This week, I’ve had the chance to visit both the Museo Nacional de Antropología and the Museo del Templo Mayor. They are truly world-class museums (the architecture of the anthropology museum is super cool, with a giant open courtyard and an enormous fountain, plus a pretty decent café) and the buildings of Templo Mayor surround an active archaeological dig, which isn’t something you usually get to see.

And what is truly jaw-dropping about both of these museums is the amount of history they contain, and how little of it is familiar. The exhibits of both museums take you through thousands and thousands of years of humanity—civilizations that rose and fell just like in Asia, Mesopotamia, Europe, only we didn’t spend nearly the same amount of time learning about them.

I don’t have the knowledge or the ability to try to write a synopsis of what I saw and read. I think everyone should see these places and understand the scope and breadth of what came out of these civilizations. Yes, this includes the horrible history of conquest by the Spaniards. It also includes traditions of human sacrifice and bloodshed. But there is so much more—a sophisticated understanding of astronomy, highly-developed agricultural systems, feats of engineering that are kind of mind-boggling (not just the temples and pyramids, but paved streets, drainage systems, and aqueducts). The capital of the Mexica empire, Tenochtitlan, was established on an island in the middle of the giant Lake Texcoco and the Mexica (Aztecs) built causeways that were miles long to connect the island to the shore.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier under Hernán Cortés when the Spanish first reached Tenochtitlan (which is now Mexico City), later wrote this in his memoirs: “When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments (...) on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? (...) I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.”

We know what happened after that. And yes, this is how history works—the Spanish dominated and wiped out the Aztecs in the same way that the Mexica dominated and wiped out other cultures, as did the Maya, as did other Mesoamerican cultures. It’s distressing on many levels but what thing that stands out to me is the question of what knowledge and information about all those other peoples has been lost?

History, as they say is written by the victors. But it sucks that in the process of writing that history, so much of what was accomplished by the losers—for lack of a better term—disappears. I think about all the Aztec and Mayan codices—libraries full of them, according to some of Cortés’s conquistadors—that the Spanish destroyed, especially the Catholic priests. What kind of information was in there? What could we have known earlier that we then had to rediscover, if we ever did rediscover it? It didn’t just damage the culture of those in Mesoamerica—it was a loss for all of us, as humans. The fact that so much of this ancient history still isn’t all that familiar to people is just an extension of that deprivation.

And not to get political here, but I think this is one of the things that really burns my bacon about the modern day book bans. How dare you deprive me, or anyone else, of knowledge? How arrogant of you to think that only your world view matters—that the experiences and information gleaned by others are bad or worthless. All this is part of our collective heritage and no one has a right to take that away.

Ahem.

Anyway, the point of this post was to highlight how impressive and overwhelming and amazing all this history is and if you come to Mexico City, please go to the museums and soak it all up and also don’t vote for anyone who wants to censor knowledge.