In the heart of an ancient Aztec jungle, where vibrant colored plants collided with the rolling fields of wildflowers, a young girl named Chantico and her family journeyed to the bustling city of Tenochtitlan. The air hummed with the whispers of a thousand stories as they treaded the well-worn path, their woven baskets filled with treasures – shells, quetzal feathers, turquoise, cacao, obsidian, and jade. The journey was more than a physical journey; it was a dance with nature, a story of Aztec life interwoven with tales of gods and heroes. Amidst the music of rustling leaves and distant calls of exotic birds, Chantico’s family moved forward, guided by the rhythm of the earth and the legacy of their people.

Chantico and her family were from the coastal city of Tlapallan. They were traders, which means they gathered goods and moved them to different cities to sale for a profit. This is how they survived. They were ancient Aztecs in what is now modern day Mexico and worked hard to move their goods whatever the task required. Chantico thought back about their preparations the day before. 

As the sun rose over Tlapallan, her family had gathered their goods and set out on their journey. The salty breeze from the nearby ocean whispered on the wind and seemed to bid them farewell. Chantico’s father carried a woven basket filled with shells, a reminder of their coastal home. Her mother wore a headdress decorated with quetzal feathers, a symbol of honor and prestige.

The road to Tenochtitlan led them through many environments. At first, the sandy shores gave way to vibrant jungles with towering ceiba trees. The family marveled at the intricate web of life around them, from the calls of tropical birds to the rustle of unseen creatures in the underbrush. Chantico’s younger brother, Tlalli, pointed excitedly at the colorful feathers of quetzal birds, their feathers shimmering like precious green and blue gems.

Along the path, they met other traders from nearby villages. Beneath the shade of giant agave plants, they exchanged goods and shared stories and advice, which roads were best, which ones they should avoid. One man let them know the rain had washed out one of the most popular roads, so they should detour lightly. Another family let them know bandits were waiting on a different road. 

While trading goods, Chantico’s family proudly displayed their shells and traded them for cacao beans, which could be made into a delicious chocolate drink. They could also be traded for good money once they reached the city. Around them, the air was thick with the sweet scent of blooming flowers, and the ground beneath their feet was a carpet of colorful petals.

After taking a long rest, drink water from a stream, and eating some meat and vegetables, Chontico and her family packed up and continued along the road. They climbed higher into the mountains. It was hard work, but they encouraged each other. Their legs and lungs were strong from many journeys. As they climbed higher into the hills, they looked out over thick jungle canopy and majestic mountains in the distance. 

Chontico’s clothes were woven from maguey fibers and kept them cool in the warm climate. Her mother wore a skirt adorned with intricate patterns representing the cycles of life, and her father’s shirt was decorated symbols of the sun, a nod to the Aztec belief in the sun god’s protective power. Tlalli, with eyes wide in wonder, wore a small pendant of turquoise around his neck.

As the day turned to dusk, the family decided to camp for the night. A fire was kindled, casting a warm glow on their faces as they settled down, still breathing heavy from the day’s journey. Everyone drank from the gourd of water, passing it around. Around the crackling flames, they feasted on roasted deer meat, flavored with herbs gathered along the way. The rich smells of cacao filled the air as they tasted the precious beans. It reminded them of the other smells and treasures that awaited in Tenochotitlan.

Underneath the glittering sky of stars, the children laid their heads on their parents laps as Chantico’s grandmother began to tell a story:

“Once, in the ancient land of the Aztecs,” she said, “there lived a mischievous god named Tlaloc. Tlaloc had a special job – he was the god of rain. His responsibility was to make sure the earth received the water it needed to flourish. But Tlaloc had a playful side, and he loved to explore the world in disguise.

“One sunny day,” grandmother said, “Tlaloc decided to visit a small village and transformed into a butterfly. As he fluttered through the village, the children couldn’t help but be enchanted by the dazzling display of colors.

Tlaloc, in his butterfly form, soon made friends with a group of children playing by the river. They giggled with delight as he danced around them. The children named him “Ahuizotl,” meaning “joyful one,” because he brought happiness wherever he went.

