Ancient Mexico Facts

Water provided the most efficient means of transportation in pre-Columbian Mexico. Rafts and canoes were used in coastal waters, as well as farther out to sea. Although these rafts and canoes were paddled (the sail was unknown in Mexico), they attained considerable size. Columbus noted an ocean-going merchant’s canoe in the Caribbean, and rafts were employed for long-distance bulk goods trade, as evidenced by their use in shipping salt from Yucatán to Tuxpan (Tochpan) in northern Veracruz.

Because of the sharp drop in altitude from central Mexico to the coasts and the pronounced seasonality of the region’s rainfall, most rivers were not navigable for long distances or throughout the year. Landlocked navigation was nevertheless important in the Valley of Mexico and the Pátzcuaro Basin. Especially in the former, tens of thousands of dugout canoes in sizes ranging from small 12-foot vessels up to 100-foot giants plied the lakes. Poled or paddled but lacking sails, the canoes traveled at approximately the same speed as a tlameme could walk, but they could haul significantly larger loads, ranging from one ton in the smaller canoes to well over seven tons in the biggest.

The speed of human travel limited most communications in Mexico. Smoke and fire signals were occasionally used, and there is evidence of lookout posts that may have linked locations within valley systems. But while such systems could have conveyed information quite speedily, their messages would have been limited to the prearranged, and the systems themselves were relatively inflexible and spatially limited. More elaborate and more distant links depended on human conveyance. In formal matters, ambassadors carried messages between rulers, but at no greater speed than tlamemes. For faster service, runners were employed. Along some routes, runners were stationed every three miles or so to carry messages in relay fashion much faster than was possible by other means.

These means of transport were only the most obvious element of what were, in fact, elaborate transportation systems. Tlamemes, ambassadors, and runners all depended on a system of maintained roads, as well as inns and hostelries. Where the Mexica Empire expanded, these were provided; beyond the cities, however, roads were only dirt. (Exceptions occurred during portions of the late Classic and early postClassic periods in the Maya lowlands, where elaborate stone roads linked some towns.) The lakes, too, required maintenance. In the Valley of Mexico, canals had to be dredged and maintained; and dikes, dams, sluice gates, and docks all had to be built, manned, and maintained. Despite their sophistication, both land and water transport suffered seasonal variation in utility. During and after the May-to-September rainy season, roads quickly became quagmires and swollen streams could become impassable, even if they were bridged in normal times. Canoe transport complemented this pattern, with the lake levels rising to more suitable heights during and after the rainy season, although extensive dams and dikes did create navigable pools, especially in the southern Valley of Mexico, permitting more use of canoes than would otherwise have been feasible.

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