10 ms·

Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

121 points by benbreen 7y ago

Svip 7y ago
Because it makes the Conquistadors' conquests of the New World seem more appetising? Because it downplays the indiscriminate conquering of the Americas? Spain commemorates the day Columbus discovered America as its national day, as it ushered in a golden age for Spain, which is true enough. But with the atrocities inflicted by Spain (along with the other European powers) on the natives in the New World, it may have become harder to feel that such a moment should be celebrated. And tales that the Aztecs simply handed their lands to the Spanish, rather than the Spanish conquering it, may help people feel a little less weary about the celebration. But I am merely speculation. Plenty of retelling of history tends to decorate it as best possible (or omit the bad parts) for our side. In much the same fashion, I'd imagine Austrian history classes simply stops in 1866.
- vkizl 7y ago
  Might is right, sorry buddy.
- zwirbl 7y ago
  > I'd imagine Austrian history classes simply stops in 1866 Nope, it goes all the way through WW1, Austro-Fascism to fascism and WW2 but didn't reach the present IIRC. The Austrian Empire lost a lot (most?) of the wars it was involved in, but that didn't keep it from being taught, albeit in a, as you wrote, decorated fashion
- werpon 7y ago
  Spaniard here. I don't think I've ever read or heard a sugarcoated version of the conquest. In fact it's usually the opposite. October 12 is indeed the day Columbus set foot on the New World and also our national holiday, but I fail to see how it's different from other holidays such as Thanksgiving.
  - lentil_soup 7y ago
    I don't think Thanksgiving is comparable. Spain celebrating the 12th of October as its national day is as if England celebrated Thanksgiving as its own national day.
    - willvarfar 7y ago
      I don't understand why Thanksgiving is celebrated at all. Its a bunch of religious bigots who left England for Holland because England was too religiously tolerant. They then had to leave Holland because they felt threatened by the fact that their children didn't want to continue their religion and were 'going native'. So they head off to the English colonies in America where they settle land cleared of native Indians by the plague. Half of them then die, and then the next year one of the pilgrim's many 'thanksgivings' is for the harvest. After the revolution, Washington is petitioned to make it a holiday, although its not on the current day. Jefferson, for example, rallied against it. So why celebrate thanksgiving again? Why celebrate the 'pilgrim fathers' in school? Why? England's national day doesn't make sense through a modern lens either. Its generally believed that, if Saint George existed, he was a lowly Greek soldier from modern-day Turkey. We can speculate what the dragon might actually have been, except that story doesn't seem to turn up until later. The Catholic Saint George was executed by a Roman emperor for refusing to worship pagan gods... and this is related to England in what way? Technically that goes back to King Richard praying to him on a crusade or something. Then again, you stop someone in the English street and ask them why Saint George is the patron saint, or why, and they have not a clue! Don't get me started on Christmas! If we had to justify every holiday and explain how it still makes any sense to celebrate it or whoever it originally venerated, then we'd have no holidays at all! :)
      - madengr 7y ago
        Thanksgiving is now about overeating and shopping. Wonder what it will be about 100 years from now.
      - dan_mctree 7y ago
        Considering the Dutch connection. Thanksgiving may've just been a continuation of the Dutch dankdag/Thanksday, which is a small protestant celebration thanking God for the harvest. They do that every year, regardless of the circumstances, and it kind of sounds like they just continued that practice. Harvest festivals in general were common throughout Europe and many immigrants would be familiar with them, so it's not very surprising that at least one version of it would survive.
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  > But I am merely speculation. A question mark in a submission title doesn't mean they're actually asking uninformed HN readers to speculate. It generally means that the author, who presumably has some subject matter expertise, intends to explore and possibly answer the question. Why would you bother speculating instead of just reading the article and learning something?
- rixrax 7y ago
