satisfaction of social needs: the production of luxury goods, construction of religious buildings, and so on." (Ángel Palerm. 1990) [1]
The Milpa invention.
The milpa was another valuable trigger for the development of the Anahuac civilization, because by planting maize, chili, squash and beans, intensively farming a very small piece of land during four months; one man could feed his family for an entire year. This is as if today, with four months of minimum-wage earnings one could survive for one year. Hydraulic engineering reached very advanced levels in Cem Anahuac, not only due to extensive irrigation, but also because the use of the "Chinampa" was a very advanced concept, even by today’s standards.
"...irrigation agriculture was the only technological way to sustain a sufficiently productive economy and to maintain a concentrated population, stable and specialized in non-agricultural work and a political organization to maintain the functioning of a productive system and good distribution. Therefore, the use of irrigation would have fostered urban life and, consequently, civilization." (Teresa Rojas Rabiela. 2001)
We definitely cannot imagine the wonders and magnificence of Teotihuacan or Monte Alban in the Classical period, without the basis of an efficient food system, which was able to support the challenges of building the various and numerous centers of knowledge that existed in our territory. Foreign researchers have not given Anahuac agriculture the place it deserves in the history of mankind.
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- ↑ Ángel Palerm Vich was an anthropologist, Spanish professor and researcher, born in Ibiza in 1917 and died in the city of Mexico in 1980. As a result of the Spanish Civil War he moved to Mexico in 1939, after having been militant in the Catalonian anarchist syndical movement, and later embraced the Communist current. He was a professor to critical social scientists, committed to their own reality. While in Mexico, he broke with all political affiliations to devote himself to the study of Anthropology, which he had started in Barcelona. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a Bachelor's degree in history.
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