Admittedly, their island was available only because no one else wanted it. People of the central basin had long lived by farming corn and beans, but the swampy conditions of the central lake area ruled out full dependence on agriculture. Not that the Mexica gave up the project entirely; they had observed that on the southern shore of the lake, their rivals the Xochimilca (whose warriors’ ears the Mexica had, in the distant past, cut off) did very well by constructing chinampas.