  Modern scholars put pre-Colombian American population somewhere north of 50M people[0]. This number has been hard to measure as most of these people were presumably wiped out by European and African germs well before settlers arrived to most areas and no/few pre Colombian written records exist. Imagine demoralizing and disorienting effect of losing up to 90%[0] of communities population to mysterious disease. I’ve sometimes wondered if the lack of this wonder weapon is reason behind why Vikings and others that reached American continent before Columbus did, never established permanent lasting and expanding colonies. Imagine if it would have worked the other way around - indigenous Americans carrying a germ that would have traveled back to a Europe making great plague look like a child’s play. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indige...
  - kwelstr 7y ago
    <<Imagine if it would have worked the other way around - indigenous Americans carrying a germ that would have traveled back to a Europe making great plague look like a child’s play.>> Syphilis spread in Europe after Columbus returned from the Americas and was devastating even if not to the same extent.
  - woliveirajr 7y ago
    Well, there are some hypotheses that indeed Columbus' crew got syphilis in exchange of some "trades" [0], but it wasn't that devastanting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis
- okusername 7y ago
  Just that you know - it's ok no to post, if you have nothing substantial to say. Spreading hateful slander adds nothing to the board.
- spanxx 7y ago
  Do you really think that a hundred of undisciplined soldiers could fight and won a war against an empire? Spanish conquerors were lucky that Aztecs were hated by other natives and allied them. It was more like a civil war than a conquest.
  - Maultasche 7y ago
    Yeah, a lot of people simplify it and say it was guns, horses, and armor that allows Cortes to conquer the Aztecs, but I eventually learned that it was nothing like that. The guns, horses, and armor (although there were only a few relatively primitive guns, mainly cannon) did offer an advantage, their opponents learned to deal with these elements. A couple hundred against tens of thousands will lose even with the tech advantage. They really only had a chance because they found lots of allies willing to overthrow their cruel oppressors. Even then, something like half of the Spaniards were killed in the street fighting in what is today Mexico City, both in the initial escape after negotiations went downhill and the return with a large army. The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz contains an interesting account of the fighting that took place, and he makes it clear that their allies were essential to their victory. It's a fascinating read.
ianai 7y ago
That was a pretty good read. There may be lessons there for today - the power of shared stories on social media and advertisement. Flood a communication channel with a message that reinforces your political objectives and they become seemingly almost inevitable.
electrichead 7y ago
Malcolm Gladwell also talked about it in the book "Talking to Strangers." It revolved around a breakdown on communication between the two and assumptions that they each had for the other.
nestorD 7y ago
My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico), is that it was Montezuma II who purposefully spread rumors saying that the conquistador were returning gods so that people would stop fighting them and start trading with them. It was not superstitious belief from ignorant savages, it was a political move. [0]: which I highly recommend, they are available on project Gutenberg for free: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm
- DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  This is a fascinating story for reasons that have nothing to do with the Spanish or Aztecs. This is a story about technology and the internet; also it's about how history cycles. The Spanish were probably a poor reporter of the conditions they encountered. Even if they had tried to be completely objective, they would have had a very difficult time explaining what they saw without a lot of context they didn't have. I think most people know this instinctively. History moves in cycles, with one bunch being praised by one generation only to have them reviled by the following one. Then it will swing back the other way. Astute authors and historians can make some cash by riding the wave when it appears. After hearing such a one-sided story for so long, people are ready to hear the other side. It seems like it is an important thing that