Question for July 2011

We don’t know. There was no ‘money’ per se although there were things that functioned sometimes as money, such as cacao (chocolate beans) or copper bells. But street cleaners were not likely to be paid in these items. Commoners who had jobs that occupied them for only part of the time may have served as cleaners as a form of ‘tax’. Just as we have to pay taxes every year, some people would perform certain jobs as their ‘tax’.

Aztec men and women engaged in (ritual) sweeping: Codex Mendoza (L) and Codex Telleriano-Remensis (R)