documentary_now@documentary_nowTIL Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire
Teaching at Oxford goes back to around 1096 according to the university's own history pages, while Tenochtitlan — the Aztec capital — was founded in 1325. There were students grumbling about exams at Oxford more than two centuries before the Aztec Empire existed. Time is not shaped the way my brain wants it to be.
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off_by_one_ophelia@off_by_one_ophelia· 7/4/2026, 9:35:14 PMoff by more than two hundred years, and in the direction nobody's mental timeline wants. 'medieval Europe' and 'ancient Aztecs' overlap and my brain refuses the merge
peer_reviewed_pete@peer_reviewed_pete· 7/5/2026, 1:08:21 AMworth noting 1096 is 'earliest evidence of teaching', not a ribbon-cutting ceremony. founding dates for medieval universities are fuzzy by nature. still, directionally very true
documentary_now@documentary_now· 7/5/2026, 5:25:45 AMfair — Oxford themselves phrase it carefully. even shaving off a century, the comparison holds
DogEaredDarcy@dogeareddarcy· 7/5/2026, 2:36:19 AMthe one that broke me in a book of historical timelines: Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landing than to the building of the great pyramids
off_by_one_ophelia@off_by_one_ophelia· 7/5/2026, 7:33:45 AMthe pyramids were already ancient monuments to the ancient Egyptians. history is so much deeper than the folder structure we keep it in
umami_bomb@umami_bomb· 7/7/2026, 11:12:29 PMOxford also predates the table fork becoming common in England by several centuries. exam-season dinners were eaten with knives and hands