needs telling. What does this have to do with the net? Take a look at the comments. You're the only person that read the first-hand account. Everybody else is riffing off how "right" the story feels, then projecting various present-day political and emotional responses to an event from 500 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I think that's a great thing....as long as students stay tuned for the next flip around. Then they start realizing that for any one set of events, hundreds or thousands of narratives are possible. That's not a weakness of history, that's its strength. History is not a science where there is only one right and wrong. It's a humanities subject where the more we study, the more we understand about ourselves. I'm not sure how this works in the age of Wikipedia where so many people want to Google for the right result. Sure is fascinating to watch, though.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    It's the same pathos vs logos argument that has been well documented over the last 3000+ years. Emotion and logic have always been at odds.
627467 7y ago
I'm surprised not to find any mention to the diseases brought by the conquistadores. Quick glance at literature seems to indicate a consensus on the outsized importance of diseases in demographic changes in the Americas. Just over 100 years before the arrival of Cortés, Europe was going through similar epidemic disaster with the Black Plague also brought through intercontinental contact between people's. Then, the plague was also seen by many as divine intervention. While it does seem self serving to propagate the message that Europeans were seen as gods it does not seem unusual for people to turn to religious explanations when faced with existential threats. edit: misspellings
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jcranmer 7y ago
  The diseases do not appear to have been a particularly major factor in the defeat of the Aztec Triple Alliance, mostly occurring after the polity had already collapsed.
  - totalZero 7y ago
    What about the smallpox outbreak that ravaged the Aztecs in 1520? “As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease, they died in heaps, like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died, and as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them, so that their homes became their tombs.” https://theconversation.com/how-smallpox-devastated-the-aztecs-and-helped-spain-conquer-an-american-civilization-500-years-ago-111579 https://theconversation.com/how-smallpox-devastated-the-azte...
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Disease was indeed a huge factor, but like all imperial conquests, the technology advantage (steel weapons / armor in this case) likely made the biggest difference.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
trumbitta2 7y ago
Wait, how come "teotl" shares a similar radix and meaning as "theos"?
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Pure coincidence, as far as we know.
- bitwize 7y ago
  For the same reason the Aborigine word for "dog" is "dog" -- it's just a coincidence.
trevyn 7y ago
For the same reason why children who have a near-death experience sometimes report the “white light” as “meeting Santa Claus.” An encounter occurred between people with vastly different levels of technology and ability, and it was contextualized in the most comprehensible way.
spanxx 7y ago
According to [1], slaved population by Aztec was sacrificed by the thousands, so I could see the slaved people treating the newcomers as gods, or more likely liberators and joining them in the war against Aztec Empire. [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundred...
BlameKaneda 7y ago
I feel like if I were an Aztec and came across a mysterious figure covered from head to foot in silver plates and on top of a massive beast, I'd be highly intimidated albeit curious as to what he was. If I saw him off the creature and possibly out of the silver plates, then I'm not so sure that I'd see him as a deity.
proc0 7y ago
European technology was just that much more advanced. It's like joining a game of Civ around turn 60 when your opponents have already researched, traded, and discovered a bunch of tech. When your civilizations meet you will just not have a chance. The whole mediterranean was a meeting grounds for dozens of civilizations, if not more, where for millenia people traded goods and technologies. It was really a matter of luck that the ancestors of the Aztecs picked a far away land that was tough to farm and little animals to domesticate, and no one else around to share information with.

