Aztecs

The Aztecs[a] (/ˈæztɛks/ AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican

civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the
post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec
people included different ethnic groups of central
Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the
Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of
Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec
culture was organized into city-states (altepetl), some
of which joined to form alliances, political
confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a
confederation of three city-states established in 1427: The Aztec Empire in 1519 within Mesoamerica
Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Mexica or
Tenochca, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of
the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco. Although the term Aztecs[1] is often
narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or
peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era,[2] as well as the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821).[3] The
definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion ever since German scientist
Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early 19th century.[4]

Most ethnic groups of central Mexico in the post-classic period shared essential cultural traits of
Mesoamerica. So many of the characteristics that characterize Aztec culture cannot be said to be exclusive
to the Aztecs. For the same reason, the notion of "Aztec civilization" is best understood as a particular
horizon of a general Mesoamerican civilization.[5] The culture of central Mexico includes maize cultivation,
the social division between nobility (pipiltin) and commoners (macehualtin), a pantheon (featuring
Tezcatlipoca, Tlaloc, and Quetzalcoatl), and the calendric system of a xiuhpohualli of 365 days intercalated
with a tonalpohualli of 260 days. Particular to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan was the patron God
Huitzilopochtli, twin pyramids, and the ceramic styles known as Aztec I to IV.[6]

From the 13th century, the Valley of Mexico was the heart of dense population and the rise of city-states.
The Mexica were late-comers to the Valley of Mexico, and founded the city-state of Tenochtitlan on
unpromising islets in Lake Texcoco, later becoming the dominant power of the Aztec Triple Alliance or
Aztec Empire. It was an empire that expanded its political hegemony far beyond the Valley of Mexico,
conquering other city-states throughout Mesoamerica in the late post-classic period. It originated in 1427 as
an alliance between the city-states Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan; these allied to defeat the Tepanec
state of Azcapotzalco, which had previously dominated the Basin of Mexico. Soon Texcoco and Tlacopan
were relegated to junior partnership in the alliance, with Tenochtitlan the dominant power. The empire
extended its reach by a combination of trade and military conquest. It was never a true territorial empire
controlling territory by large military garrisons in conquered provinces but rather dominated its client city-
states primarily by installing friendly rulers in conquered territories, constructing marriage alliances between
the ruling dynasties, and extending an imperial ideology to its client city-states.[7] Client city-states paid
taxes, not tribute[8] to the Aztec emperor, the Huey Tlatoani, in an economic strategy limiting
communication and trade between outlying polities, making them dependent on the imperial center for the
acquisition of luxury goods.[9] The political clout of the empire reached far south into Mesoamerica
conquering polities as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala and spanning Mesoamerica from the Pacific to
the Atlantic oceans.

The empire reached its maximum extent in 1519, just before the arrival of a small group of Spanish
conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés. Cortés allied with city-states opposed to the Mexica, particularly the
Nahuatl-speaking Tlaxcalteca as well as other central Mexican polities, including Texcoco, its former ally in
the Triple Alliance. After the fall of Tenochtitlan on 13 August 1521 and the capture of the emperor
Cuauhtémoc, the Spanish founded Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. From there, they proceeded
with the process of conquest and incorporation of Mesoamerican peoples into the Spanish Empire. With the
destruction of the superstructure of the Aztec Empire in 1521, the Spanish used the city-states on which the
Aztec Empire had been built to rule the indigenous populations via their local nobles. Those nobles pledged
loyalty to the Spanish crown and converted, at least nominally, to Christianity, and, in return, were
recognized as nobles by the Spanish crown. Nobles acted as intermediaries to convey taxes and mobilize
labor for their new overlords, facilitating the establishment of Spanish colonial rule.[10]

Aztec culture and history are primarily known through archaeological evidence found in excavations such
as that of the renowned Templo Mayor in Mexico City; from Indigenous writings; from eyewitness
accounts by Spanish conquistadors such as Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo; and especially from 16th-
and 17th-century descriptions of Aztec culture and history written by Spanish clergymen and literate Aztecs
in the Spanish or Nahuatl language, such as the famous illustrated, bilingual (Spanish and Nahuatl), twelve-
volume Florentine Codex created by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, in collaboration with
Indigenous Aztec informants. Important for knowledge of post-conquest Nahuas was the training of
indigenous scribes to write alphabetic texts in Nahuatl, mainly for local purposes under Spanish colonial
rule. At its height, Aztec culture had rich and complex philosophical, mythological, and religious traditions,
as well as remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments.

Definitions
The Nahuatl words aztēcatl (Nahuatl pronunciation: [asˈteːkat͡ɬ],
singular)[11] and aztēcah (Nahuatl pronunciation: [asˈteːkaʔ], plural)[11]
mean "people from Aztlán",[12] a mythical place of origin for several
ethnic groups in central Mexico. The term was not used as an endonym
by the Aztecs themselves, but it is found in the different migration
accounts of the Mexica, where it describes the different tribes who left
Aztlan together. In one account of the journey from Aztlan,
Huitzilopochtli, the tutelary deity of the Mexica tribe, tells his followers on Aztec metal axe blades. Prior
the journey that "now, no longer is your name Azteca, you are now of the arrival of the European
settlers, see: Metallurgy in
Mexitin [Mexica]".[13]
pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

In today's usage, the term "Aztec" often refers exclusively to the Mexica
people of Tenochtitlan (now the location of Mexico City), situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who
referred to themselves as Mēxihcah (Nahuatl pronunciation: [meːˈʃiʔkaʔ], a tribal designation that included the
Tlatelolco), Tenochcah (Nahuatl pronunciation: [teˈnot͡ʃkaʔ], referring only
to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, excluding Tlatelolco) or Cōlhuah (Nahuatl
pronunciation: [ˈkoːlwaʔ], referring to their royal genealogy tying them to
Culhuacan).[14][15][nb 1][nb 2]

Sometimes the term also includes the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan's two

principal allied city-states, the Acolhuas of Texcoco and the Tepanecs of
Tlacopan, who together with the Mexica formed the Aztec Triple Alliance
that controlled what is often known as the "Aztec Empire". The usage of
the term "Aztec" in describing the empire centered in Tenochtitlan has
been criticized by Robert H. Barlow, who preferred the term "Culhua-
Mexica",[14][16] and by Pedro Carrasco, who prefers the term "Tenochca
empire".[17] Carrasco writes about the term "Aztec" that "it is of no use
for understanding the ethnic complexity of ancient Mexico and for
identifying the dominant element in the political entity we are
studying".[17]
Large ceramic statue of an
In other contexts, Aztec may refer to all the various city-states and their Aztec eagle warrior
peoples, who shared large parts of their ethnic history and cultural traits
with the Mexica, Acolhua, and Tepanecs, and who often also used the
Nahuatl language as a lingua franca. An example is Jerome A. Offner's Law and Politics in Aztec
Texcoco.[18] In this meaning, it is possible to talk about an "Aztec civilization" including all the particular
cultural patterns common for most of the peoples inhabiting central Mexico in the late postclassic period.[19]
Such usage may also extend the term "Aztec" to all the groups in Central Mexico that were incorporated
culturally or politically into the sphere of dominance of the Aztec empire.[20][nb 3]

When used to describe ethnic groups, the term "Aztec" refers to several Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central
Mexico in the postclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology, especially the Mexica, the ethnic group that
had a leading role in establishing the hegemonic empire based at Tenochtitlan. The term extends to further
ethnic groups associated with the Aztec empire, such as the Acolhua, the Tepanec, and others that were
incorporated into the empire. Charles Gibson enumerates many groups in central Mexico that he includes in
his study The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (1964). These include the Culhuaque, Cuitlahuaque, Mixquica,
Xochimilca, Chalca, Tepaneca, Acolhuaque, and Mexica.[21]

In older usage, the term was commonly used about modern Nahuatl-speaking ethnic groups, as Nahuatl
was previously referred to as the "Aztec language". In recent usage, these ethnic groups are referred to as
the Nahua peoples.[22][23] Linguistically, the term "Aztecan" is still used about the branch of the Uto-
Aztecan languages (also sometimes called the Uto-Nahuan languages) that includes the Nahuatl language
and its closest relatives Pochutec and Pipil.[24]

To the Aztecs themselves the word "Aztec" was not an endonym for any particular ethnic group. Rather, it
was an umbrella term used to refer to several ethnic groups, not all of them Nahuatl-speaking, that claimed
heritage from the mythic place of origin, Aztlan. Alexander von Humboldt originated the modern usage of
"Aztec" in 1810, as a collective term applied to all the people linked by trade, custom, religion, and
language to the Mexica state and the Triple Alliance. In 1843, with the publication of the work of William
H. Prescott on the history of the conquest of Mexico, the term was adopted by most of the world, including
19th-century Mexican scholars who saw it as a way to distinguish present-day Mexicans from pre-conquest
Mexicans. This usage has been the subject of debate in more recent years, but the term "Aztec" is still more
common.[15]

History

Sources of knowledge
Knowledge of Aztec society rests on several different sources: The many
archeological remains of everything from temple pyramids to thatched
huts can be used to understand many of the aspects of what the Aztec
world was like. However, archeologists often must rely on knowledge
from other sources to interpret the historical context of artifacts. There are
many written texts by the indigenous people and Spaniards of the early
colonial period that contain invaluable information about pre-colonial
Aztec history. These texts provide insight into the political histories of
various Aztec city-states, and their ruling lineages. Such histories were
produced as well in pictorial codices. Some of these manuscripts were A page from the Codex
entirely pictorial, often with glyphs. In the postconquest era, many other Boturini depicting the
departure from Aztlán
texts were written in Latin script by either literate Aztecs or by Spanish
friars who interviewed the native people about their customs and stories.
An important pictorial and alphabetic text produced in the early sixteenth century was Codex Mendoza,
named after the first viceroy of Mexico and perhaps commissioned by him, to inform the Spanish crown
about the political and economic structure of the Aztec empire. It has information naming the polities that
the Triple Alliance conquered, the types of taxes rendered to the Aztec Empire, and the class/gender
structure of their society.[25] Many written annals exist, written by local Nahua historians recording the
histories of their polity. These annals used pictorial histories and were subsequently transformed into
alphabetic annals in Latin script.[26] Well-known native chroniclers and annalists are Chimalpahin of
Amecameca-Chalco; Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc of Tenochtitlan; Alva Ixtlilxochitl of Texcoco, Juan
Bautista Pomar of Texcoco, and Diego Muñoz Camargo of Tlaxcala. There are also many accounts by
Spanish conquerors who participated in the Spanish invasion, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo who wrote a
full history of the conquest.

