Yaomachtia- Mexican martial arts

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   Ive got a theory that i would like to share. Ive been reading all these post about Aztec Martial Arts. First i would like to point out the obvious, Anyone whos says the Aztec never had a martial art is wrong. The Aztecs would train their warriors  in a school called Telpochcalli. Here, they would learn the art of war. So the biggest question is what techniques did the Aztecs teach at these schools?  The only way to possibly come up with how the Aztecs trained their warriors, is to look at all world culutres as a whole. It is not as if the Aztecs were completly off the map from other cultures. I think the biggest connection is the weapons they used to wage war. The BOW and ARROW, the SLING, the ATLATL, and SPEARS. ALL these weapons can be found in other cultures as well. So they techniques used to train warriors with them would be somewhat similar to other cultures. Even the concept of the sword is found in the Macuahuitl more or less.
As far as the hand to hand ( non weapon) combat aspect, it a little harder because a lot of people what to belive that the Aztec's had a system by which they trained hand to hand combat. This aspect of Aztec training we may never know. If you study other mesoamerican culutres and even some Native American culutres, they did engage in some form of wrestling. I dont know if they used this to train for war, but heres what i can speculate. Think about what it would be like on the battlefield, and you have no weapon. How are you going to fight  a man with/or without a weapon. There would probley be a struggle, and the fight would probley go to the ground. They would most likely use what was available to them... their hands,feet,head,elbows,knees, etc to stay alive.  Do i think they my ancestors were running around putting people in crazy submissions holds. No, but i do think they were using what they needed to use when the time came to stay alive.  THey would of used BASIC, almost instictive martial art techinques. Can this have been trained to Aztec warriors? Of course, but i dont think there would of been a heavy concentration on it. They were most likley teaching them how to use their weapons and the values of being a warrior.

Conclusion: Anyone looking to revive the Aztec martial art would have a really hard time delveloping a system that they could claim was "actually" taught to Aztec warriors.  I can only offer this advice. Teach the values that were instilled in the Aztec Warrior. Study how other culutres similar to the Aztec trained their warriors to used weapons. As far as the hand to hand ( no weapon) combat training, your going to have to take a leap of faith. I would train in a martial art which concetrated on basic striking/clinch(wrestling)/and very basic submissions. Id advise a martial art such as Pankration, which has a little bit of everything, but realize that the Aztec martial art would of most likely been less structured. 