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Both cities were founded by " losers" who were driven by stronger tribes out into the marsh to escape annihilation by them . A marsh is not at all the location that one would expect an agrarian society to build a great city . It has no arable land on which to grow crops , no material with which to build a city , and no place to build it . Yet both cities managed to not only survive , but flourish . Venice became the premier trading center of Europe for about 700 years and Tenochtitlan became the capitol of the most powerful empire in the history of pre-Colombian America .

You mean refugees escaping and settling down on an Island? Although I dig the eagle on cactus legend . Both becoming large and powerful cities and empires . Although the venetian was naval based through trade the Mexican through the might of their army?

You are correct Yichel , the two cities took completely different routes to power . The Aztecs built floating gardens in the lake and then connected their city to the mainland by causeways . They took a military path to conquest , creating an empire of about 25 million people in a primarily agrarian economy before Cortez rained on their parade in 1520 . After the Spanish wrecked tenochtitlan , they rebuilt it as their own capitol , Mexico City , which is still one of the great cities in the world . The Venetians never connected their city to the mainland , and though they did have some land possessions in the nearby Veneto and in coastal Dalmatia , their wealth and power was almost totally derived from their ships and their trading .

Tenochtitlan was founded by the Toltecs, later the Aztecs arrived and integrated/assimilated into the Toltec culture. The aztecs left their origin, language and history thur marriage and leadership. By the time Cortez had arrived the Aztecs had been in power 100 yrs. Their heavy taxation and brutality lead to their final demise. Those rural mexican inhabitantants joined the Spanish in the conquest of the Aztecs empire.
Early reports of encounters with native americans were varied in experiences. Columbus observed the Carribs and the Arawack, one "eaters of men" the other "peaceful and lazy".
Trade routes were very inportant to the Americas also. I spent 2 summers on a dig in Utah( basket maker 1000 ad). A mayan copper bell was found the yr before I arrived in 1978. The history of the Americas was destroyed by religious zealots and we dont really have the entire story but war was not their only focus.
The marshes brought lots of safety from human preditors, drought and animals were abundant...... San Francisco was also a marsh land at one time, strategic abundance.

I was told the venetian is a different language then italian would anyone know of a book to read about the history of venice I own "death in venice, but I am more obssessive about the past. (don't say it dirck)

Yichel , Venetian is an Italian dialect , not really a separate language . The most obvious difference between Venetian and Italian is that Venetians tend to omit the final vowel that you so often find in Italian . For example , if you name was Marino in Italian , it would be Marin in Venetian .After I went to Venice for the first time , I was so blown away by it that for about 6 months , I checked out every book in my local library about Venetian history . I can't recall any one history that I would recommend above all of the others though .

Anyoak , all of the history that I have read says that though the Toltecs were in the area first , and were the dominant tribe in the area , that it was the Aztecs , or Mexica , who built Tenochtitlan in Lake Texcoco , primarily to get away from Toltec dominance .

Now both cities are sinking into the mire, I saw in MX DF in the early 70' were they were trying to pump concrete under several buildings, Several buildings I saw were tilted at that time about 20degrees.
There were found in Switzerland several pylons when water levels went down, all over the country: view link
I think about if it was so defensible, why were they abandoned?

Tenochtitlan was conquered by Cortez after a months long slaughter in the streets . It was torn down by the Spanish and rebuilt . Venice was never conquered and never abandoned . It just slipped from relevance as its trade dominance withered after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and the age of discovery opened all-sea trade routes to the Far East and to the Americas .

As to the last comment, true, trade fell off, but Venice flexed its muscles enough in the 17th century to push the Turks in Dalmatia back into Bosnia. My grandfather's town was liberated by them and all the mosques were destroyed and the town rebuilt. It was Napolean who conquered Venice and ended its independence. Later when Italy underwent unification, a questionable referendum was held in Venice and it was absorbed. Under the subsequent poor administration, many Venetians went into exile throughout the Western world. (By the way, Marco Polo's family was from Korcula Island near Split but served in the Venetian empire; descendants still live there. Their ancestors were romanic Illyrians (Boduli) who fled before invading Avars and Croats and preserved their Dalmatic language until the Venetians came; later they became slavicized.)

Theirs is a separate language of Gallo-Iberian, not Italo-Rumanian, origin, being a dialect of Latin, not Italian, and differing just as Spanish, French and Portuguese do from each other. There are said to be 2 million bilingual speakers in the Veneto region but "Romanos" look down upon them in conversation. There's a false Italian Venetian in the main cities. Ask a true Venetian or look up their websites. My father, though not Venetian, spoke a dialect of it and defended it. Similarly, further north are the even prouder Friulians with half a million bilngual speakers who are of Rhaeto-Romanic origin. Dialect implies a degradation from an original language; Italian, actually the Tuscan standard, was equally a separate offshoot of Latin. That's how Mussolini, along with forced italianized names, got to fool the world and claim millions in the eastern Adriatic coast as Italians.