I'm surprised the original city centre square was preserved, but all the original pyramids were knocked down, was it really worth the effort just to get those stones?
A nice illustration of how the ubiquity of cheap fossil-based transport and manufacturing has completely skewed our perception.
Of course it's easier to pick stones from a convenient pile that's already where you need it, even if it perhaps requires some banging at them to get them loose. Most convenient quarry on the continent, likely the exact reason why you started building in the vicinity in the first place.
But I'm certainly not immune to perception through those petrol-colored sunglasses myself, please don't read this as "look at that fool!"
> was it really worth the effort just to get those stones?
It wasn't just to get building materials.
You don't want a giant monument to gods that demanded human sacrifice as a prominent part of the skyline when you're trying to convert the local heathens to Christianity.
Very cool. Back in the late 90’s when VRML was a thing there was a website demo that did a rendering. It still survives as http://www.dellerae.com/tenoch/
That's an amazing piece of work. Assuming accuracy: what strikes me is that certain features of the ancient city apparently carry over into the modern day and how ecologically balanced the older city looks compared to the new one. Another interesting feature seems to be that 'places of power' back then are still places of power today but different kinds of power.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software.
90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.
What made you interested in doing this region? How did you find source material? Also, are you planning on doing more?
I imagine that some nations would even give out grants for an open source and fully immersive, 3d version of some historical region. Like parts of classical or hellenic Greece for example, or Carthage, Cairo, Syracuse, Judea, etc...
A bit of artistic license, but the trees play a crucial role.
They are Ahuejotes, and they keep together the plots of farmland called Chinampas.
You can see some of this today in Xochimilco.
We don't know if that was what it was like in Tenochtitlan, but it is likely. What adds to this is the fact that the houses are all one story, so the trees look taller and more numerous than they are.
In the same vein, many of today's boulevards and highways line up with old streets in your renders, is that a historical coincidence or is the Mexico City layout a direct result of Tenochtitlan remains despite its destruction?
I know in The Netherlands this happened in the city I grew up, Hoogeveen [0].
> In the second half of the 1960s, Hoogeveen was the fastest growing town in the Netherlands. Until that period, the town contained a number of canals, which had been dug in the area's early days when it was a prime source of peat and maritime transportation was a necessity for efficient transportation of cargo. By the 1960s the rise of the automobile and truck-based transportation meant the canals had lost much of their economic function, and the canals were filled in.
It's not a coincidence. The conquistadors spent months in Tenochtitlan as guests of Montezuma and wrote extensively about how amazing the urban planning was. They would have preferred to keep the city in tact all things considered.
Since the Aztecs had done all of the hard work of figuring how to build out drainage and stability with the chinampas, the Spaniards built their new buildings on top of the foundations remaining from the Aztec buildings. It then took several centuries to fill in all of the canals and turn them into streets so the layout of Mexico City very much reflects Tenochtitlan.
For example the Zócalo square is right where the Aztec ceremonial center used to be and I believe the Metropolitan Cathedral was originally built on top of the foundations of a minor temple that was built as part of the Templo Mayor complex.
Incredible work! Since you've made this in 3D, I wonder if that could potentially enable a more immersive way to get more out of the work you've put in than just static images?
Would it be possible to do a sort of flyover video with the assets you've created? Or potentially even plop the assets into a game engine and let people interactively explore?
I was gonna ask, "did you use geometry nodes?" But then I CTRL+F this comment chain.
I've gotten absolutely incredible mileage out of geo nodes for forests and cities. Once you get used to the peculiarities, geometry incredibly superior to using particles and heatmaps. And I'm just a hobbyist! I use Blender for gamemastering, but haven't ever been paid to do it . . yet.
(If that sounds like fishing it is totally fishing. How does a middle-age MilStdJunkie break into the modelling / simulating market?)
Did you do any street-level renders? I realize that it's completely, totally a different kettle of fish, the detail you got here would murder the entire world's computers if it had 1m scale detail.
Fabulous, fabulous work. Amazing. I did something similar for New Amsterdam ~1660CE, for "Providence", a Lovecraftian horror game set in colonial New England. But New Amsterdam and Seekonk in 1660 is nothing compared to this, Tenochtitlan in the immediate pre-contact period.
