Native American people who created a rich civilization and powerful empire in central and southern Mexico

The Aztecs are Native American people who created a rich civilization and powerful empire in central and southern Mexico from the 14th to the 16th century. They were one of the largest and most advanced Indian nations to ever exist on earth. The Aztecs life style was better than many Europeans of that time but they lacked the military technology of the Europeans. The Aztec nation is more unique in its history, economy, geography and way of life than any other nation at that time.

About three thousand years ago small bands of hunting and gathering tribes made their way across the land bridge and migrated southward through Canada and the United States. Eventually they settled in the valley of Mexico. For the next two thousand years the tribes of the valley constantly fought each other for the control of the land. It wasn’t until the eleventh century that the Aztec tribe began their migration in to the valley. They came from their mythical mysterious homeland Aztlan. The conflict in the Central Valley continued and the Aztecs were constantly at war with their neighbors. It seems at first that the other tribes in the area would defeat the Aztecs, but they would prevail and create one of the most powerful Indian tribes in the area.

By the 14th century the Aztec civilization flourished they began to construct several great cities in the valley of Mexico. In the days of the Aztec, the area was covered with a series of small lakes. This included lake Texcoco, which had an island in the center. The Aztecs built their greatest city on the island. It would become known as Tenochtitlan and would become their capital. Tenochtitlan was a pre-Columbian city in central Mexico and capital of the Aztecs. It lies on the site of present-day Mexico City. It was founded in 1325 originally on an island in what was Lake Texcoco. It became a flourishing city, protected against floods by well-built dams and connected with the mainland by three causeways. According to modern estimates it housed up 200,000,000 people, making it one of the most populous cities in the ancient world. The Spanish conqueror Hernen Cortes occupied the city in 1521 and razed it. Upon its ruins he founded Mexico City.

Aztec society was highly advanced, it relied on agriculture and religion to guide it. The Aztec worshipped gods that represented natural forces and were important to their agricultural economy. All Aztec cities had giant stone pyramids with pyramids on top where human sacrifices took place. Aztec art was an expression of religion and warfare. This increased the empire’s wealth and power. In Aztec mythology, several worlds are created and destroyed by the gods before the creation of the human world. Quetzalcoatl was thought to be the Aztec god and legendary ruler of Mexico. The Aztecs made him a symbol of death and resurrection and a patron of priests. Tezcatlipoca who was the god of the night sky opposed him and it was believed that he had driven Quetzalcoatl into exile. According to prophecy Quetzalcoatl would one day return. So when the Spanish conqueror Hernen Cortes appeared in 1519 the Aztec king Montezuma II thought he was Quetzalcoatl returning to his people. In 1519 Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes and 500 Spaniards landed in eastern Mexico. They were there in search of land and gold.

Cortes formed an alliance with the Tlaxcalans, which were an enemy of the Aztecs. Then he set out for Tenochtitlan. The Aztec ruler Montezuma allowed Cortes to enter the city in order to learn more about him and his intentions. Cortes found large amounts of gold and other treasure in the city. He feared that the Aztecs would attack his vastly outnumbered force. So he seized Montezuma as a hostage. The Spaniards melted down the gold ornaments of the Aztec for shipment to Spain and forced Montezuma to swear allegiance to the king of Spain. The Spaniards remained in the city for the next six months. Then the Spanish massacred 200 Aztec nobles who had gathered for a religious ceremony. The Aztec then rebelled trying to drive the Spaniards out of their city. The Spanish tried to escape through the water but three-fourths of them drowned because they were weighted down with stolen gold. Cortes retreated to regroup. He then attacked Tlaxcalans with greater numbers and eventually conquered the city. The Spaniards conquered the remaining Aztec peoples and took over their lands, forcing them to work in gold mines and on Spanish estates. The fall of Tenochtitlan marked the end of the Native American civilizations that had existed since the first human settlement of the region.

At the time of the Spanish conquest, the religion of the Aztecs was polytheistic, based on the worship of a multitude of personal gods, most of them with well-defined attributes. Nevertheless, magic and the idea of certain impersonal and occult forces played an important role among the people. There was, in addition, among the uneducated classes tendency to exaggerate polytheism by conceiving of as gods, also, what to the priests, were only manifestations or attributes of one god ( Caso, 1987 ).

Even though there was a magical and impersonal background in the religion of the Aztec people, as well as an exaggerated polytheism, there is also evidence to support that Aztec priests tried to reduce the multiple divinities to different aspects of the same god. When they adopted the gods of conquered peoples or received gods from peoples of more advanced cultures, the priests would always try to incorporate them, like the Romans, into their own national pantheon, by considering them as diverse manifestations of the gods they had inherited from the great civilizations which preceded them and from which they had derived their culture ( Leon-Portilla, 1970 ).

Although the Aztec priests tried to unite in a single concept the different gods of the different tribes the people as a whole would not admit that their local god was subject to any other or that he was only an attribute of a superior being. An exception to this generalized thought was Huitzilopochtli, the Aztecs’ own tribal god, and other deities associated with him in the national myths kept alive by Aztec pride. In later legends this god is associated with the creation of the world, occupying a space similar to that held by the traditional Toltec and Teotihuacan gods and by those gods worshiped by the people of the Valley of Mexico before the volcano Xitle covered their homes with lava, several centuries before Christ ( Caso, 1987).

However, a very ancient school of philosophy held that the origin of all things was a single dual principle, masculine and feminine, that had created the gods, the world, and man. Nezahualcoyotl, the king of Texcoco, already preferred to worship an invisible god that could no longer be represented. He was called Tloque Nahuaque, or Ipalnemohuani, “the god of the immediate vicinity, that one through whom all live,” who was placed above the heavens and in the highest realm and on whom all things depended. Even though this appears to be a monotheistic attitude it still acknowledged the existence and the worship of the other gods, it does indicate however, that in exceptional mentalities the philosophical desire for unity had already appeared and that men were seeking a single cause to explain all other causes, and a single god superior to all other gods ( Caso, 1987 ).

Therefore, when Nezahualcoyotl built a temple upon a pyramid of nine terraces representing the nine heavens, he did not place in the sanctuary that crowned the pyramid any image representing the god, since he could not be portrayed and must be conceived as pure idea. This single god of Nezahualcoyotl did not have much following, nor did he affect the religious life of the people. The gods of philosophers have never been popular, for they arise from the need of a logical explanation of the universe, while the common people require less abstract gods who will satisfy their sentimental need for love and protection ( Leon-Portilla, 1970 ).

On the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards built Mexico City. The city’s present-day cathedral rises over the ruins of an Aztec temple, and the palace of the Mexican president stands on the site of the palace of Montezuma. About 80 percent of Mexico’s population is made up of mestizos who are the mixed race of Spaniards and natives. Indigenous peoples make up approximately 8 percent of the population. These people are mostly of Mayan and Aztecs decent. While Spanish people make up about 9 percent of the population. As most powerful and advanced nations and cultures of history the Aztec nation was defeated and simply faded away into poverty and despair. The Aztecs became powerful in their own part of the world but once outsiders with better weapons and no regard for their way of life came in to the Aztec world, their society fell almost immediately. Their Mythology also contributed to their defeat by helping mislead the Aztec king. Even though their grand empire is long gone the Aztecs still live together in peace with their former Spanish invaders.

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