Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire

The University of Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire. A master was lecturing to as many as 100 students at Oxford by about 1117, roughly two centuries before the Mexica founded Tenochtitlan around 1325, and the empire itself only took shape in 1428.

When did Oxford actually begin?

Oxford has no founding date, and the often-quoted 1096 marks only the earliest hint that some teaching went on there, not a founding. The earliest firm record, according to the Victoria County History, is of Theobald of Étampes, a ‘Magister Oxenefordie’ who around 1117 lectured to audiences of 60 to 100 clerks. Numbers grew after Henry II, quarrelling with Becket and the Pope, banned English clerks from going overseas without a royal licence, which kept students bound for Paris at home.

Recognition came in stages. In 1209 townsmen hanged two clerks and many scholars left, some of them for Cambridge. A papal legate’s ordinance of 25 June 1214 brought them back with privileges: the town owed 52 shillings a year for poor scholars, had to feast 100 poor scholars annually, and had to hand arrested clerks to the Church. Oxford’s chancellors run unbroken from 1221.

When did the Aztec Empire begin?

Later than most people assume. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) says most historical sources date the founding of México-Tenochtitlan to 1325, the date the Mexica themselves gave after the Spanish conquest. Archaeoastronomers note a solar eclipse that year, which may have served as a mythic marker. In the migration story, the god Huitzilopochtli told his people to stop calling themselves Aztecs.

The empire came a century later. In 1428 Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan formed the Triple Alliance, which ruled until the Spanish conquest of 1521, just 93 years. By then Oxford’s privileges were more than two centuries old. Universities reached the Americas only with Spain: Lima’s University of San Marcos dates from 1551. It is the same kind of time-scale surprise as Cleopatra living closer to the Moon landing than to the pyramids.