Not at the moment, the problem is that the total project is quite large and would require me to write quite some documentation if you wanted to get started. Once I free up some time I might!
People have devoted their entire lives to studying this, but I can give a very short overview:
First, there's early colonial maps, such as the Mapa de Uppsala, which give us a decent understanding of the city.
Then there are the accounts of the arriving Spanish. There's also archaeological evidence all throughout Mexico City, though much has been actively destroyed.
From a Mexican, I'd like to congratulate you for all this effort and thank you for the amazing experience you put together for us to enjoy.
All of this history was taught to me through primary school, and yet, this project made me put together some things I haven't realized before. Visualization goes a long way.
The New Fire ceremony looks amazing, everything else is also beautiful. Thanks again for such a fine piece of work!
My first thought when the page was loading was "Wow", then while scrolling even more so. It's impressive.
How long have you been working on this?
Edit: Oh, I see, `This project is the result of over 1.5 years of research and iteration.
It would not have been possible without the input of the following people:`
If you'd ever like to see it in VR, we run an open source desktop/VR social platform at https://overte.org/
It shouldn't be too hard to set up a server and take a walk among the past. By the looks of it it's probably way too big for the entire thing to be loaded at once, so things likely need trimming down quite a bit.
We're a decentralized system, so you can run your own server if you like.
Text mentions smoked peppers, but there is no smoke rising from the city. Was that too hard or distracting or both? Might smoke be added in the future as an addenda? Inspiring as is to be sure, but for sake of realism it struck me as off since the rest is so detailed and eye catching.
Is that really the expectation? That fire would only be used within the extremely limited range of temples? It seems more likely that there would be fires for cooking and basic industry all over the city. This would have a big impact on how the city looks. Maybe they are using induction for cooking?
First and foremost, this is incredible! Fantastic work! I've always wanted to do something like this (on a MUCH smaller scale) with the Alamo mission, in Texas, as a way to visualize the battle, in real time.
To that purpose, my end goal was always to pull whatever environments I modeled into Unreal engine (so nanite and lumen make short work of my detailed models). Which makes me wonder if you had any plans to do the same?
Walking around in ancient cities should not be reserved for assassination missions in action games (regardless of how fun that is). I'd love to just have a 'day in the life' simulation that I could move through, interact with, and study! Feels like a way to make history feel tangible. It would be awesome to immerse myself in a New Mexican pueblo builder society, or with an indigenous Native American tribe on the praries, or in the Japanese imperial Palace circa the Edo era, or in pre-medieval Europe, or, or, or...
Sorry for the predominant 'what else you got' vibe; I really am impressed by the scope and detail of your work! It just tends to send the mind racing with possibility, which I hope you'll take as the compliment I intend it as!
Great idea. Historic recreation.
Then get various historians, and/or people with regional historic stories, that may have been passed on from generation to generation, and add them too.
Possibly a sidebar to check various layers as in Geo mapping, but instead of features, you get eras and or different points of view.
Thanks for putting this together and doing all the research. 1.5 years is a long time but the end result looks amazing. Are there any plans to let educational institutions or historical museums use this? I imagine such a presentation would be invaluable for Mesoamerican studies.
This is fantastic. I'm curious what the sources are. I know there are some maps, books written by Spanish conquistadors, and so on. How much do we know about the city beyond the sites of significant historical events?
A surprising amount! They were mostly pictorial but the Aztecs and their vassal cities were very meticulous about keeping government records of all kinds and even though almost all of Tenochtitlan's documents were destroyed during the battle, some of them were backed up in other cities. Since the conquistadors spent some time in the city as guests of Montezuma, we've also got first hand accounts from the soldiers and friars.
Probably safer to hug them than another human. Most diseases don't even cross species boundaries, seems unlikely they'd do well trying to infect a completely alien being.
The reason that diseases from the old world were so deadly, when they crossed the pond, is that they'd evolved to spread quite well even in humans with an evolved or acquired resistance and were suddenly in a completely unprepared population.
The danger would be organisms that simply eat our biochemistry but are entirely immune to any of our defenses. Think flesh eating bacteria from space, only it also basically eats our entire biosphere.
Aliens from different biospheres will never be able to have physical contact.
