In 1519, 10 years after Henry VIII became King of England, a small group of Spanish conquistadors

led by Hernando Cortés came across a sophisticated civilization more than 5,000 miles away from

Europe in what is now Mexico. Within two years, the Aztec Empire had been all but destroyed,

and its complex culture still fascinates us today. They used a ritual sacrifice, their

beliefs about the afterlife, and perhaps surprisingly, their advanced attitudes to gender roles,

including a schooling for both boys and girls.

I'm Professor Cisana Lipscomb, and in this edition of Not Just the Tudors, I'm delving

deep into the world of the Aztecs with Dr Caroline Dodd's Penneck to discover an extraordinary

society and its differences and similarities to its European invaders.

Caroline and I have long been Twitter buddies, and we've even recently collaborated on

a book, but this is the first time we've had an actual, it's not quite in real life, but

in real time conversation, and Caroline is Senior Lecturer in International History

at the University of Sheffield. She's the author of Bonds of Blood, Gender, Life, Cycle,

and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture, and if you enjoy our conversation, which I'm sure you

will, you must rush out and buy it, because not only do I think it's brilliant, very well

written, really fascinating stuff, but also it won the Royal Historical Society Gladstone

Pride, and she's currently writing a book that we eagerly awaiting, which is on early

Indigenous travellers to Europe entitled On Savid Shores, the American Discovery of

Europe. So hopefully we'll talk about that in the future, but it's the Aztecs we're

talking about today. So Caroline, can we start by talking about our

non-manclature, Aztecs or Mexico or other words that we use? What's correct? What should

we be saying? That's a good place to start. Thank you for the kind introduction. The

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