As the day went on, the villagers noticed something extraordinary happening. Dark clouds gathered in the sky, and a gentle rain began to fall. The villagers danced and celebrated in its refreshing embrace.

The children, unaware that their newfound friend was the mischievous rain god Tlaloc, continued to play by the river. Tlaloc, still in his butterfly form, joined them in their games. 

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Tlaloc revealed his true identity to the children. His butterfly form transformed into the god of rain, and a soft drizzle surrounded them. The children gasped in amazement, realizing they had spent the day with a divine visitor, an Aztec god.

Tlaloc chuckled at their surprise and explained his role as the bringer of rain. He thanked the children for their joyful company and promised to return, bringing rain to their village when the earth thirsted for water.

From that day forward, the children in the village eagerly awaited the return of Ahuizotl, the joyful butterfly who brought not only laughter but also the gift of rain.”

Chantico smiled and became sleepy during her grandmother’s story. She loved hearing her grandmother’s soothing voice. As she lay beneath the starry sky, Chantico felt a profound sense of belonging. Wrapped in blankets woven with care, she drifted into dreams of butterfly gods and filled with the promise of a new day.

When the sun rose, Chantico and her family continued their journey to Tenochtitlan. As they followed the road over the final hill, the sprawling city emerged on the horizon. In the distance, they could see the step pyramid stretching into the sky. Canals crisscrossed the gigantic city, which was surrounded by bright blue water. 

They followed a road into the city, surrounded by water on both sides. In the city, Chantico marveled at the tall stone buildings, decorated with intricate carvings of their gods and other stories of the Aztec people. All around, the vibrant colors of the city people’s clothing and the glint of precious stones in their necklaces and headpieces reflected the richness of their culture. The animals were even decorated in beautiful clothing and gems. It was more color than Chantico had ever seen. 

Finally, they reached the busy markets of Tenochtitlan. All around them were the latest fashions, clothing, headpieces, jewelry. And the food markets were rich with the smells of new spices, warm tortillas, corn cakes, colorful squash, brown, gold, and orange maize, and spiced beans.

Chantico’s family eventually found other traders they knew and began setting up shop to trade their treasures – shells from the sea that she had gathered, quetzal feathers, turquoise, cacao, obsidian, and jade. She helped her father sort out the goods and lay them out on tables. He did his best to get a good price for everything they had worked so hard to bring with them and by the end of the day his bag was heavy with gold pieces carved with the intricate designs of the Aztec gods. 

Together, they explored the market and bought cornmeal and spiced beans and tortillas, along with some of the tools they needed at home for farming, hunting, and gathering, and a few bowls for meal times. Chantico’s father bought her mother a jeweled necklace and she a doll made of wood with a beautiful red dress. Her brother got a wooden sword, which he swung about playfully. They found a place on the top of a tall building to settle in and eat and rest from the day’s labors.

As the day drew to a close, Chantico looked out over the grand city, marveling at the step temple stretching high above them. It was a hard journey and not easy most of the way, but she was grateful for city and roads and progress that gave them good things to eat and enjoy. She also thought of the stories and legends and symbols that connected her to the heart of the Aztec empire: the people and culture she was proud of.  The road back to Tlapallan would be filled with the memories of jungles, animals, and starlit nights. With each step, Chantico carried the strength and life of the Aztec people, a flame that would light the path for generations to come.

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Do you live in a big city? Or do you live in a small town? Or do you live far away from everyone else? I grew up in a medium-sized town, but it always fascinates me to visit big cities. It’s amazing to see a city be able to function with so many people in such a small area. For example, if you visit one of the biggest cities in the United States like New York, many people live and work in skyscrapers, which reach very high into the sky. They do this so more people can fit within a small geographical area. And usually, everything you need to survive such as grocery stores is nearby. If you grew up in a small town, you may have lots of space but also have to drive a little further for groceries.