Spanish friars also produced documentation in chronicles and other types of accounts. Of key importance is
Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, one of the first twelve Franciscans arriving in Mexico in 1524. Another
Franciscan of great importance was Fray Juan de Torquemada, author of Monarquia Indiana. Dominican
Diego Durán also wrote extensively about pre-Hispanic religion as well as the history of the Mexica.[27] An
invaluable source of information about many aspects of Aztec religious thought, political and social
structure, as well as the history of the Spanish conquest from the Mexica viewpoint is the Florentine Codex.
Produced between 1545 and 1576 in the form of an ethnographic encyclopedia written bilingually in
Spanish and Nahuatl, by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and indigenous informants and scribes, it
contains knowledge about many aspects of precolonial society from religion, calendrics, botany, zoology,
trades and crafts and history.[28][29] Another source of knowledge is the cultures and customs of the
contemporary Nahuatl speakers who can often provide insights into what prehispanic ways of life may have
been like. Scholarly study of Aztec civilization is most often based on scientific and multidisciplinary
methodologies, combining archeological knowledge with ethnohistorical and ethnographic information.[30]

Central Mexico in the classic and postclassic

It is a matter of debate whether the enormous city
of Teotihuacan was inhabited by speakers of
Nahuatl, or whether Nahuas had not yet arrived in
central Mexico in the classic period. It is generally
agreed that the Nahua peoples were not
indigenous to the highlands of central Mexico, but
that they gradually migrated into the region from
somewhere in northwestern Mexico. At the fall of
Teotihuacan in the 6th century CE, some city-
states rose to power in central Mexico, some of
them, including Cholula and Xochicalco,
probably inhabited by Nahuatl speakers. One
study has suggested that Nahuas originally
inhabited the Bajío area around Guanajuato which
reached a population peak in the 6th century, after
which the population quickly diminished during a
subsequent dry period. This depopulation of the
Bajío coincided with an incursion of new
populations into the Valley of Mexico, which
suggests that this marks the influx of Nahuatl
speakers into the region.[31] These people
populated central Mexico, dislocating speakers of The Valley of Mexico with the locations of the main city-
Oto-Manguean languages as they spread their states in 1519
political influence south. As the former nomadic
hunter-gatherer peoples mixed with the complex
civilizations of Mesoamerica, adopting religious and cultural practices, the foundation for later Aztec culture
was laid. After 900 CE, during the postclassic period, many sites almost certainly inhabited by Nahuatl
speakers became powerful. Among them are the site of Tula, Hidalgo, and also city-states such as
Tenayuca, and Colhuacan in the valley of Mexico and Cuauhnahuac in Morelos.[32]

Mexica migration and foundation of Tenochtitlan

In the ethnohistorical sources from the colonial period, the Mexica themselves describe their arrival in the
Valley of Mexico. The ethnonym Aztec (Nahuatl Aztecah) means "people from Aztlan", Aztlan being a
mythical place of origin toward the north. Hence the term applied to all those peoples who claimed to carry
the heritage from this mythical place. The migration stories of the Mexica tribe tell how they traveled with
other tribes, including the Tlaxcalteca, Tepaneca, and Acolhua, but that eventually their tribal deity
Huitzilopochtli told them to split from the other Aztec tribes and take on the name "Mexica".[33] At the time
of their arrival, there were many Aztec city-states in the region. The most powerful were Colhuacan to the
south and Azcapotzalco to the west. The Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco soon expelled the Mexica from
Chapultepec and executed the first Aztec royal family except Queen Chimalxochitl II. In 1299, Colhuacan
ruler Cocoxtli permitted them to settle in the empty barrens of Tizapan, where they were eventually
assimilated into Culhuacan culture.[34] The noble lineage of Colhuacan traced its roots back to the
legendary city-state of Tula, and by marrying into Colhua families, the Mexica now appropriated this
heritage. After living in Colhuacan, the Mexica were again expelled and were forced to move.[35]

According to Aztec legend, in 1323, the Mexica were shown a vision of an eagle perched on a prickly pear
cactus, eating a snake. The vision indicated the location where they were to build their settlement. The
Mexica founded Tenochtitlan on a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco, the inland lake of the Basin of
Mexico. The year of foundation is usually given as 1325. In 1376 the Mexica royal dynasty was founded
when Acamapichtli, son of a Mexica father and a Colhua mother, was elected as the first Huey Tlatoani of
Tenochtitlan. [36]

Early Mexica rulers

In the first 50 years after the founding of the Mexica dynasty, the Mexica were a tributary of Azcapotzalco,
which had become a major regional power under the ruler Tezozomoc. The Mexica supplied the Tepaneca
with warriors for their successful conquest campaigns in the region and received part of the tribute from the
conquered city-states. In this way, the political standing and economy of Tenochtitlan gradually grew.[37]

In 1396, at Acamapichtli's death, his son Huitzilihhuitl (lit. "Hummingbird feather") became ruler; married
to Tezozomoc's daughter, the relationship with Azcapotzalco remained close. Chimalpopoca (lit. "She
smokes like a shield"), son of Huitzilihhuitl, became ruler of Tenochtitlan in 1417. In 1418, Azcapotzalco
initiated a war against the Acolhua of Texcoco and killed their ruler Ixtlilxochitl. Even though Ixtlilxochitl
was married to Chimalpopoca's daughter, the Mexica ruler continued to support Tezozomoc. Tezozomoc
died in 1426, and his sons began a struggle for the rulership of Azcapotzalco. During this power struggle,
Chimalpopoca died, probably killed by Tezozomoc's son Maxtla who saw him as a competitor.[38] Itzcoatl,
brother of Huitzilihhuitl and uncle of Chimalpopoca, was elected the next Mexica tlatoani. The Mexica
were now in open war with Azcapotzalco and Itzcoatl petitioned for an alliance with Nezahualcoyotl, son
of the slain Texcocan ruler Ixtlilxochitl against Maxtla. Itzcoatl also allied with Maxtla's brother
Totoquihuaztli ruler of the Tepanec city of Tlacopan. The Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and
Tlacopan besieged Azcapotzalco, and in 1428 they destroyed the city and sacrificed Maxtla. Through this
victory, Tenochtitlan became the dominant city-state in the Valley of Mexico, and the alliance between the
three city-states provided the basis on which the Aztec Empire was built.[39]

Itzcoatl proceeded by securing a power basis for Tenochtitlan, by conquering the city-states on the southern
lake – including Culhuacan, Xochimilco, Cuitlahuac, and Mizquic. These states had an economy based on
highly productive chinampa agriculture, cultivating human-made extensions of rich soil in the shallow lake
Xochimilco. Itzcoatl then undertook further conquests in the valley of Morelos, subjecting the city-state of
Cuauhnahuac (today Cuernavaca).[40]

Early rulers of the Aztec Empire

Motecuzoma I Ilhuicamina
In 1440, Moteuczomatzin Ilhuicamina[nb 4] (lit. "he frowns like a lord, he shoots the sky"[nb 5]) was elected
tlatoani; he was the son of Huitzilihhuitl, brother of Chimalpopoca and had served as the war leader of his
uncle Itzcoatl in the war against the Tepanecs. The accession of a new ruler in the dominant city-state was
 often an occasion for subjected cities to rebel by refusing to pay
taxes. This meant that new rulers began their rule with a coronation
campaign, often against rebellious provinces, but also sometimes
demonstrating their military might by making new conquests.
Motecuzoma tested the attitudes of the cities around the valley by
requesting laborers for the enlargement of the Great Temple of
Tenochtitlan. Only the city of Chalco refused to provide laborers,
and hostilities between Chalco and Tenochtitlan would persist until
the 1450s.[41][42] Motecuzoma then reconquered the cities in the
The coronation of Moctezuma I,
Tovar Codex
valley of Morelos and Guerrero, and then later undertook new
conquests in the Huaxtec region of northern Veracruz, and the
Mixtec region of Coixtlahuaca and large parts of Oaxaca, and later
again in central and southern Veracruz with conquests at Cosamalopan, Ahuilizapan, and Cuetlaxtlan.[43]
During this period the city-states of Tlaxcalan, Cholula and Huexotzinco emerged as major competitors to
the imperial expansion, and they supplied warriors to several of the cities conquered. Motecuzoma therefore
initiated a state of low-intensity warfare against these three cities, staging minor skirmishes called "Flower
Wars" (Nahuatl xochiyaoyotl) against them, perhaps as a strategy of exhaustion.[44][45]

Motecuzoma I also consolidated the political structure of the Triple Alliance and the internal political
organization of Tenochtitlan. His brother Tlacaelel served as his main advisor (Nahuatl languages:
Cihuacoatl) and he is considered the architect of major political reforms in this period, consolidating the
power of the noble class (Nahuatl languages: pipiltin) and instituting a set of legal codes, and the practice of
reinstating conquered rulers in their cities bound by fealty to the Mexica tlatoani. [46][47][44]

Axayacatl and Tizoc

In 1469, the next ruler was Axayacatl (lit. "Water mask"), son of Itzcoatl's son Tezozomoc and
Motecuzoma I's daughter Atotoztli II.[nb 6] He undertook a successful coronation campaign far south of
Tenochtitlan against the Zapotecs in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Axayacatl also conquered the independent
Mexica city of Tlatelolco, located on the northern part of the island where Tenochtitlan was also located.
The Tlatelolco ruler Moquihuix was married to Axayacatl's sister, and his alleged mistreatment of her was
used as an excuse to incorporate Tlatelolco and its important market directly under the control of the tlatoani
of Tenochtitlan.[48]

Axayacatl then conquered areas in Central Guerrero, the Puebla Valley, on the gulf coast and against the
Otomi and Matlatzinca in the Toluca Valley. The Toluca Valley was a buffer zone against the powerful
Tarascan state in Michoacan, against which Axayacatl turned next. In the major campaign against the
Tarascans (Nahuatl languages: Michhuahqueh) in 1478–1479 the Aztec forces were repelled by a well-
organized defense. Axayacatl was soundly defeated in a battle at Tlaximaloyan (today Tajimaroa), losing
most of his 32,000 men and only barely escaping back to Tenochtitlan with the remnants of his army.[49]

In 1481 at Axayacatls death, his older brother Tizoc was elected ruler. Tizoc's coronation campaign against
the Otomi of Metztitlan failed as he lost the major battle and only managed to secure 40 prisoners to be
sacrificed for his coronation ceremony. Having shown weakness, many cities rebelled and consequently,
most of Tizoc's short reign was spent attempting to quell rebellions and maintain control of areas conquered
by his predecessors. Tizoc died suddenly in 1485, and it has been suggested that he was poisoned by his
brother and war leader Ahuitzotl who became the next tlatoani. Tizoc is mostly known as the namesake of
the Stone of Tizoc a monumental sculpture (Nahuatl temalacatl), decorated with a representation of Tizoc's
conquests.[50]

Ahuitzotl
The next ruler was Ahuitzotl (lit. "Water monster"), brother of Axayacatl
and Tizoc and war leader under Tizoc. His successful coronation
campaign suppressed rebellions in the Toluca Valley and conquered
Jilotepec and several communities in the northern Valley of Mexico. A
second 1521 campaign to the gulf coast was also highly successful. He
began an enlargement of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan, inaugurating
the new temple in 1487. For the inauguration ceremony, the Mexica
invited the rulers of all their subject cities, who participated as spectators
in the ceremony in which an unprecedented number of war captives were
sacrificed – some sources giving a figure of 80,400 prisoners sacrificed
over four days. Probably the actual figure of sacrifices was much smaller,
Ahuitzotl in Codex Mendoza but still numbering several thousand. There have never been found
enough skulls in the capital to satisfy even the most conservative
figures.[51] Ahuitzotl also constructed monumental architecture in sites
such as Calixtlahuaca, Malinalco, and Tepoztlan. After a rebellion in the towns of Alahuiztlan and
Oztoticpac in Northern Guerrero, he ordered the entire population executed and repopulated with people
from the valley of Mexico. He also constructed a fortified garrison at Oztuma defending the border against
the Tarascan state.[52]

