Page:Historia Verdadera del Mexico profundo.djvu/56

 spaniards in 1519, built during the decadent postclassical period was an example of engineering and architecture use and application.

''"In Spain, and throughout Europe, did not then exist urban conglomerates comparable with Mexico, although some claim it had a population of a million and a half inhabitants, it is likely that it had around half a million (London did not have more than 40 thousand and Paris, the largest city, barely had 65 thousand), and that does not include other cities of the Valley, that also had large populations, such as, Texcoco, Azcapotzalco, Iztapalapa, Tacuba, etc." (Jose Luis Guerrero. 1990)''

The hydraulic engineering works required to divide, contain, and regulate the Anahuac Valley Lakes represented a technological advance unknown to Europeans; as well as the reticular street concept, avenues, roads, channels. This decadent postclassical period city, had drinking water, plazas, schools, markets, cultural centers, courts, libraries, Zoo, temples, ballgame courts, museums, community barns, everything that for people of our time implies a "modern" city.

"This city has many plazas, where there is a continuous market with buying and selling deals. It has another plaza as large as two times the city of Salamanca, all fenced around with portals where there are daily over sixty thousand souls...There is a large house in this large square, as if for hearings, where they are always seated ten or twelve people, who are judges...There are many mosques or idols houses with very beautiful buildings in the sections and neighborhoods... among these mosques there is one which is the main, that there is no human language that can explain its greatness and particularities... There are a good forty high towers and well-constructed, the main has fifty steps to climb to the body of the Tower; the principal is higher than the Tower of the Church of Seville... There are many good and very large houses in this great city.... On an avenue entering this great city, there are two mortar pipes, two steps wide each, and as high as a person and by each of them flows very good fresh water, as wide as a man’s body, that goes to the body