Before Cities

Have you ever wondered how big cities came to be? Throughout human history, cities didn’t always exist. If you were to travel back into history 10,000 years ago most people lived in small tribes or communities and either hunted and gathered or farmed a small area of land. Even for many years before farming early humans moved often, hunting animals for or gathering nuts and seeds, and berries for survival. It was a pretty hard life! They were always on the move because once the animals and other food in the area were gone, they had to be on their way. They lived in shelters or caves and did whatever they could to just barely get by. It’s hard to imagine, but humans lived this way for a VERY, VERY long time. Just think about that a moment and then think of where we are today. How did that change happen? It has taken about 12,000 years. Big changes in history often take time.

Early Farming

But eventually, these humans who hunted and gathered food for a living figured out ways to plant seeds to grow their own food! It seems obvious how to go about it today but it wasn’t for them. But once they did figure this out, instead of always having to move they could stay in one place and plant wheat and harvest it, which means to cut it down, then turn it into something like bread to eat. They also figured out new ways of watering their crops using irrigation. Irrigation is digging a ditch from a stream or river to their farms. Domesticating animals was another way they survived. Domesticating means to keep animals in an enclosed area and grow the group of animals so they didn’t have to hunt them. Animals such as goats, pigs, and cows were domesticated. So over time some humans moved less and were able to live in small towns living off their farms and animals in the same place. This is often called the Neolithic Age, which means New Stone Age.

In some areas of the world, these small communities began to grow into larger ones. This usually happened because they lived in an area with lots of water, like a river, and very good soil. Good soil made their crops grow and gave them more food. There was also lots of fish to eat and fresh water for drinking. It was easy to move around using the river and easy to trade with other towns. For these reasons and others, the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East was a popular area for humans to settle 10,000 years ago. It was called The Fertile Crescent because it’s shaped like a crescent or moon. It has fertile, or good, soil because of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that flow around it. 

First settlements

People in these areas settled down and soon many people were making lots of food and living nearby each other. The amazing thing about humans is when many humans are living and working nearby each other and putting their minds together, they share ideas, and come up with new ideas about how to solve problems! This is what happened in the Fertile Crescent. People became better at farming, better at domesticating animals, and soon figured out better ways to build things like pots for their food and bricks for their homes. They shaped clay into stronger bowls. This is called pottery. Bricks were made using clay and mud and other materials and then cooked in the sun or hot furnace to make them rock hard. 

Eventually, their homes changed from small huts to strong brick buildings that didn’t fall over as easily. They built buildings to keep their grain safe. They built beautiful temples to their gods. They built walls to keep their cities safe. Other humans who were still hunting and gathering and on the move saw the nice things of the city and wanted to take them. The people of the cities designed better weapons and better walls to protect themselves from these tribes and from other cities. 

Sumerians of the Fertile Crescent

In the Fertile Crescent in a region called Mesopotamia, many of these big cities grew very, very big. These people are often called the Sumerians, but they lived in many different cities with names such as Eridu, Uruk, Kish, Ur, and Akkad. Some of these cities had tens of thousands of people living in them, which was huge at the time! In the center of each of the cities was a gigantic temple. There the priests who ran the city lived and worked. Big cities required many people to make decisions and keep track of all of the work that needed to be done. They traded items with nearby cities and began to keep track of their money and other goods by using sticks to make marks on clay tablets. This early version of writing was called cuneiform.

As people in cities put their heads together they became better at shaping metals, too. This is called metallurgy. Very hot fires were created in furnaces and used to extract and mold the metal. Advances in metallurgy led to what is called The Bronze Age. Bronze was a very hard metal made from combining tin and copper. Bronze gave them stronger tools, made stronger bowls, vehicles such as chariots, and weapons when needed. This is also the time when the wheel became very popular and was used for carts and chariots, which made it much easier to move things around.  

Indus River Valley

The Sumerians weren’t the only people to build big cities during the Bronze Age. In what is now India, the people of the Indus River Valley built very impressive cities, too. Most big cities were very dirty and didn’t have clean water. You can imagine with all of the body waste that goes into toilets what a stinky and dirty place some big cities became. The people of Mohenjo-Doro recognized this problem and designed their city with canals on every street to move the dirty toilet water out and the clean water in. Their homes had clean water, bathtubs, and the city stayed very orderly and clean.

