One: Women would use indigo hair dye called xiuquilitl to turn their hair blue.
Two: In Tenochtitlán human waste would be collected from public toilets for fertilizer. Thus it was someone’s job to sail the “poop canoe” to deliver night soil.
Three: Only a certain type of cacao was used as currency. Counterfeiting was rampant.
Blue hair and probably also pronouns… damn woke Aztecs! The poop canoe seems pretty ordinary to me, after all, shit is gold in an agricultural society. Then, how does one counterfeit cacao??
Even with billions of cacao beans exchanges, Aztec cacao sellers took great measures to disguise their fake cacao. According to Bernard Sahagun, a Spaniard documenting Aztec lives, cacao sellers processed fakes using hot ashes, chalk, and a generous coating of amaranth dough, wax, or avocado pits (Coe 100). To further camouflage their counterfeit cacao, sellers mixed the fake cacao with pure Theobroma cacao beans. Other cacao deception experts exploited empty shells by filling the insides with mud (De Maré).
One: Women would use indigo hair dye called xiuquilitl to turn their hair blue.
Two: In Tenochtitlán human waste would be collected from public toilets for fertilizer. Thus it was someone’s job to sail the “poop canoe” to deliver night soil.
Three: Only a certain type of cacao was used as currency. Counterfeiting was rampant.
Blue hair and probably also pronouns… damn woke Aztecs! The poop canoe seems pretty ordinary to me, after all, shit is gold in an agricultural society. Then, how does one counterfeit cacao??
Source
Sahagun was one of the first westerners to document the indigenous people of Mexico.