All about the ancient tribes
Aztec Floating Gardens The floating rafts used by the Aztecs were known as chinampas, and they were found on the banks of Lake Tenochtitlan, which is today in Mexico. Rushes and reeds were used in the construction of the rafts.
Rafters served as the bases for the floating gardens. The rafts were secured to the bottom of the lake or to a sturdy tree in the marsh by anchoring them there. They covered the raft’s surface with a variety of plants and reeds in order to improve its soil quality and drainage. They continued to dump dirt on top of this. They started the process by planting seeds in the soil.
Chinampas were the name given to the floating gardens that the Aztecs constructed in order to provide food for their expanding population. Because of the enormous urbanization that took place in the 1900s, there was less space available for farming, yet Xochimilco eventually became one of the city’s primary food supplies.
Chinampas are floating beds of agricultural food that were produced by the Aztecs in the 14th century to feed the pre-Hispanic metropolis. Chinampas are named from the Chinese word for ″floating.″
They evolved into the chinampa, which are floating gardens.
Chinampas, also known as floating gardens, were constructed by the Aztecs in an inventive manner in order to turn the marshy wetlands of Lake Texcoco into fertile farmland so that they could feed their huge population. These floating gardens were a work of technical art in their own right.
Natural floating islands are made up of plant life that is growing on top of a buoyant mat made of plant roots or other organic debris. These types of islands are also known as tussocks, floatons, and suds.
Chinampas were gardens that were built on top of marshes and floated on the water. The procedure for creating chinampas was a straightforward and uncomplicated one. The first step was to dig canals across the marshes and wetlands that were there. After that, the muck from the canals was spread out on mats that had been woven together using weeds and straw.
The term ″floating garden″ refers to a type of planting that is done on soil that is buoyed up (like on the surface of a lake) by rafts of interwoven branches or other types of floating support. These types of gardens are most commonly found in the Mexico City region and portions of Kashmir.
The floating gardens (chinampas) of Xochimilco, which are located close to Mexico City, were historically used to provide crops to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. These floating gardens are still used today for the production of flowers and vegetables. Flat-bottomed boats known as trajineras may be found in the Xochimilco neighborhood of Mexico City.
Quite frequently, a calpulli was the collective dwelling place for a number of families that were connected to one another. They would construct their homes in the shape of a square, with a shared courtyard in the middle. The calpulli, which consisted of both aristocrats and commoners, operated in a manner analogous to that of a clan in that it offered its members mutual assistance.
Tenochitlan’s architecture would differentiate itself from the architecture of other civilizations of the time period by successfully cultivating food on a lake that did not contain silt through the use of chinampas, sometimes known as ″floating gardens.″ Chinampas are the names given to these contemporary floating gardens (Source: Wikimedia Commons).
The omnipresent reed mat bed, known as a petate in Mexican Spanish and a petlatl in Náhuatl, was the basic piece of sleeping furniture for all Aztecs and Mexica. This included everyone from the lowest slave to the Aztec emperor himself. What was different was the amount of mats that people slept on; whereas most people just used one, Moctezuma used a complete pile of them.
The Valley of Mexico is where chinampas first gained popularity, and you can see them even today in the Xochimilco neighborhood of Mexico City. They are used for growing flowers, and there is an entire ecological park that is dedicated to them (in which these pictures were taken). Chinampas, on the other hand, have proved essential to agriculture in a number of other places of Mesoamerica.
The chinampa system, also known as floating gardens, is still used in certain suburban neighborhoods of Xochimilco, which is located in the valley to the south of Mexico City. These elevated fields are created by excavating canals and then mounding the dirt that is moved onto platforms once the canals have been dug.