Final Aztec rulers and the Spanish conquest

Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin is known to world history as the Aztec
ruler when the Spanish invaders and their indigenous allies began
their conquest of the empire in a two-year-long campaign (1519–
1521). His early rule did not hint at his future fame. He succeeded
in the rulership after the death of Ahuitzotl. Motecuhzoma
Xocoyotzin (lit. "He frowns like a lord, the youngest child who is
dead as he had lived in life but not death"), was a son of Axayacatl,
and a war leader. He began his rule in standard fashion, conducting
a coronation campaign to demonstrate his skills as a leader. He
The meeting of Moctezuma II and
attacked the fortified city of Nopallan in Oaxaca and subjected the
Hernán Cortés, with his cultural
adjacent region to the empire. An effective warrior, Moctezuma translator La Malinche, 8 November
maintained the pace of conquest set by his predecessor and 1519, as depicted in the Lienzo de
subjected large areas in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, and even far Tlaxcala
south along the Pacific and Gulf coasts, conquering the province of
Xoconochco in Chiapas. he also intensified the flower wars waged
against Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco and secured an alliance with Cholula. He also consolidated the class
structure of Aztec society, by making it harder for commoners (Nahuatl languages: macehualtin) to accede
to the privileged class of the pipiltin through merit in combat. He also instituted a strict sumptuary code
limiting the types of luxury goods that could be consumed by commoners.[53]
 In 1517, Moctezuma received the first news of
ships with strange warriors having landed on the
Gulf Coast near Cempoallan and he dispatched
messengers to greet them and find out what was
happening, and he ordered his subjects in the area
to keep him informed of any new arrivals. In
1519, he was informed of the arrival of the
Spanish fleet of Hernán Cortés, who soon
marched toward Tlaxcala where he allied with the
traditional enemies of the Aztecs. On 8 November
1519, Moctezuma II received Cortés and his
"The Martyrdom of Cuauhtémoc", (1892) painting by
troops and Tlaxcalan allies on the causeway south
Leandro Izaguirre
of Tenochtitlan, and he invited the Spaniards to
stay as his guests in Tenochtitlan. When Aztec
troops destroyed a Spanish camp on the Gulf Coast, Cortés ordered Moctezuma to execute the commanders
responsible for the attack, and Moctezuma complied. At this point, the power balance had shifted toward
the Spaniards who now held Moctezuma as a prisoner in his palace. As this shift in power became clear to
Moctezuma's subjects, the Spaniards became increasingly unwelcome in the capital city, and, in June 1520,
hostilities broke out, culminating in the massacre in the Great Temple, and a major uprising of the Mexica
against the Spanish. During the fighting, Moctezuma was killed, either by the Spaniards who killed him as
they fled the city, or by the Mexica themselves who considered him a traitor.[54]

Cuitláhuac, a kinsman and adviser to Moctezuma, succeeded him as tlatoani, mounting the defense of
Tenochtitlan against the Spanish invaders and their indigenous allies. He ruled for only 80 days, perhaps
dying in a smallpox epidemic, although early sources do not give the cause. He was succeeded by
Cuauhtémoc, the last independent Mexica tlatoani, who continued the fierce defense of Tenochtitlan. The
Aztecs were weakened by disease, and the Spanish enlisted tens of thousands of Indian allies, especially
Tlaxcalans, for the assault on Tenochtitlan. After the siege and destruction of the Aztec capital, Cuauhtémoc
was captured on 13 August 1521, marking the beginning of Spanish hegemony in central Mexico.
Spaniards held Cuauhtémoc captive until he was tortured and executed on the orders of Cortés, supposedly
for treason, during an ill-fated expedition to Honduras in 1525. His death marked the end of a tumultuous
era in Aztec political history.

After the fall of the Aztec Empire, entire Nahua communities were subject to forced labor under the
encomienda system, the Aztec education system was abolished and replaced by a very limited church
education, and Aztec religious practices were forcibly replaced with Catholicism.

Political and social organization

Nobles and commoners

The highest class was the pīpiltin[nb 7] or nobility. The pilli status was hereditary and ascribed certain
privileges to its holders, such as the right to wear particularly fine garments and consume luxury goods, as
well as to own land and direct corvee labor by commoners. The most powerful nobles were called lords
 (Nahuatl languages: teuctin)
and they owned and
controlled noble estates or
houses, and could serve in
the highest government
Aztec 'high lords', who were in the positions or as military
top social class. leaders. Nobles made up
about five percent of the
population.[55]

The second class was the mācehualtin, originally peasants, but later
extended to the lower working classes in general. Eduardo Noguera
estimates that in later stages only 20 percent of the population was
dedicated to agriculture and food production.[56] The other 80
percent of society were warriors, artisans, and traders. Eventually,
most of the mācehuallis were dedicated to arts and crafts. Their
Folio from the Codex Mendoza
works were an important source of income for the city.[57]
showing a commoner advancing
Macehualtin could become enslaved, (Nahuatl languages: tlacotin) through the ranks by taking captives
for example if they had to sell themselves into the service of a noble in war. Each attire can be achieved
due to debt or poverty, but enslavement was not an inherited status by taking a certain number of
among the Aztecs. Some macehualtin were landless and worked captives.
directly for a lord (Nahuatl languages: mayehqueh), whereas the
majority of commoners were organized into calpollis which gave
them access to land and property.[58]

Commoners were able to obtain privileges similar to those of the nobles by

demonstrating prowess in warfare. When a warrior took a captive he accrued the
right to use certain emblems, weapons, or garments, and as he took more captives his
rank and prestige increased.[59]

Family and gender Jaguar warrior

The Aztec family pattern was bilateral, counting relatives on the father's and mother's uniform as tax
side of the family equally, and inheritance was also passed both to sons and pay method, from
Codex Mendoza
daughters. This meant that women could own property just as men and that women
therefore had a good deal of economic freedom from their spouses. Nevertheless,
Aztec society was highly gendered with separate gender roles for men and women. Men were expected to
work outside of the house, as farmers, traders, craftsmen, and warriors, whereas women were expected to
take responsibility for the domestic sphere. Women could however also work outside of the home as small-
scale merchants, doctors, priests, and midwives. Warfare was highly valued and a source of high prestige,
but women's work was metaphorically conceived of as equivalent to warfare, and as equally important in
maintaining the equilibrium of the world and pleasing the gods. This situation has led some scholars to
describe Aztec gender ideology as an ideology not of a gender hierarchy, but of gender complementarity,
with gender roles being separate but equal.[60]
 Among the nobles, marriage alliances were often used as a political
strategy with lesser nobles marrying daughters from more
prestigious lineages whose status was then inherited by their
children. Nobles were also often polygamous, with lords having
many wives. Polygamy was not very common among the
commoners and some sources describe it as being prohibited.[61]

Altepetl and calpolli

The main unit of Aztec political organization was the city-state, in
Nahuatl called the altepetl, meaning "water-mountain". Each
altepetl was led by a ruler, a tlatoani, with authority over a group of
nobles and a population of commoners. The altepetl included a
capital that served as a religious center, the hub of distribution and
organization of a local population that often lived spread out in
minor settlements surrounding the capital. Altepetl was also the
Folio from the Codex Mendoza
main source of ethnic identity for the inhabitants, even though
showing the rearing and education of
Aztec boys and girls in an ages list,
Altepetl was frequently composed of groups speaking different
how they were instructed in different languages. Each altepetl would see itself as standing in political
types of labor, and how they were contrast to other altepetl polities, and war was waged between
harshly punished for misbehavior altepetl states. In this way, Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs of one Altepetl
would be solidary with speakers of other languages belonging to
the same altepetl, but enemies of Nahuatl speakers belonging to
other competing altepetl states. In the basin of Mexico, altepetl was
composed of subdivisions called calpolli, which served as the main
organizational unit for commoners. In Tlaxcala and the Puebla
valley, the altepetl was organized into teccalli units headed by a lord
(Nahuatl languages: tecutli), who would hold sway over a territory
and distribute rights to land among the commoners. A calpolli was
at once a territorial unit where commoners organized labor and land
use since the land was not private property, and also often a kinship
Pre-Hispanic "Tepeyac" Road of city-
unit as a network of families that were related through
state of Tlatelolco ruins with semi-
underground unidentified small and
intermarriage. Calpolli leaders might be or become members of the
simple buildings, probably houses nobility, in which case they could represent their Calpolli interests
(left). Tlatelolco archaeological site. in the altepetl government.[62][63]

In the valley of Morelos, archeologist Michael E. Smith estimates

that a typical altepetl had from 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants, and covered an area between 70 and 100
square kilometers (27 and 39 sq mi). In the Morelos Valley, altepetl sizes were somewhat smaller. Smith
argues that the altepetl was primarily a political unit, made up of the population with allegiance to a lord,
rather than as a territorial unit. He makes this distinction because in some areas minor settlements with
different altepetl allegiances were interspersed.[64]

Triple Alliance and Aztec Empire

The Aztec Empire was ruled by indirect means.
Like most European empires, it was ethnically
very diverse, but unlike most European empires, it
was more of a hegemonic confederacy than a
single system of government. Ethnohistorian Ross
Hassig has argued that the Aztec empire is best
understood as an informal or hegemonic empire
because it did not exert supreme authority over the
conquered lands; it merely expected taxes to be
paid and exerted force only to the degree it was
necessary to ensure the payment of taxes.[65] It
was also a discontinuous empire because not all
dominated territories were connected; for
The maximal extent of the Aztec Empire
example, the southern peripheral zones of
Xoconochco were not in direct contact with the
center. The hegemonic nature of the Aztec empire can be seen in the fact that generally local rulers were
restored to their positions once their city-state was conquered, and the Aztecs did not generally interfere in
local affairs as long as the tax payments were made and the local elites participated willingly. Such
compliance was secured by establishing and maintaining a network of elites, related through intermarriage
and different forms of exchange.[65]

Nevertheless, the expansion of the empire was accomplished through military control of frontier zones, in
strategic provinces where a much more direct approach to conquest and control was taken. Such strategic
provinces were often exempt from taxation. The Aztecs even invested in those areas, by maintaining a
permanent military presence, installing puppet rulers, or even moving entire populations from the center to
maintain a loyal base of support.[66] In this way, the Aztec system of government distinguished between
different strategies of control in the outer regions of the empire, far from the core in the Valley of Mexico.
Some provinces were treated as subject provinces, which provided the basis for economic stability for the
empire, and strategic provinces, which were the basis for further expansion.[67]

Although the form of government is often referred to as an empire, most areas within the empire were
organized as city-states, known as altepetl in Nahuatl. These were small polities ruled by a hereditary leader
(tlatoani) from a legitimate noble dynasty. The Early Aztec period was a time of growth and competition
among altepetl. Even after the confederation of the Triple Alliance was formed in 1427 and began its
expansion through conquest, the altepetl remained the dominant form of organization at the local level. The
efficient role of the altepetl as a regional political unit was largely responsible for the success of the empire's
hegemonic form of control.[68]

Economy

Agriculture and subsistence

Like all Mesoamerican peoples, Aztec society was organized around maize agriculture. The humid
environment in the Valley of Mexico with its many lakes and swamps permitted intensive agriculture. The
main crops in addition to maize were beans, squashes, chilies, and amaranth. Particularly important for
agricultural production in the valley was the construction of
chinampas on the lake, artificial islands that allowed the conversion
of the shallow waters into highly fertile gardens that could be
cultivated year-round. Chinampas are human-made extensions of
agricultural land, created from alternating layers of mud from the
bottom of the lake, and plant matter and other vegetation. These
raised beds were separated by narrow canals, which allowed
farmers to move between them by canoe. Chinampas were
extremely fertile pieces of land, and yielded, on average, seven
crops annually. Based on current chinampa yields, it has been
estimated that one hectare (2.5 acres) of chinampa would feed 20
individuals and 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) of chinampas could
feed 180,000.[69]

The Aztecs further intensified agricultural production by

constructing systems of artificial irrigation. While most of the
farming occurred outside the densely populated areas, within the
Cultivation of maize, the main
cities there was another method of (small-scale) farming. Each foodstuff, using simple tools.
family had a garden plot where they grew maize, fruits, herbs, Florentine Codex
medicines, and other important plants. When the city of
Tenochtitlan became a major urban center, water was supplied to
the city through aqueducts from springs on the banks of the lake, and they organized a system that collected
human waste for use as fertilizer. Through intensive agriculture, the Aztecs were able to sustain a large
urbanized population. The lake was also a rich source of proteins in the form of aquatic animals such as
fish, amphibians, shrimp, insects and insect eggs, and waterfowl. The presence of such varied sources of
protein meant that there was little use for domestic animals for meat (only turkeys and dogs were kept), and
scholars have calculated that there was no shortage of protein among the inhabitants of the Valley of
Mexico.[70]