Two of the major cities were Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, which had around 30,000 people living there. The Harappans traded goods with the Sumerians and other nearby cities. They created their own beautiful style of pottery and used an early form of writing. Like the Sumerians, they made hard bricks by heating them in a fire and used these bricks and math to build their orderly cities. They dug deep into the earth to bring water up and into their homes. This is called a well. They found ways to store the water when there was lots of rain to use later. Unlike other cities, the Harappan people lived fairly equally and yet comfortably. The Indus River Valley people were very advanced for their time.

Yellow River Valley of China

Moving further east, in what is now China, the big cities formed around the Yellow River. Like the Tigris and Euphrates River, the Nile, and the Indus River, the Yellow River gave the people of China water to drink and often flooded to provide rich soil to plant their crops. Like the other cities, the Chinese learned how to mine deep in the earth and mined minerals such as tin and copper. They used these to make bronze, the very hard metal we talked about before. This gave them stronger tools, which helped them farm and mine and cut trees better. The ancient Chinese also developed their own form of writing and beautiful pottery. They wove better cloth for better clothing. Their cities slowly grew and became powerful in the area and with them came more inventions such as the compass, papermaking, the waterwheel, and gunpowder. Some of these technologies weren’t invented in Europe and other places in the world until a thousand years later.  

The Americas

Big cities weren’t only springing up in the Old World — China, the Near East, and India. Far across the ocean in the New World, the Americas, cities were popping up in areas like the Andes, which is modern-day Peru. These people also figured out how to plant huge farms for food. These farms gave them enough food so not everyone had to be a farmer, but could become an expert at a craft like making pottery, making cloth, or different kinds of tools. Some of the people in the cities became very good at math and used their knowledge to build amazing buildings and roads that connected their cities. Others used their tall stone temples to study and create maps of the stars. This is called astronomy. 

Other places that saw growth at this time were Mesoamerica and of course, Egypt, which we’d love to get into but not in this episode. If you want to learn more about Ancient Egypt be sure to check out our episode about Pyramids.  

Take a moment to think about how these places and people grew from small groups of farmers into major cities. Then think about the size of cities today. What is different about cities now? In what ways are they the same?  

Be sure to check out our related episodes about Mayan Civilization, Ancient Greece, Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids.

The post History of the First Cities: Mesopotamia, Indus River Valley, and Yellow River Valley appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Close your eyes and imagine you are hiking through a thick jungle. You use a sharp machete to cut away the vines and leaves blocking your path. You step through deep mud and cross a busy stream, then cut through another wall of trees until you reach the clearing and see it — the tallest stone pyramid you’ve ever seen. You gaze and wonder at its size and move toward it touching the intricate carvings in the stone. From the symbols, you know you’ve discovered a temple of one of the great civilizations of the ancient world, the Mayas…

Who were these ingenious people? How did they build these gigantic pyramids? And what caused their advanced civilization to suddenly disappear? Where did the Mayas go?

The earliest Mayan villages started in 1,800 B.C., almost 4 thousand years ago! They lived in what is now the region of Mexico and Central America, which includes countries like Guatemala and Belize — also called Mesoamerica. The climate there is tropical, which means it’s filled with dense jungles and is very wet like a rainforest. The Mayas were very skilled farmers and grew corn, beans, and squash. This allowed their communities to grow larger. Over the next 2000 years, the Maya civilization slowly began to grow further into the highlands of Mesoamerica.

From 250 A.D. to 900 A.D. the Maya civilization was at its strongest also called the Classic Period. This was their Golden Age, their best years as they grew and expanded and became more advanced. During this time the Maya civilization included over 40 cities, and each city included anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 people, totaling over 2 million — which is huge for a civilization at that time! 

Each city-state was independent of the other, had its own kings, priests, and other rulers, but was very similar in other ways. They had the same language, religion, and culture. Usually, these different Maya cities got along and traded and worked together but sometimes they went to battle over different problems.

