We all know the Aztecs practised human sacrifice, a fact that so predominates in popular impressions of them that almost everything else about them is cast in its shadow. Yet as my guest in this episode, Camilla Townsend, writes in her latest book, The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs: "The Aztecs would never recognize themselves in the picture of their world that exists in the books and movies we have made." So who were the Aztecs really?

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