Crafts and trades

The excess supply of food products allowed a significant portion of the
Aztec population to dedicate themselves to trades other than food
production. Apart from taking care of domestic food production, women
weaved textiles from agave fibers and cotton. Men also engaged in craft
specializations such as the production of ceramics and obsidian and flint
tools and of luxury goods such as beadwork, featherwork, and the
elaboration of tools and musical instruments. Sometimes entire calpollis
specialized in a single craft, and in some archeological sites large
neighborhoods have been found where- only a single craft specialty was
Typical Aztec black on orange
practiced.[71][72]
ceramic ware
The Aztecs did not produce much metalwork but did have knowledge of basic smelting technology for
gold, and they combined gold with precious stones such as jade and turquoise. Copper products were
generally imported from the Tarascans of Michoacan.[73]

Trade and distribution

Products were distributed through a network of markets; some
markets specialized in a single commodity (e.g., the dog market of
Acolman), and other general markets with the presence of many
different goods. Markets were highly organized with a system of
supervisors taking care that only authorized merchants were
permitted to sell their goods, and punishing those who cheated their
customers or sold substandard or counterfeit goods. A typical town
would have a weekly market (every five days), while larger cities
held markets every day. Cortés reported that the central market of Diorama model of the Aztec market
Tlatelolco, Tenochtitlan's sister city, was visited by 60,000 people at Tlatelolco
daily. Some sellers in the markets were petty vendors; farmers might
sell some of their produce, potters sold their vessels, and so on.
Other vendors were professional merchants who traveled from market to market seeking profits.[74]

The pochteca were specialized long-distance merchants organized into exclusive guilds. They made long
expeditions to all parts of Mesoamerica bringing back exotic luxury goods, and they served as the judges
and supervisors of the Tlatelolco market. Although the economy of Aztec Mexico was commercialized (in
its use of money, markets, and merchants), land and labor were not generally commodities for sale, though
some types of land could be sold between nobles.[75] In the commercial sector of the economy, several
types of money were in regular use.[76] Small purchases were made with cacao beans, which had to be
imported from lowland areas. In Aztec marketplaces, a small rabbit was worth 30 beans, a turkey egg cost
three beans, and a tamal cost a single bean. For larger purchases, standardized lengths of cotton cloth, called
quachtli, were used. There were different grades of quachtli, ranging in value from 65 to 300 cacao beans.
About 20 quachtli could support a commoner for one year in Tenochtitlan.[77]

Taxation
Another form of distribution of goods was through the payment of taxes. When an altepetl was conquered,
the victor imposed a yearly tax, usually paid in the form of whichever local product was most valuable or
treasured. Several pages from the Codex Mendoza list subject towns along with the goods they supplied,
which included not only luxuries such as feathers, adorned suits, and greenstone beads, but more practical
goods such as cloth, firewood, and food. Taxes were usually paid twice or four times a year at differing
times.[25]

Archaeological excavations in the Aztec-ruled provinces show that incorporation into the empire had both
costs and benefits for provincial peoples. On the positive side, the empire promoted commerce and trade,
and exotic goods from obsidian to bronze managed to reach the houses of both commoners and nobles.
Trade partners also included the enemy Purépecha (also known as Tarascans), a source of bronze tools and
jewelry. On the negative side, imperial taxes imposed a burden on commoner households, who had to
increase their work to pay their share of taxes. Nobles, on the other hand, often made out well under the
imperial rule because of the indirect nature of imperial organization.
The empire had to rely on local kings and nobles and offered them
privileges for their help in maintaining order and keeping the tax
revenue flowing.[78]

Urbanism
Aztec society combined a relatively simple agrarian rural tradition
with the development of a truly urbanized society with a complex
system of institutions, specializations, and hierarchies. The urban
tradition in Mesoamerica was developed during the classic period
with major urban centers such as Teotihuacan with a population
well above 100,000, and, at the time of the rise of the Aztecs, the
urban tradition was ingrained in Mesoamerican society, with urban
centers serving major religious, political and economic functions for
A folio from the Codex Mendoza
the entire population.[79]
showing the tribute paid to
Tenochtitlan in exotic trade goods by
the altepetl of Xoconochco on the
Mexico-Tenochtitlan
Pacific coast
The capital city of the Aztec empire was Tenochtitlan, now the site
of modern-day Mexico
City. Built on a series of
islets in Lake Texcoco, the
city plan was based on a
symmetrical layout that was
divided into four city
sections called campan
(directions). Tenochtitlan
Mexico-Tenochtitlan urban standard, was built according to a
Templo Mayor Museum fixed plan and centered on
the ritual precinct, where
the Great Pyramid of
Tenochtitlan rose 50 meters (160 ft) above the city. Houses were
made of wood and loam, and roofs were made of reed, although
pyramids, temples, and palaces were generally made of stone. The
city was interlaced with canals, which were useful for
transportation. Anthropologist Eduardo Noguera estimated the
population at 200,000 based on the house count and merging the
population of Tlatelolco (once an independent city, but later became
a suburb of Tenochtitlan).[69] If one includes the surrounding islets Map of the Island city of Tenochtitlan
and shores surrounding Lake Texcoco, estimates range from
300,000 to 700,000 inhabitants. Michael E. Smith gives a
somewhat smaller figure of 212,500 inhabitants of Tenochtitlan based on an area of 1,350 hectares (3,300
acres) and a population density of 157 inhabitants per hectare (60/acre). The second largest city in the valley
of Mexico in the Aztec period was Texcoco with some 25,000 inhabitants dispersed over 450 hectares
(1,100 acres).[80]
The center of Tenochtitlan was the sacred precinct, a walled-off square area that housed the Great Temple,
temples for other deities, the ballcourt, the calmecac (a school for nobles), a skull rack tzompantli,
displaying the skulls of sacrificial victims, houses of the warrior orders and a merchants palace. Around the
sacred precinct were the royal palaces built by the tlatoanis.[81]

The Great Temple

The centerpiece of Tenochtitlan was the Templo Mayor, the Great
Temple, a large stepped pyramid with a double staircase leading up
to two twin shrines – one dedicated to Tlaloc, the other to
Huitzilopochtli. This was where most of the human sacrifices were
carried out during the ritual festivals and the bodies of sacrificial
victims were thrown down the stairs. The temple was enlarged in
several stages, and most of the Aztec rulers made a point of adding
a further stage, each with a new dedication and inauguration. The
Great Temple in Historic center of temple has been excavated in the center of Mexico City and the rich
Mexico City dedicatory offerings are displayed in the Museum of the Templo
Mayor.[82]

Archeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, in his essay Symbolism of the Templo Mayor, posits that the
orientation of the temple is indicative of the totality of the vision the Mexica had of the universe
(cosmovision). He states that the "principal center, or navel, where the horizontal and vertical planes
intersect, that is, the point from which the heavenly or upper plane and the plane of the Underworld begin
and the four directions of the universe originate, is the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan". Matos Moctezuma
supports his supposition by claiming that the temple acts as an embodiment of a living myth where "all
sacred power is concentrated and where all the levels intersect".[83][84]

Other major city-states

Other major Aztec cities were some of the previous city-state centers around the lake including Tenayuca,
Azcapotzalco, Texcoco, Colhuacan, Tlacopan, Chapultepec, Coyoacan, Xochimilco, and Chalco. In the
Puebla Valley, Cholula was the largest city with the largest pyramid temple in Mesoamerica, while the
confederacy of Tlaxcala consisted of four smaller cities. In Morelos, Cuahnahuac was a major city of the
Nahuatl-speaking Tlahuica tribe, and Tollocan in the Toluca Valley was the capital of the Matlatzinca tribe
which included Nahuatl speakers as well as speakers of Otomi and the language today called Matlatzinca.
Most Aztec cities had a similar layout with a central plaza with a major pyramid with two staircases and a
double temple oriented toward the west.[79]

Religion
Nahuas' metaphysics centers around teotl, "a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-
regenerating sacred power, energy or force."[85] This is conceptualized in a kind of monistic pantheism[86]
as manifest in the supreme god Ometeotl,[87] as well as a large pantheon of lesser gods and idealizations of
natural phenomena such as stars and fire.[88] Priests and educated upper classes held more monistic views,
while the popular religion of the uneducated tended to embrace the polytheistic and mythological
aspects.[89]
In common with many other indigenous Mesoamerican civilizations, the Aztecs put great ritual emphasis on
calendrics, and scheduled festivals, government ceremonies, and even war around key transition dates in the
Aztec calendar. Public ritual practices could involve food, storytelling, and dance, as well as ceremonial
warfare, the Mesoamerican ballgame, and human sacrifice, as a manner of payment for, or even effecting,
the continuation of the days and the cycle of life.[90][91]

Deities
The four main deities worshiped by the Aztecs were Tlaloc,
Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, and Tezcatlipoca. Tlaloc is a rain and
storm deity; Huitzilopochtli, a solar and martial deity and the
tutelary deity of the Mexica tribe; Quetzalcoatl, a wind, sky, and
star deity and cultural hero; and Tezcatlipoca, a deity of the night,
magic, prophecy, and fate. The Great Temple in Tenochtitlan had
two shrines on its top, one dedicated to Tlaloc, the other to
Huitzilopochtli. The two shrines represented two sacred mountains:
the left one was Tonacatepetl, the Hill of Sustenance, whose patron
god was Tlaloc, and the right one was Coatepec, whose patron god
was Huitzilopochtli.[92] Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca each had
The deity Tezcatlipoca depicted in
separate temples within the religious precinct close to the Great
the Codex Borgia, one of the few
Temple, and the high priests of the Great Temple were named
extant pre-Hispanic codices
"Quetzalcoatl Tlamacazqueh". Other major deities were Tlaltecutli
or Coatlicue (a female earth deity); the deity couple Tonacatecuhtli
and Tonacacihuatl (associated with life and sustenance); Mictlantecutli and Mictlancihuatl, a male and
female couple of deities that represented the underworld and death; Chalchiutlicue (a female deity of lakes
and springs); Xipe Totec (a deity of fertility and the natural cycle); Huehueteotl or Xiuhtecuhtli (a fire god);
Tlazolteotl (a female deity tied to childbirth and sexuality); and Xochipilli and Xochiquetzal (gods of song,
dance and games). In some regions, particularly Tlaxcala, Mixcoatl or Camaxtli was the main tribal deity. A
few sources mention a binary deity, Ometeotl, who may have been a god of the duality between life and
death, male and female, and who may have incorporated Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl.[93] Some
historians argue against the notion that Ometeotl was a dual god, claiming that scholars are applying their
preconceived ideas onto translated texts.[94] Apart from the major deities, there were dozens of minor deities
each associated with an element or concept, and as the Aztec empire grew so did their pantheon because
they adopted and incorporated the local deities of conquered people into their own. Additionally, the major
gods had many alternative manifestations or aspects, creating small families of gods with related aspects.[95]

Mythology and worldview

Aztec mythology is known from many sources written down in the colonial period. One set of myths,
called Legend of the Suns, describes the creation of four successive suns, or periods, each ruled by a
different deity and inhabited by a different group of beings. Each period ends in a cataclysmic destruction
that sets the stage for the next period to begin. In this process, the deities Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl
appear as adversaries, each destroying the creations of the other. The current Sun, the fifth, was created
when a minor deity sacrificed himself on a bonfire and turned into the sun, but the sun only begins to move
once the other deities sacrifice themselves and offer it their life force.[97]
 In another myth of how the earth was created, Tezcatlipoca and
Quetzalcoatl appear as allies, defeating a giant crocodile Cipactli,
and requiring her to become the earth, allowing humans to carve
into her flesh and plant their seeds, on the condition that in return
they will offer blood to her. In the story of the creation of humanity,
Quetzalcoatl travels with his twin Xolotl to the underworld and
brings back bones which are then ground like corn on a metate by
the goddess Cihuacoatl, the resulting dough is given human form
and comes to life when Quetzalcoatl imbues it with his blood.[98]

