Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity? | Hacker News Reader

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

laphamsquarterly.org

121 pointsbenbreen94 comments

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

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.

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.

Related trivia: logos initially meant story or account, as opposed to how it later evolved. So we're back to history again.

Woah, logos meant so much more than that! Check Wikipedia.

Of course! In Classic Greek there's a rich and nuanced meaning that we're still mining today!

In ancient Greek, however, say 1000-650BCE or so, it's much more murky, with "story" or "account" being the best we have right now.

From Wiki, "...What logos means here is not certain; it may mean "reason" or "explanation" in the sense of an objective cosmic law, or it may signify nothing more than "saying" or "wisdom". Yet, an independent existence of a universal logos was clearly suggested by Heraclitus..."

There's a whole other story about how beginning with the Sophists and then Plato and Aristotle the word started taking on the depth it ended up with. This journey in meaning was not the topic of my comment.

> My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico)

Diaz's account was written 50 years after it had happened and is generally considered by modern scholars to be of dubious accuracy and primarily intended as a self-serving defense of his own wealth later in life.

As Adorno writes, "At issue were not the wars long since won or lost but rather the rights to the rewards of conquest. Should royal grants to conquistadores endure in perpetuity? Was it legitimate to enslave Indians when they had not been captured as enemies in war? Did the natives of the Antilles owe further royal or personal service to the Spaniards or should they be allowed relief in order to rebuild their dwindling populations?"

The linked article has the benefit of 400 years of additional scholarship beyond Diaz's account.

> The linked article has the benefit of 400 years of additional scholarship beyond Diaz's account.

Scholarship on what documents? If you don't have new evidence, all you have is every generation's new academic fads applied to the same old text. This isn't Physics. Progress is unlikely.

The linked article discusses the additional documents beyond Diaz's account.

Have you read it? If it were written as a self-serving defense it hasn't aged well. It's incredibly self-incriminating.

Diaz's account is entirely intended as a defense of his own actions. But he isn't trying to defend himself according to modern standards, at all! He admits that the conquistadors slaughtered non-military people for all sorts of reasons, took women as "wives" from conquered people, killed people just for believing in a different religion, lied and backstabbed, stole any valuables they could find. Everything we criticize the conquistadors for today, Bernal Diaz isn't even trying to defend.

What he spends all this time defending against is accusations that Cortes broke the rules of the Spanish monarchy, and that some other conquistador is actually the one who had the right to plunder the Aztec empire. Nobody really cares about that nowadays.

Also - it's pretty clear from Diaz's accounts that the Aztecs did not treat them like gods. There are a couple characters at some point who think they are some sort of monster because they haven't seen people on horseback before. But for the vast majority of the account, the conquistadors are explaining to the locals that they are warriors who serve a king that lives across the ocean, and the locals understand that.

What one tour guide in Teotlihuacan told me (so take it FWIW) was that tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed vikings found a route to Mexico hundreds of years before the Spaniards, traded with the indigenous people for a while, and then left. Images of those people made it into their popular culture and, since they looked so different than the people of the region, those images took on an air of mystery. When people who looked like what were by then ancient paintings appeared again, the indigenous people didn't consider them necessarily immortal, but mystical.

Sounds like the kind of story a tour guide would tell tourists who skew more blond-and-blue-eyed than the typical Spanish conquistador. Evidence of Norse settlements in America is pretty much limited to Canada; so even legends about them as far south as Mexico would be a big deal.

>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.

Your message suggests it was a political move that prayed up on superstitious beliefs. So, both, basically.

I don't recall that being mentioned in Bernal Diaz del Castillo's "The Conquest of New Spain". I've also read "The Broken Spears", an Aztec account of the conquest which was recorded once surviving members of the Conquest or their descendants had learned written language. In both accounts, it appeared that there had been forewarning of "Gods" from the east who would conquer the Aztecs from the priestly / ruling caste of the Aztecs. The whole story is really quite interesting, but wearisome on ones soul, I would highly recommend both books if you have the constitution for it. Werner Herzog recommends reading "The Conquest of New Spain" to "... understand the hearts of men."