In order for civilizations to thrive, they have to be able to share resources with each other. Resources are things like food, building materials, and other items people want and need to buy. Sometimes they are crafted goods like jewelry or nice clothing. The Mayas made trade easier by building roads between each of the cities. These highways were called “white ways” because they were covered in stucco or plaster that made them easier to travel on. With better trade routes, cities moved goods faster and were able to prosper as they worked together. 

One of the cities that did the most trading is one we now call Tulum. It was built on cliffs along the Caribbean Sea and protected by huge walls. The walls are 16-24 feet thick in some places to keep out invaders. Long ago, Mayas from all over Mesoamerica came to Tulum by land, river, and sea to trade with each other. We know this because of all of the artifacts which have been found there that come from a very distance. These artifacts include gold, feathers, and copper items. The ancient people called this beautiful city “Zama” which means “Dawn” because it faces the sunrise. The city leaders lived inside the walled city, while the peasants and other citizens lived and worked outside the city. In the center of Tulum is a pyramid called El Castillo which served as a temple for the city’s priests. Tulum was one of the last cities to be lived in by Mayas who were there even when Spanish explorers arrived in the 1500s.     

In their largest cities like Tikal, the Mayans built gigantic buildings of stone. Some of these were temples, others were palaces and plazas where the city people met together to buy and sell and hold sporting events. Their favorite sport was a game called ulama, where the players bounced a rubber ball back and forth across the court. Ulama was very tricky because players weren’t allowed to use their hands or feet, but instead used their knee and hip, and other body parts to hit the ball.

The step pyramid-shaped temples that towered over the city were magnificent and many of them can be visited today. Chichen Itza includes one of the largest of the pyramids in Mexico. Copan and Palenque, along with Tulum, are among the most visited ruins today. 

Anciently, the Mayas used these temples to worship their gods. Some of these gods were  Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent God, who ruled the winds and water and who they believed created humans and taught them the rules of law, literacy, medicine, architecture, farming, and how to run a civilization. Then there was Itzamna, God of the Sky, the founder of Maya culture and protector of the sciences, such as astrology and writing. Ix Chel was the Mayan Moon Goddess who represented love and marriage. The Maya priests made offerings to these gods of food and other objects to stay in their good favor.  

The Mayas were also very gifted artists. They decorated their pyramids and other stone buildings with beautiful pictures and hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are symbols that represent words and their ruins which you can still see today are covered in them. They made beautiful jewelry using shells from the ocean, bright green feathers from the quetzal bird, and precious stones like gold and jade. The Mayas were also very skilled at math, which they used to build their magnificent temples. From the temples, their priests watched the sun, moon, and stars, so were advanced astronomers. Their buildings were often designed with their understanding of astronomy in mind. For example, the Pyramid of El Castillo has 365 steps to represent the different days of the year. The Maya calendar is still known today for its accuracy.

By the end of the Classic Period, something began to change in the Maya Civilization that slowly caused their power and influence to slow down. Over the next few hundred years, their cities became smaller and there were fewer people, the population declined. No one knows for sure what happened to the Mayan Empire, but some archeologists think it was because they had used up all of the land and other precious resources. Others also think there may have been a drought, which means not enough water, which people needed to survive. There may also have been fighting between the different cities and its powerful families which caused the downfall of the Maya Civilization. But even though the cities were empty, the Maya people spread throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and the surrounding area, turning to other ways of life like farming and fishing and living in smaller villages instead. 

In 1839, an American traveler and writer named John Lloyd Stephens visited some of the Maya sites with a friend. Together, they wrote and sketched the amazing cities and ruins and sparked interest in the ancient Mayan people and their civilization. Archeologists visited to research the sites and try to better understand who the Maya were. Others deciphered the hieroglyphics to understand their history. People all over the world finally learned about this advanced civilization that once ruled Mesoamerica. 

Today, the descendants of the Maya still live in Central America, which includes parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. 

If you get the chance, be sure to look up documentaries about the Maya or books at your local library. You can also find many amazing photos of their cities and buildings which still stand today.

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