Bizzare Facts

The Western academic world often presents institutions like Oxford as paragons of medieval European history, while figures like the **Aztec Empire** are positioned as symbols of deep Mesoamerican antiquity. This mental separation, however, obscures a bizarre chronological overlap. In England, the first records of teaching at **Oxford University** date back to **1096 CE**, a time when William the Conqueror's children were still shaping the kingdom.

Meanwhile, the foundational moment of the celebrated Aztec civilization, the establishment of its monumental capital, **Tenochtitlan** (the site of modern Mexico City), didn't occur until **1325 CE**. This means that when the first great city of the Aztecs was being built on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco, Oxford had already been educating scholars for 229 years. The university was an institution with centuries of history before the empire it is compared to had even started.

This temporal paradox highlights how independent and staggered human civilization's timelines truly are. It demonstrates that while one society was constructing one of the world's most intricate city-states based on a prophecy, another, halfway across the world, was already grappling with the logistics of medieval academic life—a reminder that not all historical eras start and end at the same time.