> there had been forewarning of "Gods" from the east who would conquer the Aztecs

I'm reading a history of Christianity right now, that says this. Apparently the Aztecs had wiped out an earlier civilisation (Toltecs), and the legend is that the defeated king would return as a god and take revenge. The return would occur in a certain year of the 53 year Aztec cycle, and the avenging god-king would come from the East, and be light-skinned (all of which matched up).

It's like 400 pages! Can you recommend an excerpt?

Book two happens after the conquest of mexico and I found it less interesting, you can safely skip it.

Book one, however, has a surprisingly modern style and reads very easily.

The headers of the chapters contain a summary of their content, if you are mostly interested in what I said in the top comment you need to find the chapters that relate to the first travels (in the beginnig of the book), when Montezuma II becomes aware of the conquistadors.

Which contradicts the article, which I suspect is based on that book that has some shifty agenda to re-write history. The fact is, at least technologically, Europeans might as well have been gods. Anyone doubting this just read the history, a handful of Spanish conquering a whole empire (twice!). Imagine if Spain wanted to engage in a full fledged war with the Aztecs or Incas. They could have easily wiped out everybody.

I mean, when the Soviet Union fell, it wasn't because they were conquered by gods - somewhere I got the impression that was somewhat analogous to what happened in the Americas.

Europeans of the late 1400s and early 1500s weren't technologically "godlike" to the aztecs, incas or anyone else. It wasn't until the 1800s when industrial revolution in the US and Britain put the real separation between the west and the rest.

> Anyone doubting this just read the history, a handful of Spanish conquering a whole empire (twice!).

They didn't conquer the "whole empire". They conquered the elites. Big difference.

> Imagine if Spain wanted to engage in a full fledged war with the Aztecs or Incas.

Spain would have been utterly crushed. There is a reason why spain didn't wage a full fledged war against the aztecs or the incas.

> They could have easily wiped out everybody.

With what? A bunch of useless and inaccurate muskets?

I think you are highly overestimating what europeans were back then and their technological capabilities. Spain conquered the aztecs like the british conquered mughal india. They bought some elites, killed other elites and for whatever reason were at the right place at the right time to exploit the aztecs. Why and how is completely lost to history sadly.

But one thing we know for certain is that the atzecs elites were completely incompetent and ignorant and most likely divided. Which is a recipe for disaster. But all empires seem to verge towards that state amongst the elites - persians, romans, mongols, etc.

Minor nitpick.

>> the british conquered mughal india.

It was not the Mughals but the Marathas, however the methods essentially were as you described.

The Mughals were already in decline, during the EIC's rise. The dominant power in India during that time was the Maratha Empire. This period is often glossed over in history.

Fun fact, the Anglo-Maratha war was the first major campaign of one Arthur Wellesley, who later went on to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo. The battle of Assaye is one of my favourites [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Empire

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Assaye

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.

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.

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

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.

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-azte...

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.

No, the biggest advantage was uniting all the disaffected neighbors to do the dirty work of fighting the war. There were at least 80,000 native allies of Cortes fighting the Aztecs, without whom the Spanish would have been slaughtered.

Most imperial expansion in the New World tended to rely on "ally with my neighbors' neighbors to defeat my neighbors, and now that my neighbors' neighbors are now my neighbors, turn against them using their neighbors" as the primary strategy for expansion. The technological advantage is often grossly overstated, especially since natives were eager buyers of European military arms, and Europeans were eager sellers of them.

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-hundred...

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.

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.

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

Pure coincidence, as far as we know.

For the same reason the Aborigine word for "dog" is "dog" -- it's just a coincidence.

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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.

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! :)

Thanksgiving is now about overeating and shopping. Wonder what it will be about 100 years from now.

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.

Regardless of the specific framing of Thanksgiving, it seems like lots of cultures have some sort of seasonal harvest feast or festival (at least those originating in climates that support a seasonal planting/harvesting cycle).

I won't lie. Even though I'm a city dweller far removed from that agrarian lifestyle, I have zero problem with a nice yearly feast with friends and family. That aspect has a universal appeal I think.