Huitzilopochtli is the deity tied to the Mexica tribe and he figures in

Aztec cosmological drawing with the
the story of the origin and migrations of the tribe. On their journey,
god Xiuhtecuhtli, the lord of fire in
the center and the four corners of the
Huitzilopochtli, in the form of a deity bundle carried by the Mexica
cosmos marked by four trees with priest, continuously spurs the tribe by pushing them into conflict
associated birds, deities, and with their neighbors whenever they are settled in a place. In another
calendar names, and each direction myth, Huitzilopochtli defeats and dismembers his sister the lunar
marked by a dismembered limb of deity Coyolxauhqui, and her four hundred brothers at the hill of
the god Tezcatlipoca.[96] From the Coatepetl. The southern side of the Great Temple, also called
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer Coatepetl, was a representation of this myth, and at the foot of the
stairs lay a large stone monolith carved with a representation of the
dismembered goddess.[99]

Calendar
Aztec religious life was organized around the calendars. Like most
Mesoamerican people, the Aztecs used two calendars
simultaneously: a ritual calendar of 260 days called the
tonalpohualli and a solar calendar of 365 days called the
xiuhpohualli. Each day had a name and number in both calendars,
and the combination of two dates was unique within 52 years. The
tonalpohualli was mostly used for divinatory purposes and it
consisted of 20-day signs and number coefficients of 1–13 that
cycled in a fixed order. The xiuhpohualli was made up of 18
"months" of 20 days, and with a remainder of five "void" days at The "Aztec calendar stone" or "Sun
the end of a cycle before the new xiuhpohualli cycle began. Each Stone", a large stone monolith
20-day month was named after the specific ritual festival that began unearthed in 1790 in Mexico City
the month, many of which contained a relation to the agricultural depicting the five eras of Aztec
cycle. Whether, and how, the Aztec calendar was corrected for leap mythical history, with calendric
images.
year is a matter of discussion among specialists. The monthly rituals
involved the entire population as rituals were performed in each
household, in the calpolli temples, and the main sacred precinct. Many festivals involved different forms of
dancing, as well as the reenactment of mythical narratives by deity impersonators and the offering of
sacrifice, in the form of food, animals, and human victims.[100]

Every 52 years, the two calendars reached their shared starting point and a new calendar cycle began. This
calendar event was celebrated with a ritual known as Xiuhmolpilli or the New Fire Ceremony. In this
ceremony, old pottery was broken in all homes and all fires in the Aztec realm were put out. Then a new
fire was drilled over the breast of a sacrificial victim and runners brought the new fire to the different
calpolli communities where fire was redistributed to each home. The night without fire was associated with
the fear that star demons, tzitzimimeh, might descend and devour the earth – ending the fifth period of the
sun.[101]

Human sacrifice and cannibalism

To the Aztecs, death was instrumental in the perpetuation of
creation, and gods and humans alike had the responsibility of
sacrificing themselves to allow life to continue. As described in the
myth of creation above, humans were understood to be responsible
for the sun's continued revival, as well as for paying the earth for its
continued fertility. Blood sacrifice in various forms was conducted.
Both humans and animals were sacrificed, depending on the god to
be placated and the ceremony being conducted, and priests of some
gods were sometimes required to provide their blood through self-
mutilation. It is known that some rituals included acts of
cannibalism, with the captor and his family consuming part of the
Ritual human sacrifice as shown in flesh of their sacrificed captives, but it is not known how
the Codex Magliabechiano widespread this practice was.[102][103]

While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the

Aztecs, according to their accounts, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the
reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, Aztec and Spanish sources later said that
80,400 prisoners were sacrificed over four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself. This
number, however, is considered by many scholars as wildly exaggerated. Other estimates place the number
of human sacrifices at between 1,000 and 20,000 annually.[104][105]

The scale of Aztec human sacrifice has provoked many scholars to consider what may have been the
driving factor behind this aspect of Aztec religion. In the 1970s, Michael Harner and Marvin Harris argued
that the motivation behind human sacrifice among the Aztecs was the cannibalization of the sacrificial
victims, depicted for example in Codex Magliabechiano. Harner claimed that very high population pressure
and an emphasis on maize agriculture, without domesticated herbivores, led to a deficiency of essential
amino acids among the Aztecs.[106] While there is universal agreement that the Aztecs practiced sacrifice,
there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism was widespread. Harris, the author of
Cannibals and Kings (1977), has propagated the claim, originally proposed by Harner, that the flesh of the
victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. These
claims have been refuted by Bernard Ortíz Montellano who, in his studies of Aztec health, diet, and
medicine, demonstrates that while the Aztec diet was low in animal proteins, it was rich in vegetable
proteins. Ortiz also points to the preponderance of human sacrifice during periods of food abundance
following harvests compared to periods of food scarcity, the insignificant quantity of human protein
available from sacrifices, and the fact that aristocrats already had easy access to animal protein.[107][104]
Today, many scholars point to ideological explanations of the practice, noting how the public spectacle of
sacrificing warriors from conquered states was a major display of political power, supporting the claim of
the ruling classes to divine authority.[108] It also served as an important deterrent against rebellion by
subjugated polities against the Aztec state, and such deterrents were crucial for the loosely organized empire
to cohere.[109]

Art and cultural production

The Aztecs greatly appreciated the toltecayotl (arts and fine craftsmanship) of the Toltecs, who predated the
Aztecs in central Mexico. The Aztecs considered Toltec productions to represent the finest state of culture.
The fine arts included writing and painting, singing and composing poetry, carving sculptures and
producing mosaics, making fine ceramics, producing complex featherwork, and working metals, including
copper and gold. Artisans of the fine arts were referred to collectively as tolteca (Toltec).[110]
Urban standard details; The Mask of Xiuhtecuhtli; Double-headed serpent;
Mexico-Tenochtitlan wall 1400–1521; cedrela wood, 1450–1521; Spanish cedar
remnants stone bricks in turquoise, pine resin, mother- wood (Cedrela odorata),
Templo Mayor Museum of-pearl, conch shell, turquoise, shell, traces of
(Mexico City) cinnabar; height: 16.8 cm gilding & 2 resins are used as
(6.6 in), width: 15.2 cm adhesive (pine resin and
(6.0 in); British Museum Bursera resin); height:
(London) 20.3 cm (8.0 in), width:
43.3 cm (17.0 in), depth:
5.9 cm (2.3 in); British
Museum

Page 12 of the Codex Aztec calendar stone; 1502– Tlāloc effigy vessel; 1440–
Borbonicus, (in the big 1521; basalt; diameter: 3.58 m 1469; painted earthenware;
square): Tezcatlipoca (night (11.7 ft); thick: 98 cm (39 in); height: 35 cm (14 in); Templo
and fate) and Quetzalcoatl discovered on 17 December Mayor Museum (Mexico City)
(feathered serpent); before 1790 during repairs on the
1500; bast fiber paper; height: Mexico City Cathedral;
38 cm (15 in), length of the full National Museum of
manuscript: 142 cm (56 in); Anthropology (Mexico City)
Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée
nationale (Paris)
 Kneeling female figure; 15th– Frog-shaped necklace
early 16th century; painted ornaments; 15th–early 16th
stone; overall: 54.61 cm century; gold; height: 2.1 cm
× 26.67 cm (21.50 in (0.83 in); Metropolitan
× 10.50 in); Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York
Museum of Art (New York City)
City)

Writing and iconography

The Aztecs did not have a fully developed writing system like the
Maya; however, like the Maya and Zapotec, they did use a writing
system that combined logographic signs with phonetic syllable signs.
Logograms would, for example, be the use of an image of a mountain
to signify the word tepetl, "mountain", whereas a phonetic syllable
sign would be the use of an image of a tooth tlantli to signify the
syllable tla in words unrelated to teeth. The combination of these
principles allowed the Aztecs to represent the sounds of names of
persons and places. Narratives tended to be represented through
sequences of images, using various iconographic conventions such as
footprints to show paths, temples on fire to show conquest events, Ma (hand) and pach (moss). In
etc.[111] Nahuatl, handmoss is synonym
of raccoon.
Epigrapher Alfonso Lacadena has demonstrated that the different
syllable signs used by the Aztecs almost enabled the representation of
all the most frequent syllables of the Nahuatl language (with some notable exceptions),[112] but some
scholars have argued that such a high degree of phonetics was only achieved after the conquest when the
Aztecs had been introduced to the principles of phonetic writing by the Spanish.[113] Other scholars,
notably Gordon Whittaker, have argued that the syllabic and phonetic aspects of Aztec writing were
considerably less systematic and more creative than Lacadena's proposal suggests, arguing that Aztec
writing never coalesced into a strictly syllabic system such as the Maya writing, but rather used a wide
range of different types of phonetic signs.[114]

The image to the right demonstrates the use of phonetic signs for writing place names in the colonial Aztec
Codex Mendoza. The uppermost place is "Mapachtepec", meaning literally "Hill of the Raccoon", but the
glyph includes the phonetic prefixes ma (hand) and pach (moss) over a mountain tepetl spelling the word
"mapach" ("raccoon") phonetically instead of logographically. The other two place names, Mazatlan
("Place of Many Deer") and Huitztlan ("Place of many thorns") use the phonetic element tlan represented
by a tooth (tlantli) combined with a deer head to spell maza (mazatl = deer) and a thorn (huitztli) to spell
huitz.[115]

Music, song and poetry

Song and poetry were highly regarded; there were presentations and poetry
contests at most of the Aztec festivals. There were also dramatic
presentations that included players, musicians, and acrobats. There were
several different genres of cuicatl (song): Yaocuicatl was devoted to war
and the god(s) of war, Teocuicatl to the gods and creation myths and
adoration of said figures, xochicuicatl to flowers (a symbol of poetry itself
and indicative of the highly metaphorical nature of poetry that often used
duality to convey multiple layers of meaning). "Prose" was tlahtolli, also
with its different categories and divisions.[116][117]

A key aspect of Aztec poetics was the use of parallelism, using a structure
of embedded couplets to express different perspectives on the same
element.[118] Some such couplets were diphrasisms, conventional
metaphors whereby an abstract concept was expressed metaphorically by
using two more concrete concepts. For example, the Nahuatl expression for
"poetry" was in xochitl in cuicatl a dual term meaning "the flower, the
Frame drum huehuetl played
song".[119]
by a youth in Aztec-themed
A remarkable amount of this poetry survives, having been collected during
costume in Amecameca,
State of Mexico, 2010 the era of the conquest. In some cases poetry is attributed to individual
authors, such as Nezahualcoyotl, tlatoani of Texcoco, and Cuacuauhtzin,
Lord of Tepechpan, but whether these attributions reflect actual authorship
is a matter of opinion. An important collection of such poems is Romances de los señores de la Nueva
España, collected (Tezcoco 1582), probably by Juan Bautista de Pomar,[nb 8] and the Cantares
Mexicanos.[120] Both men and women were poets in Aztec society, illustrating pre-Hispanic Mexico's
gender parallelism in upper-class society.[121] One famous female poet is Macuilxochitzin, whose work
primarily focused on the Aztec conquest.[122]

Ceramics
The Aztecs produced ceramics of different types. Common are orange wares, which are orange or buff
burnished ceramics with no slip. Red wares are ceramics with a reddish slip. Polychrome ware is ceramics
with a white or orange slip, with painted designs in orange, red, brown, and/or black. Very common is
"black on orange" ware which is orange ware decorated with painted designs in black.[123][124][125]

