Hello! This is my first post here, hopefully it will go well! My niece is working on a science fair project I am assisting her with, and we came across the historical stories that the Aztecs grew food and even trees on floating islands. Both of us wondered what he builders used to keep the rafts afloat with the burden of soil and crops atop its surface - any help or advice would be sincerely appreciated! Thank you all in advance for your time reading the post.
Standard clarification, that the "Aztecs" didnt exist, the dominant culture in the Triple Alliance (composed of Nahautl Mexicas, Alcolhual Texcocans and Tecpanec Tlacopans) by the time of contact were the Nahuatl Mexicas ("the people of mexhi/huitzilopochtli"), whith the capital in Mexhico-Tenochtitlan ("Place of the Mexicas-Land of Tenoch"), it should be noted that chinanpas already existed in the Valley of Mexico by the time the new incarnation of the Triple Alliance came to be, though the Mexicas did had the idea of putting them inside the lake instead of prolonging the terrain unlike the Chalcans or Xochimilcans, with that out of the way...
The Chinanpa (and here Im talking about the Mexica "floating" variety) was mainly built out of Ahuehuete wood which is both water proof and termite proof (dont ask me why, I dont know, but it is), and then they used Ahuejote to "stitch" the wood toghether, they would use young samplings to "root" the whole structure into mud, and finally they anchored the structure through the use of Ahuehuete pillars, at 50x100 meters or 90x10 meters, with the arable surface land at around 1.6 - 2 meters above the water surface, filled with the same lake's mud.
Notably the structure was able to keep temperature to some degree allowing the Mexica to have 3 harvest seasons instead of just 1, in fact the chinanpa is used to this day in agriculture in Mexico, though this is the "extended terrain" variety rather than the "floating" variety.
La vida cotidiana de los aztecas en vísperas de la conquista. Soustelle, Jacques.
