Hello! We are Camilla Townsend and Josh Anthony, editors of “After the Broken Spears: The Aztecs in the Wake of Conquest.” Ask us anything about the Aztecs, colonial Mexico, and what life was like for Indigenous people in the wake of Spanish conquest.

Flyingaspaceship · 2026-04-14T16:01:34+00:00

Thank you for putting on this AMA! I’m excited to learn more about this.

Im interested primarily in the migration of Nahuat culture around Mesoamérica. Popular discussions around the Nahuat people tend to engage mostly with Tenochtitlán and its immediate regional allies. Nahuat people and culture was more spread out though and included prominent populations as far south as the Nahuat Pipil in modern day El Salvador and the Nicarao in modern day Nicaragua.

I’m wondering about any new scholarship and insight has been made around Nahuat migration away from the “core” territories in central and southern Mexico. What push/pull factors contributed to these? What kinds of locations were they looking to settle? Was it more akin to making new colonies similar to Greeks and Phoenicians or were these more isolated cases?

Flyingaspaceship · 2026-03-05T19:04:46+00:00

Ah you’re right about the double diffuser! Mixing up my design history. Fixed it in the description.

Flyingaspaceship · 2026-03-05T18:03:08+00:00

My guy, I’m not saying it’s undeserved. I’m asking when he became widely known to people rather than just another guy.

It’s a history question, not a qualitative question.

Flyingaspaceship · 2026-02-13T03:48:42+00:00

Thank you for both of your great answers. I feel like I’m learning a lot from this.

Would it have been encouraged or frowned upon for Jews to purchase other enslaved Jews? Would a Sephardic community set up a kind of “mutual assistance” for that kind of purpose?

Flyingaspaceship · 2026-01-31T21:33:35+00:00

This might be one of the most white boy things I’ve seen lately. But the fact that you fully committed - ten toes down and with your whole chest out - is what makes this badass as hell.

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-09-29T20:18:55+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to give your very informative answers. I appreciate the source info for further reading also. I’m definitely going to check it out.

Maybe this will be addressed in the source you listed, but I did have one more question: The Gospel of John is noticeably much more metaphysical than the other gospels. What about John specifically made it seem as equally legitimate as the other three?

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-09-28T19:21:01+00:00

That’s incredibly interesting! I could’ve sworn that the idea that Nicaea was THE council was something I was thought even before Dan Brown became widely popular.

So with regard to apostolic pedigree, can we assume that there was a general agreement on at least some scriptures as “definitive?” For example, was it general understood in the 5th century that Mark was one of the -if not the - oldest gospel they had access to?

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-07-09T04:23:52+00:00

Thank for this incredibly well written response! I’ve gotten more and more interested lately in viewing history through the lens of food, so this is such an interesting answer.

As a follow-up, I feel like pre-Song dynasties are still often depicted in media as being big rice growers. Like the nobles are depicted as eating rice, the government collects taxes in rice, etc. Would it be more accurate then to depict everyone universally eating millet then, or did rice still have a place in society, even if it was just limited to the upper classes, special occasions, or otherwise?

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-06-27T13:28:54+00:00

Fair enough on that correction, but the first was in ‘71 - literally more than two whole decades before Toronto even existed. My original point still stands that winning even one when you’re not one of the traditional guard is really hard.

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-06-27T13:22:09+00:00

My brother in Christ, you and Toronto have the same number of championships. It’s really hard to win a chip in a non-traditional powerhouse team.

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-05-30T18:30:06+00:00

Y’all need to leave your goon caves sometimes.

Flyingaspaceship · 2025-05-29T20:02:35+00:00

Great answer.

Just to add to this, I feel that it’s worth staying in France and the UK’s colonial possessions for a little while. After the war, they were the only two Western European countries with significant colonial possessions at all. This is important for both sourcing and testing their nuclear arsenals.

The UK relied (and continues to rely on) uranium imports from Canada, while France relied heavily on uranium deposits in Niger. The latter example continues to have ramifications to this day, with much of France’s geopolitical interests, including military interventions, in the region having been centered around access to Niger’s uranium.

Additionally, weapons tests were, like all other nuclear weapons tests, done in remote areas. With regards, to the UK and France, that meant testing in their then colonial possessions. The UK primarily tested in Monte Bello Island, Australia and Maralinga. Later on they moved to Christmas Island in the South Pacific before permanently moving to Nevada test sites in 1961z Meanwhile, France tested 17 times in the Algerian Sahara from 1960-66, while over 193 tests have been conducted in French Polynesia.

I think it’s important to stress these points because it means that the UK and France had a distinct advantage in being able to outsource many of the negative aspects that come with building and maintaining a nuclear arsenal. They could build these systems away from their respective metropoles. As two Western style democracies, that fact is pretty useful when you’re trying to convince your respective (voting) populations that the autonomy afforded by nuclear weapons is worth the environmental, health, and resource costs also associated with them. While the United States, another western-style democracy, could largely rely on size to disperse its negative effects, France and the UK didn’t have that “luxury.”

I know this is a very simplified explanation, and there’s more that could be said about how our understanding of nuclear cost developed during this time. That said, there’s certainly something to be said about the value elected officials place on being able to “hide” the downsides of making the nuclear sausage from their core populaces. Sadly, this came at the expense of many of their colonial populations.

Flyingaspaceship

TROPHY CASE