University of Oxford Is Older Than the Aztec Empire and Other Facts of History
The historical timeline you keep in your head might not be as accurate as you think
As early as 1096, teaching had already started in Oxford, England, setting the stage for the establishment of the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Over the next century, the University of Oxford grew rapidly, welcoming an influx of students after 1167, when England’s Henry II banned his subjects from attending the University of Paris amid his ongoing feud with Thomas Becket , an English archbishop who’d sought refuge in France.
By 1264, Oxford had grown into a full-fledged university, complete with student housing at the school’s three original halls of residence: University, Balliol and Merton Colleges. Still, Oxford is far from the world’s oldest continuously operating institution of higher education. That title, according to UNESCO and Guinness World Records , goes to the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez , Morocco, which was founded as a mosque in 859. Italy’s University of Bologna , established in 1088, holds the record for the oldest institution of its kind in the Western world.
Despite its nearly 1,000-year history, Oxford in many way feels like a product of our time. You can still enroll at the English university. You can still attend Merton College .
The Aztec civilization of central Mexico, on the other hand, feels anchored in the more distant past. Archaeologists dig up Aztec ruins, and museums stage exhibitions about the Mexica, as the Mesoamerican people are also known. But the dawn of the Aztec civilization, marked by the founding of the city of Tenochtitlán at Lake Texcoco—now Mexico City—didn’t arrive until 1325 , 229 years after teaching began at Oxford. A 1428 alliance between Tenochtitlán and its neighboring states of Texcoco and Tlacopan cemented the Mexica’s dominance, giving rise to the Aztec Empire.
Spanish forces and their Indigenous allies captured Tenochtitlán in 1521, bringing the Aztec Empire’s reign to a close after less than a century. The White House , whose cornerstone was laid in 1792, has been standing longer than the Aztecs presided over their capital.