If they are close in biochemistry the dangers are extreme to catastrophic. If we actually found a crashed UFO with bodies we should drop a thermonuclear bomb on it immediately. Just ask the Native Americans.
If they are not biochemically close chances are we and our environment would be horribly toxic, freezing, or boiling hot to them and vice versa.
I love his videos over the podcast despite being the same audio. The imagery he puts up is spot on and in no way filler. I find it aids my understanding of the topics.
Tenochtitlan had a sophisticated system of urban planning with zoned public bathrooms (latrines, really) that were cleaned at night by a large labor force dedicated to keeping the city clean. The waste was collected by canoe from these bathrooms and dumped into the canal system where it decomposed and was later dredged up to fertilize and replenish the topsoil on the chinampas. Fresh drinking water was provided by mountain spring connected to the city by several aqueducts built in the 15th century.
As far as I know, his family did speak it never passed it on, so he learn it afterwards. So semi-native, I guess. The variant is a central one, relatively close to the variant that would have been spoken by the Mexica.
This is so incredibly cool. Something about the first few shots with the pyramid in the distance and the rest of the land gave me goosebumps! It really feels like a secret photograph from 600 years ago
The chinampas are a super neat example of agroforestry. The soil is extremely dark (like Ukrainian chernozem or better) and has a very low depletion per cycle. Some still exist and are being stewarded toward renewal and proliferation!
It would be amazing if you created an interactive history experience based on this. I'd love to be able to jump around to see where all of the historical tentpole moments happened throughout the city, such as the mass slaughter that happened while Cortez was away, and other historically significant moments.
Thomas, this is beautiful. If we found you a UE5 expert, would you be open to the assets being used to deliver some sort of experience with it? I feel like this is just too good not to try and deploy towards some street-level experiences.
This is great, and really helps tie together the pre-Colombian history I've read about to the here-and-now.
How feasible would it be to build some sort of AR component? In particular, I'd love to be able to see your rendering for my current position, as I wander around Mexico City.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadI'm surprised the original city centre square was preserved, but all the original pyramids were knocked down, was it really worth the effort just to get those stones?
The casing stones from the much larger Egyptian pyramids were all scavenged several centuries ago:
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/06/the-great-pyramid-...
Of course it's easier to pick stones from a convenient pile that's already where you need it, even if it perhaps requires some banging at them to get them loose. Most convenient quarry on the continent, likely the exact reason why you started building in the vicinity in the first place.
But I'm certainly not immune to perception through those petrol-colored sunglasses myself, please don't read this as "look at that fool!"
It wasn't just to get building materials.
You don't want a giant monument to gods that demanded human sacrifice as a prominent part of the skyline when you're trying to convert the local heathens to Christianity.
Unfortunately the VR files now longer work without the VRML plugins, which are no longer available or supported (AFAIK).
It could be made to work again with the X_ITE 3D Javascript viewer though, which I tried recently to view some old VRML files.
Reminds me a bit of the 3D Starry Night.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Dt9ziemYA
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.
I imagine that some nations would even give out grants for an open source and fully immersive, 3d version of some historical region. Like parts of classical or hellenic Greece for example, or Carthage, Cairo, Syracuse, Judea, etc...
Thanks for making this btw, great work!
I don't have any concrete plants for more, but who knows!
We don't know if that was what it was like in Tenochtitlan, but it is likely. What adds to this is the fact that the houses are all one story, so the trees look taller and more numerous than they are.
> In the second half of the 1960s, Hoogeveen was the fastest growing town in the Netherlands. Until that period, the town contained a number of canals, which had been dug in the area's early days when it was a prime source of peat and maritime transportation was a necessity for efficient transportation of cargo. By the 1960s the rise of the automobile and truck-based transportation meant the canals had lost much of their economic function, and the canals were filled in.
———
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogeveen
Since the Aztecs had done all of the hard work of figuring how to build out drainage and stability with the chinampas, the Spaniards built their new buildings on top of the foundations remaining from the Aztec buildings. It then took several centuries to fill in all of the canals and turn them into streets so the layout of Mexico City very much reflects Tenochtitlan.
For example the Zócalo square is right where the Aztec ceremonial center used to be and I believe the Metropolitan Cathedral was originally built on top of the foundations of a minor temple that was built as part of the Templo Mayor complex.