I had always assumed Thanks Giving was similar to the Harvest Festival celebrated in (at least) England (and assumed other parts of UK).

Just being thankful for a good harvest.

They "founded" America and their values persist into modern day in one form or another. We will always have a puritan(ical) streak.

> They "founded" America

No, they didn't, either in fact or tradition. We have a set of people honored as founders, and it's not the Pilgrims.

> Its a bunch of religious bigots...

Plausible.

> ... who left England for Holland...

True.

> ... because England was too religiously tolerant.

Was too tolerant? No. They left for Holland because they were literally suffering religious persecution in England.

It’s true they left England because they became outlawed. But the reason they became outlawed is because they went around being intolerant of everyone else.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Why-Did-the-Puritans-Really... is a good intro to a very interesting subject. History is “written by the victors” and the popular US school history curriculum doesn’t seem to really question it.

What that page actually says is:

> Things came to a head when King Charles I came to the throne in 1625. In the first few years of his reign, the Puritans in parliament strongly opposed his royal authority.

> In order to maintain his royal power base and rid himself of those he viewed as his enemies, including many Puritans, Charles I took the unprecedented step of dissolving parliament altogether. The Puritans, probably quite rightly, interpreted this as a hostile act towards themselves and their religious practices, and so many decided to leave England and settle in the Americas, where they could develop their own communities based on their own beliefs.

That is, the issue wasn't that the Puritans were religiously intolerant; they were politically opposed to the king. That article doesn't make a case for your current claim (that they left because they were [religiously] intolerant), nor your original one (that they left because England was too tolerant).

> Things came to a head when King Charles I came to the throne in 1625

Pop quiz: when did the mayflower sail for the new world?

So the England the pilgrim fathers were moving first to holland and then to the new world was an England where Elizabeth and then James I had first tried to compromise with them before banning them.

Normally I cynically try to work out what religious leaders gain in the real world to work out what motivates them. It’s usually greed etc. But the puritans are a special case: I don’t think you can make distinctions between religion and politics with the Puritans, as they were didn’t seem to see any distinction.

1620.

Hey, you're the one that cited that page. Now you're saying that the page is wrong? And even if right, it didn't seem to support your position. I'm a little confused about your train of thought here.

Err, because the American continent IS NOT Spain, nor part of it? Because the current Spain state should not celebrate what a previous empire conquered? Still celebrating the national day on Oct 12th is a complete shame, and let one wonder how is still imperialism inside the Spain way of thinking. Spain national day should be Dec 6th, when the current Constitution was approved.

Another victim of Black Legend...

Please enlighten me

The Spanish try to whitewash their atrocities by speaking of a purposeful campaign of defamation from rival powers.

So successful it was, apparently, that it made disctinct stories of Spanish brutality materialize in every country in the Americas.

The legend of the Black Legend also emphasizes the enlightenment of the Crown's laws regarding the legal status and treatment of indigenous peoples.

Unfortunately the rumors spread by the English about the treatment of natives were so convincing, that the Spanish conquistadors and encomenderos also came to believe that they had the right to enslave the indians and create a racial caste system where mestizos would live as serfs for centuries.

Or maybe it just was that the laws were never effectively enforced.

Not true at all. English made propaganda about supposed atrocities and that propaganda is alive today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

Yes, it is alive because the Spanish did do things like cutting the hands and feet of entire indigenous settlements, as they did with the village from which the mapuche general who resisted the initial Spanish drive into Chile suffered.

The somewhat reasonable laws regarding the encomienda system were pervasively circumvented by the encomenderos by always demanding tribute in labor, and having it paid for generations.

The mestizaje and conversion to Christianity was used, in the end, to also circumvent laws regarding the treatment of natives by creating an entirely new underclass of people lacking in rights.

The Black Legend is what's known in Latin America as "history".

Spanish Crown edicted some laws to protect the natives https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Burgos

What legal protection had the native population in the American colonies or British Empire?

