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Spiritual_Jaguar4685 t1_j6o3bv9 wrote

Egyptians by a LOOONG shot.

If you allow that Egyptian culture started with the first Pharaoh, that was roughly 3.100 BCE.

The Aztec empire only existed from roughly the year 1400 - 1521 CE.

So the Egyptians came first by almost 5,000 years.

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Akalenedat t1_j6o3xlm wrote

BC/BCE, or Before Christ/Before Common Era, is years prior to the start of the Gregorian calendar, 2023 years ago. For XX BC, the bigger the number, the older it is. Ancient Egypt began around 3100 BCE, or 5,123 years ago.

AD/CE, or Anno Domini/Year of Our Lord/Common Era, is years after the Gregorian Calendar. Bigger number, more recent. The Aztec Empire began in the early 1400s, around 600 years ago.

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breckenridgeback t1_j6o4egl wrote

Think of AD and BC dates as positive and negative numbers.

The Aztec Empire proper was around from 1428 to 1521 AD, that is, the years "+1428" to "+1521".

Ancient Egypt was around from about 3100 BC to, depending on exactly where you draw the line, 30 BC, that is, the years "-3100" to "-30".

Which is bigger? -3000 or +1428? Obviously, the positive one. The Aztecs came many, many centuries after the Egyptians.

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Gnonthgol t1_j6o5bsk wrote

The easiest way to remember this is that BC stand for Before Christ and AD stand for After Christ. In reality it does not but it is the easiest to remember. So if you say the Egyptians were present 1500 years before Christ and the Aztecs were present 1500 years after Christ that means that the Egyptians were here at least 3000 years before the Aztecs. In reality we do not know when the Egyptians came to be as they were already an advanced civilization when they made the earliest artifacts we have from them from about 5000 BC. And there are signs that they were conducting archeological digs back then and reusing what was even then ancient works.

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explainlikeimfive-ModTeam t1_j6o5jkl wrote

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TheWrongFusebox t1_j6o6t2d wrote

Certainly not the Aztecs, but possibly not the Egyptians either.

The Djoser Step Pyramid in Egypt was constructed by Imhotep (Djoser's royal architect) c.2630 BC.

However, as early as 2700-2600 BC, an ancient city featuring up to 20 pyramids was constructed at Caral in the Supe Valley on the west coast of Peru. The early settlement is widely believed to be the first city in the Americas, although the difficulties in dating ancient monuments has made it impossible to say for certain whether its pyramids pre-date Djoser's pyramid.

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