Gabion: The Aztecs: how to invent a civilization. 1/6

Text © Hugh Pearman. The original longer and less reverent text of the article published in The Sunday Times Magazine, October 2, 2002, as "Chocolate Soldiers". Picture layouts © The Sunday Times.

We think we know them, the Aztecs. There was Emperor Montezuma, yes? Great big temples? Human sacrifices? Gorgeous clothes and accessories? Important not to confuse them with the Incas, down Peru way. The Aztecs were big in Mexico. Spanish conquistadors came and they crumbled like dust. End of story. They didn't have the wheel, let alone gunpowder or the Bible. Centuries later Cadbury named a chocolate bar after them. A rival to Mars, it was meant to be. Like its namesake, the Aztec bar vanished after a few brief years of glory. Chocolate, that was a big Aztec thing, of course. Am I wandering from the point here?

All right, so I'm a bit vague about the Aztecs. But I'm not alone in this. Everyone knows the name, but not that many people know who they were. In fact, as this winter's eponymous blockbuster show, Aztecs, at London's Royal Academy makes clear, not even they really knew who they were. The Aztecs invented themselves. They were a made-up civilization. Like that doomed chocolate bar, they were a me-too product. A bunch of migrants who stumbled into someone else's backyard in what we now call Mexico, and selected the bits they wanted from the famous older names around them - Toltecs, Olmecs, Tepanecs. They cobbled together a religion based on sun worship and ritual sacrifice, and then invented a history, a mythical island kingdom called Aztlan they were meant to have come from. This was a kit-of-parts culture, and it worked. A real life precursor to that computer strategy game, "Age of Empires".