeded. The Mexicans today use the term <i> malinche</i> for traitor. And they see her as a traitor-- a woman who betrayed her own people. >> Nimoy: With Malinche's help, Cortés launched his bloody invasion into the heart of the kingdom. At first, local tribes resisted the Spanish onslaught. But their arrows and war clubs were no match for the swords and cannons of the Spaniards. Some historians have suggested that the real secret weapon of the Spanish was the horse, an animal which the Aztecs had never seen before. >> There's a favorite legend; it's repeated in every book on the history of Latin America. Ohh, the Indians thought the horse and the man were one creature. But how true that is--how do we know what they really thought when they first saw a horse? But the idea that they thought it was one creature like a centaur, I think, is nonsense. >> Nimoy: Witnessing the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, the Spaniards viewed them as barbarians. Yet the Aztecs were equally shocked by the brutality of the conquistadores. >> [speaking Spanish] >> The soldiers were setting fires. The soldiers were killing. The soldiers were branding the captured Indian slaves in the forehead with hot irons like they would cattle. >> The Spaniards fought to kill. And of course, the Aztecs fought to take sacrificial victims. So an Aztec would never want to kill someone on the battlefield, because it would be wasted blood. >> The Aztecs saw that as an incredible waste of human life. Why on earth would anybody just recklessly destroy the human body? To the Aztec, the body was something sacred. It did not really belong to man; it belonged to a god. >> Nimoy: But how could Cortés, with only 600 men, 16 horses, and few cannon, conquer an empire of millions? As he fought his way towards Mexico City, Cortés made allies of the many tribes Motecuhzoma had oppressed. These warriors swelled his force into an army of thousands, eager to destroy their Aztec overlords. Whether the neighboring tribes the Aztecs had enslaved saw Cortés as god or a man, to them he represented salvation. By November 7, 1519, the Spaniards and 50,000 Indian allies looked down upon Tenochtitlan. The stage was set for one of the most extraordinary confrontations in history. Scholars have been mystified that after waging so many battles against Cortés, Motecuhzoma welcomed him as the returning god Quetzalcoatl. >> "O our lord, thou hast come to arrive on earth. Thou hast come to govern the city of Mexico. The ancient rulers departed saying that thou wouldst come. Now it hath been fulfilled." --Motecuhzoma II. >> Nimoy: Motecuhzoma invited the Spaniards into the heart of the city. There, the Aztec ruler showered them with lavish gifts of gold and silver jewelry. He indulged them in the splendor of his ornate palace. And yet, within one week, Cortés repaid Motecuhzoma's hospitality with betrayal. The Spaniard had his men shackle Motecuhzoma in chains. >> Nimoy: In November 1519, the Aztec ruler Motecuhzoma was held a prisoner in chains in his own palace by Cortés and his men. Hungering for more gold, the Spanish found the royal treasury and looted it. Priceless ancient artifacts were melted down into gold bars. To the Aztecs, the Spaniards' frenzy of greed seemed absurd. >> "They seized upon the gold as if they were monkeys. Clearly, their thirst for gold was insatiable. They starved for it. They lusted for it. They wanted to stuff themselves with it as if they were pigs." --From the Aztec accounts told to Father Bernadino de Sahagún, 1577. >> Nimoy: Part of the Spaniards' mission had been to spread the true faith of Catholicism. They saw the Aztecs' gods as devils and set out to destroy their idols. >> Cortés did try to throw down some of the idols. He demanded when he had Motecuhzoma a prisoner that they remove the two principal idols of the Temple Mayor, which was a huge stone image of Huitzilopochtli and another of Tlaloc, the preeminent rain god. So the Indians took them down the stairs, hid them someplace in a cave. They've never been found. >> Nimoy: To this day, scholars wonder whether this priceless, lost treasure may be hidden somewhere in the Valley of Mexico, waiting to be discovered. On June 29, 1520, with their temples desecrated and their emperor in chains, the Aztecs finally rebelled against the Spanish invaders. Thousands surrounded the palace. In this final, climactic moment, Cortés brought Motecuhzoma out onto a balcony to calm the mob. But his subjects shouted that Motecuhzoma was a traitor. >> And then something very mysterious happened. The Spaniards claimed that a rock did in fact impact Motecuhzoma's head and did in fact fracture his skull. According to Cortés, Motecuhzoma was then--was not dead at the time. He was escorted back to his quarters, where he then received the holy sacrament from a friar and died in heavenly bliss as a true Christian. >> Nimoy: The Aztecs, however, tell a dramatically different story. They insist that Cortés, seeing Motecuhzoma was no longer of value, drew his dagger and drove it deep into the emperor's back. Was Cortés guilty of Motecuhzoma's murder? Or was Motecuhzoma killed by his own people? Perhaps this mystery will never be solved. What is known is that after Motecuhzoma's death, the Aztecs attacked the Spaniards with a vengeance. During a night of confusion and bloodshed, Cortés fought his way out of the city, but lost half his men. Ironically, many wounded Spaniards drowned in the canals, weighed down by the gold they had stolen. Yet in the bloodiest defeat of their campaign, the Spanish left behind something far more lethal than the blades of their swords: smallpox. >> "There came to be prevalent a great sickness, a plague. Many died of it. No longer could they walk. Indeed, many people died, and many just died of hunger. There was no one to take care of another. There was no one to attend another." --From the Aztec accounts told to Father Bernadino de Sahagún, 1577. >> Nimoy: Over the next decade, 80% of the population of central Mexico would die from the Spanish conquistadores' deadly legacy. As the epidemic began to take its toll, the Spanish returned to Tenochtitlan. They laid waste what once had been the mightiest city on earth. So totally was the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan obliterated that even the location of the great temple had been lost for centuries. >> Modern Mexico covers the ancient Aztec capital. And every time a new building is built or a new foundation is dug, they will come up with an ancient Aztec sculpture or an edge of an old Aztec temple or palace, because the great cities of Mexico are on top of the old Aztec cities. So the mystery I think for today is, what else is there waiting to be found? >> Nimoy: In September 1978, digging 15 feet below street level, a workman made an astonishing discovery: a magnificent sculpture of the Aztec moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui. At over eight tons and 11 feet in diameter, she had rested undisturbed beneath the asphalt of downtown Mexico City for over four centuries. Even more surprisingly, the sculpture seemed to be part of a much bigger structure. The Aztecs' holiest shrine, the long lost great temple, had at last been found. Since 1978, Professor Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and his team have excavated over 5,000 priceless objects at the ancient Aztec site, relics which speak eloquently of a vanished way of life. >> I think the biggest misconception about the Aztecs is that people feel they were savages. But in fact, they were not. They were deeply moral people. And from the time an Aztec child was very young, that child was taught to be prudent, to be discreet, to be modest, and to always do the correct thing. The Aztecs, even though they did practice human sacrifice and their warriors were valiant, were themselves circumspect and moral people. >> Nimoy: Today in the shadow of a Catholic cathedral, built over what was once a holy Aztec shrine, the Aztec civilization still survives... for every year, drawn from villages throughout Mexico, the descendants of the Aztecs make a pilgrimage here. They come to celebrate a lost empire, which seems as distant as a dream, yet as real as the land itself. >> [singing in Nahuatl] ♪ ♪ >> "Sweet flower of cacao bursts open with perfume. The fragrant flower of peyote falls in the raining mist. I, the singer--I live. My song is heard. It takes root. Our flowers stand up in the rain." --Aztec song. >> [singing in Nahuatl] ♪ ♪ Captioning by<font color="#00FF00"> CaptionMax</font> www.captionmax.com
