Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Membership feed, Episode 3, the Aztec Triple Alliance.

We saw last week the Aztecs complete their migration from Aslan to the fringes of the Valley of Mexico.

We then watched them slowly work the way into the remnants of the Toltec aristocracy, gain respectability, and then defeat the Tepanaka to become rulers of the valley.

Now, after I put out episode two, listener Mike raised a very good point on Twitter.

I've been talking a lot about the Valley of Mexico,

but I haven't commented on its size. I've been talking about it a lot, but it wasn't huge.

Mexico is a pretty big country, the 14th largest in the world. It's eight times bigger than the UK. It shares a 2,000-mile land

border in the north with the United States, and it's also about 2,000 miles in length. Pretty big.

Now, the Valley of Mexico, it's located in the heart of the country in a mountain range. It's about 50 miles north

of south and 20 miles across. If you'll allow me to conduct some very rough maths, it's less

than 0.2% of Mexico. But size doesn't always matter. The valley of Mexico was culturally significant. It was the home

of at least two great civilizations of the pre-Columbian Americas, Tiotic Wakan and the Tolteca.

It was also becoming home to the Third, the Aztecs. It was heavily populated,

spoke in episode one about the size of Teotai Wakan. It had good farmland. The example I would

use to explain it in a more familiar context would be like Athens and Attica in the ancient

Mediterranean. It was geographically small, but it was

good land in a good location with significant gravitas attached. There is a well-known saying to

scholars of ancient Greece when comparing Sparta and Athens, that people in the future would

overestimate the influence of Athens based and was it physically left behind, and that they would

underestimate Sparta. So, while it may not seem that important that the Aztecs had managed

to gain control of the valley, it was.

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