Australian native population did not have land rights until 1970-1979 [1]

[1] https://indigenousrights.net.au/timeline/1970-79

Pretty interesting how independent latin-american governments succeeded in conquering native lands and subjugating native population: See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Araucan%C3%ADa

Please note I'm giving sources.

I know that Latin American successor states then went on to do the same and worse.

The Chilean Congress only this year acknowledged the genocide of the peoples in Tierra del Fuego, perpetrated by mercenaries of settlers of various nationalities with total impunity from the Chilean state.

Do look up the Wikipedia article on the War of Arauco for accounts of the cruelty of Pizarro and Pedro de Valdivia. As I said, the enforcement of the various laws regarding the indigenous populations were... lacking in enforcement.

As time passes our society should be judged more severely. You can't judge actions of XVI century, bit you can sure judge actions of XX century.

Spain recognized independence of Mapuche Nation after more than one hundred years of war [1][2].

Chile and Argentina started a war campaign against them [2][3][4]. The Mapuches call it the Last Massacre (La última masacre in Spanish)[1].

[1] https://www.mapuche-nation.org/english/html/m_nation/main/m_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arauco_War

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Araucan%C3%ADa

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert

Yes, it's a complex issue that evolved over the course of centuries. But it's a remarkable exception that the Mapuche managed to settle a border with the Crown.

I've never said that Chile was any better. I mean, it was in comparison to some periods, the early conquest saw mutilation as collective punishment and impalement as execution of POWs.

What you just said isn't a defense of the Spanish Empire. If anything it is about the capacity to resist of the Mapuche and the power of decentralized self-organization. There just wasn't an emperor-high priest to kidnap and extort the Mapuche into surrendering like with the Aztecs or the Inca.

Aztecs were conquered with the help of other slaved tribes. Do you really thing that several sailors could conquering an empire of millions? Spaniards were helped by Aztec enemies.

I'm not defending anybody, just setting some historical context.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

Ok, my point stands exactly the same. Spain DOES NOT OWN any land in the American continent, the spanish empire is long gone, October 12th should NOT be the spanish national celebration. Focus on the present, not on the past.

I would be really surprised if you actually got raw version of history as it happened at school. Very few countries actually admit properly their past mistakes (Germany and WWII might be rather an exception).

Raw version would be somewhere along the lines of "our ancestors were among the most horrible arrogant ignorant humans that ever lived if measured by the amount of evil done unto the others, and we are deeply ashamed to be their descendants". The fact that you actually celebrate Columbus' discovery as national day strongly indicates against that.

I mean, go to places like Potosi in Bolivia to see all the horror and misery caused by spanish slavers. 8 freaking million human beings were basically butchered by spanish just in this one single spot to mine silver to make spain richer. Not that it helped them in long run considering current state of spanish economy.

Do you have any sources of that? Claiming 8 million people were slaved is a bit of stretch, don't you think?

Literally the first thing that comes from google search of this. Plus they claim this number when you are actually there in their museum dedicated specifically to this horrible part of their history. Visited last year, some 'jobs' around smelting had survivability in mere weeks because of all the toxicity.

Plus took a trip quite deep into the mines themselves. Imagine mountain that is almost 4800m high, drilled through like a proper swiss emmental cheese (they claim around 500 different entrances to tunnel system).

I'm not saying this excuses anything, but the conquistadors looked at the natives more like smart apes than humans. They literally thought it was their God-given right to hold dominion over the earth and all the animals on it. This level of self-reflection was just not possible at the time (the age of conquest was contemporary with the Spanish Inquisition).

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica [1] that's false:

> The city came into existence after the discovery of silver there in 1545 and quickly became famous for its wealth. Within three decades its population surpassed 150,000, making it the largest city in the New World. The population declined from a peak of 160,000 about 1650 as silver production waned, and a typhus epidemic in 1719 claimed the lives of some 22,000 residents. By the early 19th century, Potosí had fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, but the subsequent rise of tin mining again spurred growth.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/place/Potosi-Bolivia

Well, I'm at a community college on a reservation and we certainly celebrate Thanksgiving but don't take off for Columbus day. So, I would say its viewed rather differently.

> 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?

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_indige...

<<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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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