121 points by benbreen 7y ago

Svip 7y ago

Because it makes the Conquistadors' conquests of the New World seem more appetising? Because it downplays the indiscriminate conquering of the Americas? Spain commemorates the day Columbus discovered America as its national day, as it ushered in a golden age for Spain, which is true enough. But with the atrocities inflicted by Spain (along with the other European powers) on the natives in the New World, it may have become harder to feel that such a moment should be celebrated. And tales that the Aztecs simply handed their lands to the Spanish, rather than the Spanish conquering it, may help people feel a little less weary about the celebration. But I am merely speculation. Plenty of retelling of history tends to decorate it as best possible (or omit the bad parts) for our side. In much the same fashion, I'd imagine Austrian history classes simply stops in 1866.

vkizl 7y ago
Might is right, sorry buddy.
zwirbl 7y ago
> I'd imagine Austrian history classes simply stops in 1866 Nope, it goes all the way through WW1, Austro-Fascism to fascism and WW2 but didn't reach the present IIRC. The Austrian Empire lost a lot (most?) of the wars it was involved in, but that didn't keep it from being taught, albeit in a, as you wrote, decorated fashion
werpon 7y ago
Spaniard here. I don't think I've ever read or heard a sugarcoated version of the conquest. In fact it's usually the opposite. October 12 is indeed the day Columbus set foot on the New World and also our national holiday, but I fail to see how it's different from other holidays such as Thanksgiving.
- lentil_soup 7y ago
  I don't think Thanksgiving is comparable. Spain celebrating the 12th of October as its national day is as if England celebrated Thanksgiving as its own national day.
  - willvarfar 7y ago
    I don't understand why Thanksgiving is celebrated at all. Its a bunch of religious bigots who left England for Holland because England was too religiously tolerant. They then had to leave Holland because they felt threatened by the fact that their children didn't want to continue their religion and were 'going native'. So they head off to the English colonies in America where they settle land cleared of native Indians by the plague. Half of them then die, and then the next year one of the pilgrim's many 'thanksgivings' is for the harvest. After the revolution, Washington is petitioned to make it a holiday, although its not on the current day. Jefferson, for example, rallied against it. So why celebrate thanksgiving again? Why celebrate the 'pilgrim fathers' in school? Why? England's national day doesn't make sense through a modern lens either. Its generally believed that, if Saint George existed, he was a lowly Greek soldier from modern-day Turkey. We can speculate what the dragon might actually have been, except that story doesn't seem to turn up until later. The Catholic Saint George was executed by a Roman emperor for refusing to worship pagan gods... and this is related to England in what way? Technically that goes back to King Richard praying to him on a crusade or something. Then again, you stop someone in the English street and ask them why Saint George is the patron saint, or why, and they have not a clue! Don't get me started on Christmas! If we had to justify every holiday and explain how it still makes any sense to celebrate it or whoever it originally venerated, then we'd have no holidays at all! :)
    - madengr 7y ago
      Thanksgiving is now about overeating and shopping. Wonder what it will be about 100 years from now.
    - dan_mctree 7y ago
      Considering the Dutch connection. Thanksgiving may've just been a continuation of the Dutch dankdag/Thanksday, which is a small protestant celebration thanking God for the harvest. They do that every year, regardless of the circumstances, and it kind of sounds like they just continued that practice. Harvest festivals in general were common throughout Europe and many immigrants would be familiar with them, so it's not very surprising that at least one version of it would survive.
freddie_mercury 7y ago
> But I am merely speculation. A question mark in a submission title doesn't mean they're actually asking uninformed HN readers to speculate. It generally means that the author, who presumably has some subject matter expertise, intends to explore and possibly answer the question. Why would you bother speculating instead of just reading the article and learning something?
rixrax 7y ago
Modern scholars put pre-Colombian American population somewhere north of 50M people[0]. This number has been hard to measure as most of these people were presumably wiped out by European and African germs well before settlers arrived to most areas and no/few pre Colombian written records exist. Imagine demoralizing and disorienting effect of losing up to 90%[0] of communities population to mysterious disease. I’ve sometimes wondered if the lack of this wonder weapon is reason behind why Vikings and others that reached American continent before Columbus did, never established permanent lasting and expanding colonies. Imagine if it would have worked the other way around - indigenous Americans carrying a germ that would have traveled back to a Europe making great plague look like a child’s play. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indige...
- kwelstr 7y ago
  <<Imagine if it would have worked the other way around - indigenous Americans carrying a germ that would have traveled back to a Europe making great plague look like a child’s play.>> Syphilis spread in Europe after Columbus returned from the Americas and was devastating even if not to the same extent.
- woliveirajr 7y ago
  Well, there are some hypotheses that indeed Columbus' crew got syphilis in exchange of some "trades" [0], but it wasn't that devastanting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis
okusername 7y ago
Just that you know - it's ok no to post, if you have nothing substantial to say. Spreading hateful slander adds nothing to the board.
spanxx 7y ago
Do you really think that a hundred of undisciplined soldiers could fight and won a war against an empire? Spanish conquerors were lucky that Aztecs were hated by other natives and allied them. It was more like a civil war than a conquest.
- Maultasche 7y ago
  Yeah, a lot of people simplify it and say it was guns, horses, and armor that allows Cortes to conquer the Aztecs, but I eventually learned that it was nothing like that. The guns, horses, and armor (although there were only a few relatively primitive guns, mainly cannon) did offer an advantage, their opponents learned to deal with these elements. A couple hundred against tens of thousands will lose even with the tech advantage. They really only had a chance because they found lots of allies willing to overthrow their cruel oppressors. Even then, something like half of the Spaniards were killed in the street fighting in what is today Mexico City, both in the initial escape after negotiations went downhill and the return with a large army. The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz contains an interesting account of the fighting that took place, and he makes it clear that their allies were essential to their victory. It's a fascinating read.

ianai 7y ago

That was a pretty good read. There may be lessons there for today - the power of shared stories on social media and advertisement. Flood a communication channel with a message that reinforces your political objectives and they become seemingly almost inevitable.

electrichead 7y ago

Malcolm Gladwell also talked about it in the book "Talking to Strangers." It revolved around a breakdown on communication between the two and assumptions that they each had for the other.

