![]() ![]() However, the Aztec referred to themselves as Mexica ( meˈʃihkah) or Tenochca and Tlatelolca according to their city of origin. In Nahuatl, the native language of the Aztec, "Azteca" means "someone who comes from Aztlán," thought to be a mythical place in northern Mexico. ![]() Spanish conquerors and later occupiers largely ignored Aztec cultural achievements, and through a policy of subjugation by Spanish colonial authorities, and the inadvertent introduction of diseases for which they had no immunity, the Aztec civilization of Mesoamerica was almost completely eradicated. Aztec agriculture, transportation, economy, architecture, arts, and political institutions bear extraordinary witness to the creative and collaborative capability of humankind, and of the universal inclination to find transcendent meaning to human life. Some Aztecs also anticipated the return of the white-skinned god Quetzalcoatl from the east, an expectation which may have contributed to the success of the militarily overmatched Spanish forces.Īztec civilization sustained millions of people and developed from a history of thousands of years in complete isolation from European and Asian cultures. Spanish invaders, led by Hernán Cortés, sought both to claim the new lands and resources for the Spanish Crown and to promulgate Christianity, and demanded that local native allies forswear human sacrifice and cannibalism. A hegemonic power, the Aztecs sacrificed human beings on a massive scale in bloody religious rituals, enslaved subject peoples, and, by Spanish accounts, practiced cannibalism. ![]() The most alarming aspect of the Aztec culture was the practice of human sacrifice, which was known throughout Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish conquest. The greater metropolitan area of Mexico City now covers much of the Valley of Mexico and the now-drained Lake of Texcoco.Īztec culture had complex mythological and religious traditions. After the 1521 conquest of Tenochtitlan by Spanish forces and their allies which brought about the effective end of Aztec dominion, the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the now-ruined Aztec capital. The nucleus of the Aztec Empire was the Valley of Mexico, where the capital of the Aztec Triple Alliance was built upon raised islets in Lake Texcoco. They were a civilization with a rich cultural heritage whose capital, Tenochtitlan, rivaled the greatest cities of Europe in size and grandeur. The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Aztec cosmogram in the pre-Hispanic Codex Fejérváry-Mayer-the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli is in the center ![]()
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