Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire

Line up the dates and intuition buckles. There is evidence of teaching at Oxford as early as 1096, which makes it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest in continuous operation anywhere. By the late 12th century it was a thriving studium, growing fast after 1167, when Henry II barred English scholars from the University of Paris and sent them home to study.

Now look across the Atlantic. The Mexica — the people we call the Aztecs — did not found Tenochtitlan, the city that became their imperial capital, until about 1325, on a marshy island in Lake Texcoco where, legend held, an eagle perched on a cactus. That is roughly 229 years after dons were already lecturing in Oxford.

The Aztec Empire proper came later still: the Triple Alliance that ruled central Mexico wasn’t forged until 1428, by which point Oxford had colleges, a chancellor, and a royal charter.

A medieval English university predates one of history’s most famous “ancient” civilizations.

The lesson isn’t that one culture was “ahead” of another — it’s that our mental filing system is unreliable. We shelve the Aztecs under deep antiquity and Oxford under the comfortably recent, when the chalk dust in Oxford settled first.