Would it be possible to do a sort of flyover video with the assets you've created? Or potentially even plop the assets into a game engine and let people interactively explore?
Perhaps I can bake it down to something like what you might see in Google Earth in 3D.
I've gotten absolutely incredible mileage out of geo nodes for forests and cities. Once you get used to the peculiarities, geometry incredibly superior to using particles and heatmaps. And I'm just a hobbyist! I use Blender for gamemastering, but haven't ever been paid to do it . . yet.
(If that sounds like fishing it is totally fishing. How does a middle-age MilStdJunkie break into the modelling / simulating market?)
Did you do any street-level renders? I realize that it's completely, totally a different kettle of fish, the detail you got here would murder the entire world's computers if it had 1m scale detail.
Fabulous, fabulous work. Amazing. I did something similar for New Amsterdam ~1660CE, for "Providence", a Lovecraftian horror game set in colonial New England. But New Amsterdam and Seekonk in 1660 is nothing compared to this, Tenochtitlan in the immediate pre-contact period.
My question: what kind of evidence/sources were helpful in figuring out what Tenochtitlan looked like?
First, there's early colonial maps, such as the Mapa de Uppsala, which give us a decent understanding of the city. Then there are the accounts of the arriving Spanish. There's also archaeological evidence all throughout Mexico City, though much has been actively destroyed.
All of this history was taught to me through primary school, and yet, this project made me put together some things I haven't realized before. Visualization goes a long way.
The New Fire ceremony looks amazing, everything else is also beautiful. Thanks again for such a fine piece of work!
How long have you been working on this?
Edit: Oh, I see, `This project is the result of over 1.5 years of research and iteration. It would not have been possible without the input of the following people:`
If you'd ever like to see it in VR, we run an open source desktop/VR social platform at https://overte.org/
It shouldn't be too hard to set up a server and take a walk among the past. By the looks of it it's probably way too big for the entire thing to be loaded at once, so things likely need trimming down quite a bit.
We're a decentralized system, so you can run your own server if you like.
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/image_dest/newfire_twopea...
To that purpose, my end goal was always to pull whatever environments I modeled into Unreal engine (so nanite and lumen make short work of my detailed models). Which makes me wonder if you had any plans to do the same?
Walking around in ancient cities should not be reserved for assassination missions in action games (regardless of how fun that is). I'd love to just have a 'day in the life' simulation that I could move through, interact with, and study! Feels like a way to make history feel tangible. It would be awesome to immerse myself in a New Mexican pueblo builder society, or with an indigenous Native American tribe on the praries, or in the Japanese imperial Palace circa the Edo era, or in pre-medieval Europe, or, or, or...
Sorry for the predominant 'what else you got' vibe; I really am impressed by the scope and detail of your work! It just tends to send the mind racing with possibility, which I hope you'll take as the compliment I intend it as!
if that sounds like way too much work, any chance you would open source your work for needs to add to it?
Cortes landed at Veracruz the next year, in 1519.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Acuna-So...
The reason that diseases from the old world were so deadly, when they crossed the pond, is that they'd evolved to spread quite well even in humans with an evolved or acquired resistance and were suddenly in a completely unprepared population.
If they are close in biochemistry the dangers are extreme to catastrophic. If we actually found a crashed UFO with bodies we should drop a thermonuclear bomb on it immediately. Just ask the Native Americans.
If they are not biochemically close chances are we and our environment would be horribly toxic, freezing, or boiling hot to them and vice versa.
Aliens probably won’t be human, so their diseases infecting us is unlikely at first
Dan Carlin's series is great, but even he can't hold a candle to amazing work that the Fallen Civilizations team put in.
Dan Carlin's series is great, but even he can't hold a candle to the amazing work that Paul and the team put in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa?wprov=sfla1
https://youtu.be/86gyW0vUmVs?si=zz61OacembAksi76
https://www.amazon.com/Conquistador-Hernan-Cortes-Montezuma-...
It would be amazing if you created an interactive history experience based on this. I'd love to be able to jump around to see where all of the historical tentpole moments happened throughout the city, such as the mass slaughter that happened while Cortez was away, and other historically significant moments.
How feasible would it be to build some sort of AR component? In particular, I'd love to be able to see your rendering for my current position, as I wander around Mexico City.
Kudos to this artist