Cultural imperialism was not much in evidence in Mesoamerica. Societies did not tell others how to live or what to believe, though the politically or culturally dominant did influence others informally. The Aztecs conformed to this hands-off pattern, yet they did practice two integration strategies, one a direct imposition and the other a widespread practice they turned to their own advantage.
The first, and the one cultural change they imposed, was calendrical. Having a polytheistic religion, the Aztecs did not possess exclusive religious truth and therefore did not conquer to impose their beliefs. Instead, they left intact the religious beliefs, practices, or godly pantheons of others. But they did alter their calendars.10
Very briefly, with few exceptions, the same calendrical structure was common throughout Mesoamerica, though how it was employed differed between the Maya and Mexican areas (Caso 1971). In Mexico, everyone shared the same 365-day solar calendar of eighteen 20-day months plus five “waste” days, coupled with a 260-day sacred calendar fundamentally composed of twenty 13-day cycles. These two cycles ran simultaneously to yield a still larger cycle of 52-years, the “Calendar Round,” after which the entire cycle began anew.
The names of the days, months, and years might differ among the various societies, but the structure was shared. However, there was no uniformity among the calendars in starting dates because the calendar had no internal leap-year correction. Since people operate on days, but solar years determining the seasons are 365.2422 days long, some calendrical adjustment is necessary to bring the year and the days into agreement. As a result, while the calendar system was shared throughout Mexico, the specific correlation of dates to actual days was not, as each city could make its own leap-year correction. When and how leap-year corrections are inserted into the solar calendar is merely a matter of convention - ours was dictated by Pope Gregory in 1582 and remains in force (Moyer 1982) - and essentially of a political decision.
When its subordinates held festivals for specific gods was of no concern to the Aztecs, but when they made their tribute payments was. The Aztecs wanted to coordinate these payments, forcing everyone to bring in their obligations and pledge fealty at the same time - presumably to make the pageantry more impressive politically - and they fixed those times at the beginning of four of their months, at approximately quarterly intervals.11 But effecting this in the face of an array of even slightly variant calendars would require individual notification, a costly and probably ineffective means. The only feasible system was the imposition of some means of self-coordination. Thus, when the Aztecs expanded, the only major cultural change they imposed was their calendar, not for supernatural reasons, but to create an empire that was chronologically linked, that could, by its own efforts, respond to temporally precise tribute demands.12 So while the Aztec empire was not a unified religious, social, political, or economic entity, it established synchronous unity with considerable coordination.
The second change imposed by the Aztecs did not demand a cultural shift, but took advantage of an already widespread practice. Following conquest, the Aztecs inserted themselves into the existing patterns of noble intermarriage. That noble intermarriage was a key element to the creation of peace in Mexico, while it failed abysmally in Europe, was a result of other, broader social patterns common among the Aztecs.
World History