Aztec black-on-orange ceramics are chronologically classified into four phases: Aztec I and II
corresponding to c. 1100–1350 (early Aztec period), Aztec III (c. 1350–1520), and the last phase Aztec IV
was the early colonial period. Aztec I is characterized by floral designs and day-name glyphs; Aztec II is
characterized by a stylized grass design above calligraphic designs such as S-curves or loops; Aztec III is
characterized by very
simple line designs;
Aztec IV continues
some pre-Columbian
designs but adds
European influenced
floral designs. There
were local variations on An Aztec bowl for everyday use. Black An Aztec polychrome A life-size
each of these styles, and on orange ware, a simple Aztec IV style vessel typical of the ceramic
flower design. Cholula region sculpture of an
archeologists continue to
Aztec eagle
refine the ceramic
warrior
sequence. [124]

Typical vessels for everyday use were clay griddles for cooking (comalli), bowls and plates for eating
(caxitl), pots for cooking (comitl), molcajetes or mortar-type vessels with slashed bases for grinding chilli
(molcaxitl), and different kinds of braziers, tripod dishes, and biconical goblets. Vessels were fired in simple
updraft kilns or even in open firing in pit kilns at low temperatures.[124] Polychrome ceramics were
imported from the Cholula region (also known as Mixteca-Puebla style), and these wares were highly
prized as a luxury ware, whereas the local black on orange styles were also for everyday use.[126]

Painted art
Aztec painted art was produced on animal skin (mostly deer), on
cotton lienzos, and amate paper made from bark (e.g., from Trema
micrantha or Ficus aurea), it was also produced on ceramics and
carved in wood and stone. The surface of the material was often
first treated with gesso to make the images stand out more clearly.
The art of painting and writing was known in Nahuatl by the
metaphor in tlilli, in tlapalli – meaning "the black ink, the red
pigment".[127][128]

There are few extant Aztec-painted books. Of these, none are

conclusively confirmed to have been created before the conquest,
Page from the pre-Columbian Codex but several codices must have been painted either right before the
Borgia a folding codex painted on conquest or very soon after – before traditions for producing them
deer skin prepared with gesso
were much disturbed. Even if some codices may have been
produced after the conquest, there is good reason to think that they
may have been copied from pre-Columbian originals by scribes. The Codex Borbonicus is considered by
some to be the only extant Aztec codex produced before the conquest – it is a calendric codex describing
the day and month counts indicating the patron deities of the different periods.[27] Others consider it to have
stylistic traits suggesting a post-conquest production.[129]

Some codices were produced post-conquest, sometimes commissioned by the colonial government, for
example, Codex Mendoza, were painted by Aztec tlacuilos (codex creators), but under the control of
Spanish authorities, who also sometimes commissioned codices describing pre-colonial religious practices,
for example, Codex Ríos. After the conquest, codices with calendric or religious information were sought
out and systematically destroyed by the church – whereas other types of painted books, particularly
historical narratives, and tax lists continued to be produced.[27] Although depicting Aztec deities and
describing religious practices also shared by the Aztecs of the Valley of Mexico, the codices produced in
Southern Puebla near Cholula, are sometimes not considered to be Aztec codices, because they were
produced outside of the Aztec "heartland".[27] Karl Anton Nowotny, nevertheless considered that the
Codex Borgia, painted in the area around Cholula and using a Mixtec style, was the "most significant work
of art among the extant manuscripts".[130]

The first Aztec murals were from Teotihuacan.[131] Most of our current Aztec murals were found in Templo
Mayor.[131] The Aztec capital was decorated with elaborate murals. In Aztec murals, humans are
represented like they are represented in the codices. One mural discovered in Tlateloco depicts an old man
and an old woman. This may represent the gods Cipactonal and Oxomico.

Sculpture
Sculptures were carved in stone and wood, but few wood carvings
have survived.[132] Aztec stone sculptures exist in many sizes from
small figurines and masks to large monuments, and are
characterized by a high quality of craftsmanship.[133] Many
sculptures were carved in highly realistic styles, for example
realistic sculpture of animals such as rattlesnakes, dogs, jaguars,
frogs, turtles, and monkeys.[134]

In Aztec artwork some monumental stone sculptures have been

preserved, such sculptures usually functioned as adornments for The Coatlicue statue in the National
Museum of Anthropology
religious architecture. Particularly famous monumental rock
sculpture includes the so-called Aztec "Sunstone" or Calendarstone
discovered in 1790; also discovered in 1790 excavations of the Zócalo was the 2.7-meter-tall (8.9 ft)
Coatlicue statue made of andesite, representing a serpentine chthonic goddess with a skirt made of
rattlesnakes. The Coyolxauhqui Stone representing the dismembered goddess Coyolxauhqui, found in
1978, was at the foot of the staircase leading up to the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan.[135] Two important
types of sculpture are unique to the Aztecs, and related to the context of ritual sacrifice: the cuauhxicalli or
"eagle vessel", large stone bowls often shaped like eagles or jaguars used as a receptacle for extracted
human hearts; the temalacatl, a monumental carved stone disk to which war captives were tied and
sacrificed in a form of gladiatorial combat. The most well-known examples of this type of sculpture are the
Stone of Tizoc and the Stone of Motecuzoma I, both carved with images of warfare and conquest by
specific Aztec rulers. Many smaller stone sculptures depicting deities also exist. The style used in religious
sculpture was rigid stances likely meant to create a powerful experience for the onlooker.[134] Although
Aztec stone sculptures are now displayed in museums as unadorned rock, they were originally painted in
vivid polychrome color, sometimes covered first with a base coat of plaster.[136] Early Spanish conquistador
accounts also describe stone sculptures as having been decorated with precious stones and metal, inserted
into the plaster.[134]

Featherwork
An especially prized art form among the Aztecs was featherwork – the creation of intricate and colorful
mosaics of feathers, and their use in garments as well as decoration on weaponry, war banners, and warrior
suits. The class of highly skilled and honored craftsmen who created feather objects was called the
 amanteca,[137] named after the Amantla neighborhood in Tenochtitlan
where they lived and worked.[138] They did not pay taxes nor were
required to perform public service. The Florentine Codex gives
information about how feather works were created. The amanteca had
two ways of creating their works. One was to secure the feathers in place
using agave cords for three-dimensional objects such as fly whisks, fans,
bracelets, headgear, and other objects. The second and more difficult was
a mosaic-type technique, which the Spanish also called "feather painting".
These were done principally on feather shields and cloaks for idols.
Aztec feather shield
Feather mosaics were arrangements of minute fragments of feathers from
displaying the "stepped fret"
a wide variety of birds, generally worked on a paper base, made from
design called xicalcoliuhqui in
Nahuatl (c. 1520,
cotton and paste, then itself backed with amate paper, but bases of other
Landesmuseum Württemberg) types of paper and directly on amate were done as well. These works
were done in layers with "common" feathers, dyed feathers, and precious
feathers. First, a model was made with lower-quality feathers and the
precious feathers were found only on the top layer. The adhesive for the feathers in the Mesoamerican
period was made from orchid bulbs. Feathers from local and faraway sources were used, especially in the
Aztec Empire. The feathers were obtained from wild birds as well as from domesticated turkeys and ducks,
with the finest quetzal feathers coming from Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras. These feathers were
obtained through trade and taxes. Due to the difficulty of conserving feathers, fewer than ten pieces of
original Aztec featherwork exist today.[139]

Colonial period, 1521–1821

Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, gradually replacing
and covering the lake, the island and the architecture of Aztec
Tenochtitlan.[140][141][142] After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Aztec warriors
were enlisted as auxiliary troops alongside the Spanish Tlaxcalteca allies,
and Aztec forces participated in all of the subsequent campaigns of
conquest in northern and southern Mesoamerica. This meant that aspects
of Aztec culture and the Nahuatl language continued to expand during the
early colonial period as Aztec auxiliary forces made permanent settlements
in many of the areas that were put under the Spanish crown.[143]

The Aztec ruling dynasty continued to govern the indigenous polity of

Codex Kingsborough, showing
San Juan Tenochtitlan, a division of the Spanish capital of Mexico City,
the abuse by Spaniards of a
Nahua under the encomienda
but the subsequent indigenous rulers were mostly puppets installed by the
Spanish labor system Spanish. One was Andrés de Tapia Motelchiuh, who was appointed by
the Spanish. Other former Aztec city states likewise were established as
colonial indigenous towns, governed by a local indigenous gobernador.
This office was often initially held by the hereditary indigenous ruling line, with the gobernador being the
tlatoani, but the two positions in many Nahua towns became separated over time. Indigenous governors
were in charge of the colonial political organization of the Indians. In particular, they enabled the continued
functioning of the tax and enslavement of indigenous commoners to benefit the Spanish encomenderos.
Encomenderos owned encomiendas, large tracts of agricultural land on which the encomenderos and their
slaves lived. The Spanish coerced the tribes into granting them private ownership of indigenous people and
land for enslavement and encomiendas. Occasionally, an Indigenous individual benefited from this system
and grew into substantial wealth and power come the colonial period. [144]

Population decline
After the arrival of the Europeans in Mexico and the conquest,
indigenous populations declined significantly. This was largely the
result of the epidemics of viruses brought to the continent against
which the natives had no immunity. In 1520–1521, an outbreak of
smallpox swept through the population of Tenochtitlan and was
decisive in the fall of the city; further significant epidemics struck in
1545 and 1576.[145]

There has been no consensus about the population size of Mexico

Depiction of smallpox during the
at the time of European arrival. Early estimates gave very small
Spanish conquest in Book XII of the
population figures for the Valley of Mexico, in 1942 Kubler Florentine Codex
estimated a figure of 200,000.[146] In 1963 Borah and Cook used
preconquest tax lists to calculate the number of residents in central
Mexico, estimating over 18–30 million. Their very high figure has been highly criticized for relying on
unwarranted assumptions.[147] Archeologist William Sanders based an estimate on archeological evidence
of dwellings, arriving at an estimate of 1–1.2 million inhabitants in the Valley of Mexico.[148] Whitmore
used a computer simulation model based on colonial censuses to arrive at an estimate of 1.5 million for the
Basin in 1519, and an estimate of 16 million for all of Mexico.[149] Depending on the estimations of the
population in 1519 the scale of the decline in the 16th century, range from around 50 percent to around 90
percent – with Sanders's and Whitmore's estimates being around 90 percent.[147][150]

Social and political continuity and change

Although the Aztec empire fell, some of its highest elites continued to
hold elite status in the colonial era. The principal heirs of Moctezuma II
and their descendants retained high status. His son Pedro Moctezuma
produced a son, who married into the Spanish aristocracy and a further
generation saw the creation of the title Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo.
From 1696 to 1701, the Viceroy of Mexico held the title of Count of
Moctezuma. In 1766, the holder of the title became a Grandee of Spain. In
1865, (during the Second Mexican Empire) the title, which was held by
Antonio María Moctezuma-Marcilla de Teruel y Navarro, 14th Count of
Moctezuma de Tultengo, was elevated to that of a Duke, thus becoming
Duke of Moctezuma, with de Tultengo again added in 1992 by Juan
Carlos I.[151] Two of Moctezuma's daughters, Doña Isabel Moctezuma
José Sarmiento de and her younger sister, Doña Leonor Moctezuma, were granted extensive
Valladares, Duke of
encomiendas in perpetuity by Hernán Cortes. Doña Leonor Moctezuma
Moctezuma de Tultengo,
married in succession two Spaniards, and left her encomiendas to her
viceroy of Mexico
daughter by her second husband.[152]
The different Nahua peoples, just like other Mesoamerican indigenous peoples in colonial New Spain, were
able to maintain many aspects of their social and political structure under colonial rule. The basic division
the Spanish made was between the Indigenous populations, organized under the República de indios,
which was separate from the Hispanic sphere, the República de españoles. The República de españoles
included not just Europeans, but also Africans and mixed-race castas. The Spanish recognized the
indigenous elites as nobles in the Spanish colonial system, maintaining the status distinction of the
preconquest era, and used these noblemen as intermediaries between the Spanish colonial government and
their communities. This was contingent on their conversion to Christianity and continuing loyalty to the
Spanish crown. Colonial Nahua polities had considerable autonomy to regulate their local affairs. The
Spanish rulers did not entirely understand the indigenous political organization, but they recognized the
importance of the existing system and their elite rulers. They reshaped the political system utilizing altepetl
or city-states as the basic unit of governance. In the colonial era, altepetl was renamed cabeceras or "head
towns" (although they often retained the term altepetl in local-level, Nahuatl-language documentation), with
outlying settlements governed by the cabeceras named sujetos, subject communities. In cabeceras, the
Spanish created Iberian-style town councils, or cabildos, which usually continued to function as the elite
ruling group had in the Preconquest era.[153][154] Population decline due to epidemic disease resulted in
many population shifts in settlement patterns and the formation of new population centers. These were often
forced resettlements under the Spanish policy of congregación. Indigenous populations living in sparsely
populated areas were resettled to form new communities, making it easier for them to be brought within
range of evangelization efforts, and easier for the colonial state to exploit their labor.[155][156]

