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Basic Aztec Facts: AZTEC MONEY

27th Oct 2022

Aztec cacao beans as money, part of Diego Rivera mural

‘Objects that work well as money are durable (they can survive some wear and tear), are a convenient size (not too big or too small), and distinctive (they stand out from other everyday objects). Cacao beans have all of these characteristics...’ (Written by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

As an Aztec you could walk around with a bag of cocoa beans just like today you can walk around with a purse with coins inside. Trouble is, cocoa beans were really only ‘small change’. You’d need a LOT of cocoa beans to buy something valuable like a feather headdress. Still, for your every-day shopping, cocoa beans worked really well...

Having said that, prices - what we’d call today ‘exchange rates’ -weren’t fixed, so you had to negotiate a price for things - partly depending on the quality of cocoa beans. Beans varied according to the region they came from, size, type and so on.

One good cocoa bean could get you a large juicy tomato, eight might buy you a rabbit, with a hundred you could bag a good turkey hen. You could also use cocoa beans to pay for work done: most things were carried by porters, so a single trip say from the market to your house might cost you twenty cocoa beans.

When it came to more expensive things, cocoa beans just weren’t enough. Something else was needed to be the equivalent of our bank notes. The Mexica found that large plain white cotton capes were good: practical, used, needed and in demand everywhere, easy to carry, robust. Prices of capes varied too: from 65 to 100 cocoa beans for one cape according to size and quality of workmanship.

Plain white cotton capes (as well as decorated ones) were sent to the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan from most of the provinces that paid tribute to the Mexica emperor. A person’s standard of living was measured in cotton capes! A commoner family could survive on the value of around twenty quachtli every year.

Finally, another common form of what we call ‘currency’ was copper axe blades: these were more valuable than cocoa beans but less valuable than cotton capes. Again, their value could vary according to their condition - after all, they were also used as real cutting tools! Once they had become badly worn, they had lost any money value and were melted down.

Guess...

...what a canoe load of water for a merchants’ banquet would cost?

Find out

• If you stole from somebody in Aztec times, you had to pay back the value of what you’d taken in cotton capes!
• Cocoa beans went on being used as ‘money’ for centuries after Spaniards invaded Mexico
• One merchant left 2,000 cocoa beans in his will in 1580!