Aztec Dbq Essay

538 Words2 Pages

Claire Kuykendall
Jarecki/Wilson
History 7
1/12/15

Aztecs DBQ A society on an island. Surrounded by water, and yet the Aztecs were able to create a surplus of food and an empire. Around 1100 CE, about 300,000 Aztecs arrived on the shores of Tenochtitlan. After settling, the society had many great accomplishments and dark times, but in the end should annalists fixate more about Aztec agriculture or human sacrifice? I believe they should accentuate Aztec cultivation for three important reasons: the ginormous proportion of chinampas, the clever construction of them, and the value of agriculture to the Aztec’s everyday life. The preliminary reason for emphasizing Aztec cultivation is the large amounts of chinampas. As the empire’s population was expanding, the Aztecs needed a source of food. (Doc. A) To solve this problem, the Aztec’s used miles of conquered land and turned most of it into chinampas (Doc. A) The Aztec’s had built so many chinampas that they had about twenty-two thousand acres of crops which provided about four crops a year. (Doc. B) This evidence helps support Aztec agriculture because the large scale of chinampas provided a source of food and …show more content…

The chinampas were very organized. (Doc. B)They almost all looked identical. (Doc. B) The Aztecs planted willow trees at the ends, which cleverly provided shade and anchored down the chinampas. (Doc. B) The chinampas also showed order with every chinampa having a farmer’s house, the owners name in hieroglyphs, and a note added in Spanish. (Doc. B) Everyone working in the chinampas and helping prepare the plants like corn, squash, beans, and flowers also showed the order and respect of this society. (Doc. B and C) This evidence supports emphasizing agriculture because the clever construction shows not only the organization and respect in the chinampas, but the organization and respect of order in the Aztec

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