Legacy
Today the legacy of the Aztecs lives on in Mexico in many forms. Archeological sites are excavated and
opened to the public and their artifacts are prominently displayed in museums. Place names and loanwords
from the Aztec language Nahuatl permeate the Mexican landscape and vocabulary, and Aztec symbols and
mythology have been promoted by the Mexican government and integrated into contemporary Mexican
nationalism as emblems of the country.[157]

During the 19th century, the image of the Aztecs as uncivilized barbarians was replaced with romanticized
visions of the Aztecs as original sons of the soil, with a highly developed culture rivaling the ancient
European civilizations. When Mexico became independent from Spain, a romanticized version of the
Aztecs became a source of images that could be used to ground the new nation as a unique blend of
European and American.[158]

The Aztecs and Mexico's national identity

Aztec culture and history have been central to the formation of a Mexican national identity after Mexican
independence in 1821. In 17th and 18th century Europe, the Aztecs were generally described as barbaric,
gruesome, and culturally inferior.[160] Even before Mexico achieved its independence, American-born
Spaniards (criollos) drew on Aztec history to ground their search for symbols of local pride, separate from
that of Spain. Intellectuals used Aztec writings, such as those collected by Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl,
and writings of Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and Chimalpahin to understand Mexico's indigenous past
in texts by indigenous writers. This search became the basis for what historian D.A. Brading calls "creole
patriotism". Seventeenth-century cleric and scientist, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora acquired the
manuscript collection of Texcocan nobleman Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Creole Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero
published La Historia Antigua de México (1780–1781) in his Italian
exile following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, in which he
traces the history of the Aztecs from their migration to the last Aztec
ruler, Cuauhtemoc. He wrote it expressly to defend Mexico's
indigenous past against the slanders of contemporary writers, such
as Pauw, Buffon, Raynal, and William Robertson.[161]
Archeological excavations in 1790 in the capital's main square
Modern Mexico flag, depicting a
uncovered two massive stone sculptures, buried immediately after
Mexican eagle perched on a prickly
the fall of Tenochtitlan in the conquest. Unearthed were the famous pear cactus devouring a rattlesnake.
calendar stone, as well as a statue of Coatlicue. Antonio de León y The design is rooted in the legend of
Gama's 1792 Descripción histórico y cronológico de las dos the Aztec people.[159]
piedras examines the two stone monoliths. A decade later, German
scientist Alexander von Humboldt spent a year in Mexico, during
his four-year expedition to Spanish America. One of his early publications from that period was Views of
the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.[162] Humboldt was important
in disseminating images of the Aztecs to scientists and general readers in the Western world.[163]

In the realm of religion, late colonial paintings of the Virgin of

Guadalupe have examples of her depicted floating above the iconic
nopal cactus of the Aztecs. Juan Diego, the Nahua to whom the
apparition was said to appear, links the dark Virgin to Mexico's
Aztec past.[165]

When New Spain achieved independence in 1821 and became a

monarchy, the First Mexican Empire, its flag had the traditional
Aztec eagle on a nopal cactus. The eagle had a crown, symbolizing
the new Mexican monarchy. When Mexico became a republic after
the overthrow of the first monarch Agustín de Iturbide in 1822, the
flag was revised to show the eagle with no crown. In the 1860s,
when the French established the Second Mexican Empire under
Maximilian of Habsburg, the Mexican flag retained the emblematic
eagle and cactus, with elaborate symbols of monarchy. After the
defeat of the French and their Mexican collaborators, the Mexican Motecuhzoma II's Teocalli of the
Republic was re-established, and the flag returned to its republican Sacred War emblem, which depicts
simplicity.[166] This emblem has also been adopted as Mexico's an eagle on a cactus holding the
national coat of arms, and is emblazoned on official buildings, seals, glyph for war, atl-tlachinolli in the
middle of a lake, the mythical
and signs.[164]
symbol which the Aztecs were said
to have seen at the site where the
Tensions within post-independence Mexico pitted those rejecting
city of Mexica was founded.[164]
the ancient civilizations of Mexico as a source of national pride, the
Hispanistas, mostly politically conservative Mexican elites, and
those who saw them as a source of pride, the Indigenistas, who were mostly liberal Mexican elites.
Although the flag of the Mexican Republic had the symbol of the Aztecs as its central element, conservative
elites were generally hostile to the current indigenous populations of Mexico or crediting them with a
glorious pre-Hispanic history. Under Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna, pro-indigenist
Mexican intellectuals did not find a wide audience. With Santa Anna's overthrow in 1854, Mexican liberals
and scholars interested in the indigenous past became more active. Liberals were more favorably inclined
toward the Indigenous populations and their history, but considered a pressing matter being the "Indian
Problem". Liberals' commitment to equality before the law meant that for upwardly mobile Indigenous,
such as Zapotec Benito Juárez, who rose in the ranks of the liberals to become Mexico's first president of
Indigenous origins, and Nahua intellectual and politician Ignacio Altamirano, a disciple of Ignacio Ramírez,
a defender of the rights of the indigenous, liberalism presented a way forward in that era. For investigations
of Mexico's indigenous past, however, the role of moderate liberal José Fernando Ramírez is important,
serving as director of the National Museum and doing research utilizing codices, while staying out of the
fierce conflicts between liberals and conservatives that led to a decade of civil war. Mexican scholars who
pursued research on the Aztecs in the late 19th century were Francisco Pimentel, Antonio García Cubas,
Manuel Orozco y Berra, Joaquín García Icazbalceta, and Francisco del Paso y Troncoso contributing
significantly to the 19th-century development of Mexican scholarship on the Aztecs.[167]

The late 19th century in Mexico was a period in which Aztec civilization
became a point of national pride. The era was dominated by liberal
military hero, Porfirio Díaz, a mestizo from Oaxaca who was president of
Mexico from 1876 to 1911. His policies opening Mexico to foreign
investors and modernizing the country under a firm hand controlling
unrest, "Order and Progress", undermined Mexico's indigenous
populations and their communities. However, for investigations of
Mexico's ancient civilizations, his was a benevolent regime, with funds
supporting archeological research and for protecting monuments.[168]
"Scholars found it more profitable to confine their attention to Indians
who had been dead for a number of centuries." [169] His benevolence saw
the placement of a monument to Cuauhtemoc in a major traffic
roundabout (glorieta) of the wide Paseo de la Reforma, which he
Monument to Cuauhtémoc, inaugurated in 1887. In world fairs of the late 19th century, Mexico's
inaugurated 1887 by Porfirio pavilions included a major focus on its indigenous past, especially the
Díaz in Mexico City Aztecs. Mexican scholars such as Alfredo Chavero helped shape the
cultural image of Mexico at these exhibitions.[170]

The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the

significant participation of Indigenous people in
the struggle in many regions, ignited a broad
government-sponsored political and cultural
movement of indigenismo, with symbols of
Mexico's Aztec past becoming ubiquitous, most
especially in Mexican muralism of Diego
Rivera.[171][172]
Detail of Diego Rivera's mural depicting the Aztec
In their works, Mexican authors such as Octavio market of Tlatelolco at the Mexican National palace
Paz and Agustin Fuentes have analyzed the use of
Aztec symbols by the modern Mexican state,
critiquing the way it adopts and adapts indigenous culture to political ends, yet they have also in their works
made use of the symbolic idiom themselves. Paz for example critiqued the architectural layout of the
National Museum of Anthropology, which constructs a view of Mexican history as culminating with the
Aztecs, as an expression of a nationalist appropriation of Aztec culture.[173]

Aztec history and international scholarship

Scholars in Europe and the United States increasingly wanted
investigations into Mexico's ancient civilizations, starting in the
nineteenth century. Humboldt had been extremely important in
bringing ancient Mexico into broader scholarly discussions of
ancient civilizations. French Americanist Charles Étienne Brasseur
de Bourbourg (1814–1874) asserted that "science in our own time
has at last effectively studied and rehabilitated America and the
Americans from the [previous] viewpoint of history and archeology.
It was Humboldt [...] who woke us from our sleep."[174]
Frenchman Jean-Frédéric Waldeck published Voyage pittoresque et
archéologique dans la province d'Yucatan pendant les années 1834
et 1836 in 1838. Although not directly connected with the Aztecs, it
contributed to the increased interest in ancient Mexican studies in
Europe. English aristocrat Lord Kingsborough spent considerable
President Porfirio Díaz in 1910 at the
energy in their pursuit of understanding ancient Mexico.
National Museum of Anthropology
with the Aztec Calendar Stone. The
Kingsborough answered Humboldt's call for the publication of all
International Congress of known Mexican codices, publishing nine volumes of Antiquities of
Americanists met in Mexico City in Mexico (1831–1846) that were richly illustrated, bankrupting him.
1910 on the centennial of Mexican He was not directly interested in the Aztecs, but rather in proving
independence. that Mexico had been colonized by Jews. However, his publication
of these valuable primary sources gave others access to them.

In the United States in the early 19th century, interest in ancient Mexico propelled John Lloyd Stephens to
travel to Mexico and then publish well-illustrated accounts in the early 1840s. The research of a half-blind
Bostonian, William Hickling Prescott, into the Spanish conquest of Mexico, resulted in his highly popular
and deeply researched The Conquest of Mexico (1843). Although not formally trained as a historian,
Prescott drew on the obvious Spanish sources, but also Ixtlilxochitl and Sahagún's history of the conquest.
His resulting work was a mixture of pro- and anti-Aztec attitudes. It was not only a bestseller in English, but
it also influenced Mexican intellectuals, including the leading conservative politician, Lucas Alamán.
Alamán pushed back against his characterization of the Aztecs. In the assessment of Benjamin Keen,
Prescott's history "has survived attacks from every quarter, and still dominates the conceptions of the
laymen, if not the specialist, concerning Aztec civilization".[175] In the later 19th century, businessman and
historian Hubert Howe Bancroft oversaw a huge project, employing writers and researchers, to write the
history the "Native Races" of North America, including Mexico, California, and Central America. One
entire work was devoted to ancient Mexico, half of which concerned the Aztecs. It was a work of synthesis
drawing on Ixtlilxochitl and Brasseur de Bourbourg, among others. [167]
When the International Congress of Americanists was formed in Nancy, France in 1875, Mexican scholars
became active participants, and Mexico City hosted the biennial multidisciplinary meeting six times, starting
in 1895. Mexico's ancient civilizations have continued to be the focus of major scholarly investigations by
Mexican and international scholars.

