I just had a really good moment. I just figured out that Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan are two different cities. Those dang Aztecs and their similar sounding names (Teotihuacan is much older than the Aztecs and was in ruins during the beginnings of the Aztec empire, but the name that stuck with the city is the Aztec one). Whenever I've heard either Tenochtitlan or Teotihuacan in the past, I imagine this city that has the Pyramid of the Sun in it and is half-an-hour's drive northeast of Mexico City, but also somehow the basis for Mexico City. And I imagined that it was a Maya or maybe Toltec city that must've been taken over by the Aztecs later. That's the only way I could figure the non-coorelating dates. Except they talk about the Aztecs building their city practically on a lake...and there is no lake in site when you see pictures of the ruins of this city. So you can see the confusion I've had. Not that I've spent a ton of time thinking about it (or else I would've figured it out long ago, I suspect), but still those "Ohhhh....I get it..." moments are some of the best we get in life.
This is not as life-altering as that day a few years ago when I realized that the Balkans and the Baltics are two different parts of the world (how did it take me until my first year of college to finally get that?), but nonetheless one of those things that you find out and feel this huge sense of relief that comes from understanding.
I'm teetering on the edge of going into an extensive history lesson about these two cities, but I'll spare you because a) probably nobody cares, b) it'll mean that I never finish writing this and it'll join the already overflowing world of draft posts I've accumulated and c) if someone honestly wants it, wikipedia (ah, that blessed website!) will do the trick:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan
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