nestorD 7y ago

My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico), is that it was Montezuma II who purposefully spread rumors saying that the conquistador were returning gods so that people would stop fighting them and start trading with them. It was not superstitious belief from ignorant savages, it was a political move. [0]: which I highly recommend, they are available on project Gutenberg for free: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm

DanielBMarkham 7y ago
This is a fascinating story for reasons that have nothing to do with the Spanish or Aztecs. This is a story about technology and the internet; also it's about how history cycles. The Spanish were probably a poor reporter of the conditions they encountered. Even if they had tried to be completely objective, they would have had a very difficult time explaining what they saw without a lot of context they didn't have. I think most people know this instinctively. History moves in cycles, with one bunch being praised by one generation only to have them reviled by the following one. Then it will swing back the other way. Astute authors and historians can make some cash by riding the wave when it appears. After hearing such a one-sided story for so long, people are ready to hear the other side. It seems like it is an important thing that needs telling. What does this have to do with the net? Take a look at the comments. You're the only person that read the first-hand account. Everybody else is riffing off how "right" the story feels, then projecting various present-day political and emotional responses to an event from 500 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I think that's a great thing....as long as students stay tuned for the next flip around. Then they start realizing that for any one set of events, hundreds or thousands of narratives are possible. That's not a weakness of history, that's its strength. History is not a science where there is only one right and wrong. It's a humanities subject where the more we study, the more we understand about ourselves. I'm not sure how this works in the age of Wikipedia where so many people want to Google for the right result. Sure is fascinating to watch, though.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  It's the same pathos vs logos argument that has been well documented over the last 3000+ years. Emotion and logic have always been at odds.

627467 7y ago

I'm surprised not to find any mention to the diseases brought by the conquistadores. Quick glance at literature seems to indicate a consensus on the outsized importance of diseases in demographic changes in the Americas. Just over 100 years before the arrival of Cortés, Europe was going through similar epidemic disaster with the Black Plague also brought through intercontinental contact between people's. Then, the plague was also seen by many as divine intervention. While it does seem self serving to propagate the message that Europeans were seen as gods it does not seem unusual for people to turn to religious explanations when faced with existential threats. edit: misspellings

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jcranmer 7y ago
The diseases do not appear to have been a particularly major factor in the defeat of the Aztec Triple Alliance, mostly occurring after the polity had already collapsed.
- totalZero 7y ago
  What about the smallpox outbreak that ravaged the Aztecs in 1520? “As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease, they died in heaps, like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died, and as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them, so that their homes became their tombs.” https://theconversation.com/how-smallpox-devastated-the-aztecs-and-helped-spain-conquer-an-american-civilization-500-years-ago-111579 https://theconversation.com/how-smallpox-devastated-the-azte...
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  Disease was indeed a huge factor, but like all imperial conquests, the technology advantage (steel weapons / armor in this case) likely made the biggest difference.
  - jcranmer 7y ago

trumbitta2 7y ago

Wait, how come "teotl" shares a similar radix and meaning as "theos"?

umanwizard 7y ago
Pure coincidence, as far as we know.
bitwize 7y ago
For the same reason the Aborigine word for "dog" is "dog" -- it's just a coincidence.

trevyn 7y ago

For the same reason why children who have a near-death experience sometimes report the “white light” as “meeting Santa Claus.” An encounter occurred between people with vastly different levels of technology and ability, and it was contextualized in the most comprehensible way.

spanxx 7y ago

According to [1], slaved population by Aztec was sacrificed by the thousands, so I could see the slaved people treating the newcomers as gods, or more likely liberators and joining them in the war against Aztec Empire. [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundred...

BlameKaneda 7y ago

I feel like if I were an Aztec and came across a mysterious figure covered from head to foot in silver plates and on top of a massive beast, I'd be highly intimidated albeit curious as to what he was. If I saw him off the creature and possibly out of the silver plates, then I'm not so sure that I'd see him as a deity.

proc0 7y ago

European technology was just that much more advanced. It's like joining a game of Civ around turn 60 when your opponents have already researched, traded, and discovered a bunch of tech. When your civilizations meet you will just not have a chance. The whole mediterranean was a meeting grounds for dozens of civilizations, if not more, where for millenia people traded goods and technologies. It was really a matter of luck that the ancestors of the Aztecs picked a far away land that was tough to farm and little animals to domesticate, and no one else around to share information with.