Language and placenames

The Nahuatl language is today spoken by 1.5 million people,
mostly in mountainous areas in the states of central Mexico.
Mexican Spanish today incorporates hundreds of loans from
Nahuatl, and many of these words have passed into general Spanish
use, and further into other world languages.[176][177][178]

In Mexico, Aztec place names are ubiquitous, particularly in central

Mexico where the Aztec empire was centered, but also in other
regions where many towns, cities, and regions were established
under their Nahuatl names, as Aztec auxiliary troops accompanied
the Spanish colonizers on the early expeditions that mapped New
Spain. In this way even towns, that were not originally Nahuatl Metro Moctezuma, with a stylized
speaking came to be known by their Nahuatl names.[179] In Mexico feathered crown as its logo

City there are commemorations of Aztec rulers, including on the

Mexico City Metro, line 1, with stations named for Moctezuma II
and Cuauhtemoc.

Cuisine
Mexican cuisine continues to be based on staple elements of Mesoamerican cooking and, particularly, of
Aztec cuisine: corn, chili, beans, squash, tomato, and avocado. Many of these staple products continue to be
known by their Nahuatl names, carrying in this way ties to the Aztec people who introduced these foods to
the Spaniards and the world. Through the spread of ancient Mesoamerican food elements, particularly
plants, Nahuatl loan words (chocolate, tomato, chili, avocado, tamale, taco, pupusa, chipotle, pozole, atole)
have been borrowed through Spanish into other languages around the world.[178] Through the spread and
popularity of Mexican cuisine, the culinary legacy of the Aztecs can be said to have a global reach. Today,
Aztec images and Nahuatl words are often used to lend an air of authenticity or exoticism in the marketing
of Mexican cuisine.[180]
 Las Tortilleras, an 1836 lithograph Chapulines, grasshoppers toasted
after a painting by Carl Nebel of and dusted with chilis, continue to
women grinding corn and making be a popular delicacy.
tortillas.

Ethnic identity
Aztec and Maya were newly listed examples given for American Indian groups in the 2020 United States
census, and "Aztec" became the largest American Indian group that respondents identified as having a full
background.[181][182]

In popular culture
The idea of the Aztecs has captivated the imaginations of Europeans since the first encounters and has
provided many iconic symbols to Western popular culture.[183] In his book The Aztec Image in Western
Thought, Benjamin Keen argued that Western thinkers have usually viewed Aztec culture through a filter of
their cultural interests.[184]

The Aztecs and figures from Aztec mythology feature in Western culture.[185] The name of Quetzalcoatl, a
feathered serpent god, has been used for a genus of pterosaurs, Quetzalcoatlus, a large flying reptile with a
wingspan of as much as 11 meters (36 ft).[186] Quetzalcoatl has appeared as a character in many books,
films and video games. D.H. Lawrence gave the name Quetzalcoatl to an early draft of his novel The
Plumed Serpent, but his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, insisted on a change of title.[187] American author
Gary Jennings wrote two acclaimed historical novels set in Aztec-period Mexico, Aztec (1980) and Aztec
Autumn (1997).[188] The novels were so popular that four more novels in the Aztec series were written after
his death.[189]

Aztec society has also been depicted in cinema. The Mexican feature film The Other Conquest (Spanish:
La Otra Conquista) from 2000 was directed by Salvador Carrasco and illustrated the colonial aftermath of
the 1520s Spanish Conquest of Mexico. It adopted the perspective of an Aztec scribe, Topiltzin, who
survived the attack on the temple of Tenochtitlan.[190] The 1989 film Retorno a Aztlán by Juan Mora
Catlett is a work of historical fiction set during the rule of Motecuzoma I, filmed in Nahuatl and with the
alternative Nahuatl title Necuepaliztli in Aztlan.[191][192] In Mexican exploitation B movies of the 1970s, a
recurring figure was the "Aztec mummy" as well as Aztec ghosts and sorcerers.[193]

See also
Mesoamerica
portal
Indigenous
peoples of the
Americas portal
Civilizations
portal

Atamalqualiztli
History of Mexico
Indigenismo in Mexico
Indigenous peoples of Mexico
List of Mexico-Tenochtitlan rulers
Maya civilization
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerican chronology
Mixtec people
Nahuas
Nahuatl

Notes
a. The term was not used as an endonym, see #Definitions

1. Smith 1997, p. 4 writes "For many the term 'Aztec' refers strictly to the inhabitants of
Tenochtitlan (the Mexica people), or perhaps the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico, the
highland basin where the Mexica and certain other Aztec groups lived. I believe it makes
more sense to expand the definition of "Aztec" to include the peoples of nearby highland
valleys in addition to the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico. In the final few centuries before
the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519, the peoples of this wider area all spoke the Nahuatl
language (the language of the Aztecs), and they all traced their origins to a mythical place
called Aztlan (Aztlan is the etymon of "Aztec," a modern label that was not used by the
Aztecs themselves)"
2. Lockhart 1992, p. 1 writes "These people I call the Nahuas, a name they sometimes used
themselves and the one that has become current today in Mexico, in preference to Aztecs.
The latter term has several decisive disadvantages: it implies a quasi-national unity that did
not exist, it directs attention to an ephemeral imperial agglomeration, it is attached
specifically to the pre-conquest period, and by the standards of the time, its use for anyone
other than the Mexica (the inhabitants of the imperial capital, Tenochtitlan) would have been
improper even if it had been the Mexica's primary designation, which it was not"
3. The editors of the "Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs", Nichols & Rodríguez-Alegría 2017, p. 3
write: "The use of terminology changed historically during the Late Postclassic, and it has
changed among modern scholars. Readers will find some variation in the terms authors
 employ in this handbook, but, in general, different authors use Aztecs to refer to people
incorporated into the empire of the Triple Alliance in the Late Postclassic period. An empire
of such broad geographic extent [...] subsumed much cultural, linguistic, and social variation,
and the term Aztec Empire should not obscure that. Scholars often use more specific
identifiers, such as Mexica or Tenochca, when appropriate, and they generally employ the
term Nahuas to refer to indigenous people in central Mexico [...] after the Spanish Conquest,
as Lockhart (1992) proposed. All of these terms introduce their own problems, whether
because they are vague, subsume too much variation, are imposed labels, or are
problematic for some other reason. We have not found a solution that all can agree on and
thus accept the varied viewpoints of authors. We use the term Aztec because today it is
widely recognized by both scholars and the international public."
4. The name of the two Aztec rulers which in this article is written as "Motecuzoma" has several
variants, due to alterations to the original Nahuatl word by speakers of English and Spanish,
and due to different orthographical choices for writing Nahuatl words. In English the variant
"Montezuma" was originally the most common, but has now largely been replaced with
"motecuhzoma" and "Moteuczoma", in Spanish the term "Moctezuma" which inverts the
order of t and k has been predominant and is a common surname in Mexico, but is now also
largely replaced with a form that respects the original Nahuatl structure, such as
"Motecuzoma". In Nahuatl the word is /motekʷso:ma/, meaning "he frowns like a lord"
(Hajovsky 2015, pp. ix, 147:n#3).
5. Gillespie 1989 argues that the name "Motecuzoma" was a later addition added to make for a
parallel to the later ruler, and that his original name was only "Ilhuicamina".
6. Some sources, including the Relación de Tula and the history of Motolinia, suggest that
Atotoztli functioned as ruler of Tenochtitlan succeeding her father. Indeed no conquests are
recorded for Motecuzoma in the last years of his reign, suggesting that he may have been
incapable of ruling, or even dead (Diel 2005).
7. singular form pilli
8. This volume was later translated into Spanish by Ángel María Garibay K., teacher of León-
Portilla, and it exists in English translation by John Bierhorst

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Further reading
Altman, Ida; Cline, Sarah; Pescador, Javier (2003). The Early History of Greater Mexico.
Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-091543-6.
Charlton, Thomas (2000). "The Aztecs and their Contemporaries: The Central and Eastern
Mexican Highlands". The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 2.
Mesoamerica Part 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 500–558. ISBN 978-0-521-35165-2.
Cline, Howard F. (1976). "Hubert Howe Bancroft, 1832–1918". In H.F. Cline (ed.). Handbook
of Middle American Indians, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, Part 2. pp. 326–347.
ISBN 978-0-292-70153-3.
Gillespie, Susan D. (1998). "The Aztec Triple Alliance: A Postconquest Tradition" (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20070221181058/http://www.doaks.org/Native/trad09.pdf) (PDF). In
Elizabeth Hill Boone; Tom Cubbins (eds.). Native Traditions in the Postconquest World, A
Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks 2nd through 4th October 1992. Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks Research Library and Collection. pp. 233–263. ISBN 978-0-88402-239-8.
OCLC 34354931 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34354931). Archived from the original (http://
www.doaks.org/Native/trad09.pdf) (PDF Reprint) on 21 February 2007.
Gutierrez, Natividad (1999). Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities: Indigenous Intellectuals
and the Mexican State. University of Nebraska Press.
Hassig, Ross (1985). Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political
Economy of the Valley of Mexico. Civilization of the American Indian series. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-1911-3. OCLC 11469622 (https://www.worl
dcat.org/oclc/11469622).
Hassig, Ross (1992). War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica. Berkeley: University of
California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07734-8. OCLC 25007991 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
25007991).
Kaufman, Terrence (2001). "The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times
to the sixteenth century: some initial results" (https://web.archive.org/web/20200119013512/
https://www.albany.edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa.pdf) (PDF). Project for the Documentation of the
Languages of Mesoamerica. Revised March 2001. Archived from the original (http://www.alb
any.edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa.pdf) (PDF) on 19 January 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2010.
Lockhart, James (1993). We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico.
Repertorium Columbianum. Vol. 1. Translated by Lockhart, James. Berkeley: University of
California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07875-8. OCLC 24703159 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
24703159). (in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl languages)
López Austin, Alfredo (1997). Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist. Mesoamerican Worlds
series. Translated by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano; Thelma Ortiz de Montellano. Niwot:
University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-0-87081-445-7. OCLC 36178551 (https://www.world
cat.org/oclc/36178551).
MacLeod, Murdo (2000). "Mesoamerica since the Spanish Invasion: An Overview.". The
Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 2. Mesoamerica Part 2.
Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–43. ISBN 978-0-521-65204-9.
Restall, Matthew (2004). Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (1st pbk ed.). Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517611-7. OCLC 56695639 (https://ww
w.worldcat.org/oclc/56695639).
 Schroeder, Susan (1991). Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press. ISBN 978-0-8165-1182-2. OCLC 21976206 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/21
976206).
Smith, Michael E.; Montiel, Lisa (2001). "The Archaeological Study of Empires and
Imperialism in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico". Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 20 (3):
245–284. doi:10.1006/jaar.2000.0372 (https://doi.org/10.1006%2Fjaar.2000.0372).
S2CID 29613567 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:29613567).
Zantwijk, Rudolph van (1985). The Aztec Arrangement: The Social History of Pre-Spanish
Mexico (https://archive.org/details/aztecarrangement0000zant). Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-1677-8. OCLC 11261299 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
11261299).

External links
Aztecs at Mexicolore (http://mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/): constantly updated educational site
specifically on the Aztecs, for serious students of all ages.
Aztecs / Nahuatl / Tenochtitlan (http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth3618/maaztec.ht
ml): Ancient Mesoamerica resources at University of Minnesota Duluth
Aztec history, culture and religion (http://www.history-aztec.com) B. Diaz del Castillo, The
Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (tr. by A.P. Maudsley, 1928, repr. 1965)
Article: "Life in the Provinces of the Aztec Empire" (http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/ME
S-05-SciAm-.pdf)
Tlahuica Culture Home Page (an Aztec group from Morelos, Mexico) (http://www.public.asu.
edu/~mesmith9/tlahuica.html)
"The Aztecs – looking behind the myths" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inou
rtime_20030227.shtml) on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time featuring Alan Knight, Adrian Locke
and Elizabeth Graham

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