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Question for March 2011

Did the Aztecs force you to be who you were - 1?? Asked by St Nicholas School. Chosen and answered by Professor Elizabeth Graham

Well, you were born into a social class and it was hard but not always impossible to move to another social class (similar to the situation in England for so many years, and to some extent now!). For example, if you came from a family of merchants you were likely to be a merchant, although there would be nothing against you switching to pottery or stone tools if you found a way. But professions such as the artisans who made feather objects or gold jewellery or jade mosaics would have closely guarded their ranks and these professions tended to stay in families. But of course you could rise within those professions. Farmers tended to work the land, although lots of people would have farmed part-time.

There were no slaves in the sense that there was no slave class. If you didn’t pay debts or committed a crime you could become a slave. But it was a status that was not passed on and if you could repay your debts, you would escape ‘slave’ status. Remember too that ‘slave’ is our word for this kind of person; they Aztecs may have seen this as a kind of ‘prison sentence outside of prison’ since they didn’t have prisons. There were lots of levels of upper class people, too. If you were a lower class noble woman and married someone above your station, your children would be of higher status than you were, so that’s kind of moving up in the world. Actually you could say that Aztec life wasn’t all that different from life today and there may even have been more opportunities!

Picture sources:-
Photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore

Comments (1)

t

toby joshua

25th Aug 2022

Is the image captioned “This model of Maya social structure before the Conquest in the National Anthropology Museum, Mexico City, could well stand for the Mexica too” a primary source?

M

Mexicolore

Good question and we wish we could give you a definitive answer. We took the photo ourselves in the Museo Nacional de Antropología, but couldn’t see a caption attributing the exhibit. We will ask around to see if anyone can give us the answer...

Professor Elizabeth Graham

Professor Elizabeth Graham

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