1.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
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The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most significant events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Many of those on the Cortés expedition of 1519 had never seen combat before, in fact, Cortés had never commanded men in battle before. However, there was a generation of Spaniards who participated in expeditions in the Caribbean and Tierra Firme, learning strategy. The Spanish conquest of Mexico had antecedents with established practices, in their advance, the allies were tricked and ambushed several times by the people they encountered. When Cortés left Tenochtitlan to return to the coast and deal with the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Alvarado allowed a significant Aztec feast to be celebrated in Tenochtitlan and on the pattern of the earlier massacre in Cholula, closed off the square and massacred the celebrating Aztec noblemen. The biography of Cortés by Francisco López de Gómara contains a description of the massacre, the Alvarado massacre at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan precipitated rebellion by the population of the city. When the captured emperor Motecuhzoma II, now seen as a puppet of the invading Spaniards, attempted to calm the outraged populace. Cortés had returned to Tenochtitlan and his men fled the city during the Noche Triste in June,1520. The Spanish, Tlaxcalans and reinforcements returned a year later on August 13,1521 to a civilization that had wiped out by famine. This made it easier to conquer the remaining Aztecs, the fall of the Aztec Empire was the key event in the formation of the Spanish overseas empire, with New Spain, which later became Mexico, a major component. The Spanish conquerors could and did write accounts that narrated the conquest from the first landfalls in Mexico to the victory over the Mexica in Tenochtitlan on August 13,1521. Indigenous accounts are from particular native viewpoints and as the events had a impact on their polity. All accounts of the conquest, Spanish and indigenous alike, have biases, in general, Spanish accounts do not credit their indigenous allies support. Individual conquerors accounts exaggerate that individuals contribution to the conquest, downplaying other conquerors, indigenous allies accounts stress their loyalty to the Spanish and their particular aid as being key to the Spanish victory. Their accounts are similar to Spanish conquerors accounts contained in petitions for rewards and these were almost immediately published in Spain and later in other parts of Europe. Interestingly, Cortéss right-hand man, Pedro de Alvarado did not write at any length about his actions in the New World, two letters to Cortés about Alvarados campaigns in Guatemala are published in The Conquistadors. Rather than it being a petition for rewards for services, as many Spanish accounts were, the account was used by eighteenth-century Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero in his descriptions of the history of Mexico. On the indigenous side, the allies of Cortés, particularly the Tlaxcalans, wrote extensively about their services to the Spanish Crown in the conquest, the most important of these are the pictorial Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Muñoz Camargo
2.
Lake Texcoco
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Lake Texcoco was a natural lake within the Anáhuac or Valley of Mexico. Lake Texcoco is best known as where the Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlan, after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, efforts to control flooding by the Spanish led to most of the lake being drained. The entire lake basin is now almost completely occupied by Mexico City, in the Pleistocene era, the lake occupied an even greater area. There were several paleo-lakes that would connect each other from time to time. At the north in the community of San Miguel Tocuilla there is a great paleontological field. The disarticulated remains of seven mammoths dated between 10,220 ±75 and 12,615 ±95 years were found, suggesting human presence, agriculture around the lake began about 7,000 years ago, with humans following the patterns of periodic inundations of the lake. On the northeast side of the lake, between 1700 and 1250 BC, several villages appear, by 1250 BC, the identifying signs of the Tlatilco culture, including more complex settlements and a stratified social structure, are seen around the lake. By roughly 800 BC, Cuicuilco had eclipsed the Tlatilco cultural centers and was the power in the Valley of Mexico during the next 200 years. The Xitle volcano destroyed Cuicuilco around AD30, a destruction that may have given rise to Teotihuacan, none of these predominated and they coexisted more or less in peace for several centuries. This time was described as a Golden age in Aztec chronicles, by the year 1300, however, the Tepanec from Azcapotzalco were beginning to dominate the area. If Tenochtitlan was the city of the Aztec Empire, and Mexico City the capital of Mexico, then Lake Texcoco is the Lake of the capitals. According to a story, the Mexica wandered in the deserts of modern Mexico for 100 years before they came to the thick forests of the place now called the Valley of Mexico. Tenochtitlan was founded on an islet in the part of the lake in the year 1325. Around it, the Aztecs created an artificial island using a system similar to the creation of chinampas. To overcome the problems of drinking water, the Aztecs built a system of dams to separate the salty waters of the lake from the water of the effluents. It also permitted them to control the level of the lake, the city also had an inner system of channels that helped to control the water. During Cortéss siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the dams were destroyed, the Valley of Mexico is a basin with an average elevation of 2,236 metres above mean sea level located in the southern highlands of Mexicos central altiplano. Lake Texcoco formerly extended over a portion of the southern half of the basin
3.
Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
4.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
5.
Spanish Empire
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The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in history. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, the Spanish Empire originated during the Age of Discovery after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded its last colonies in the Caribbean and its last African colonies were granted independence or abandoned during Decolonisation of Africa finishing in 1976. The unity did not mean uniformity, nevertheless, some historians assert that Portugal was part of the Spanish monarchy at the time, while others draw a clear distinction between the Portuguese and Spanish empires. During the 15th century, Castile and Portugal became territorial and commercial rivals in the western Atlantic. The conquest was completed with the campaigns of the armies of the Crown of Castile between 1478 and 1496, when the islands of Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Tenerife were subjugated. The Portuguese tried in vain to keep secret their discovery of the Gold Coast in the Gulf of Guinea, chronicler Pulgar wrote that the fame of the treasures of Guinea spread around the ports of Andalusia in such way that everybody tried to go there. Worthless trinkets, Moorish textiles, and above all, shells from the Canary and Cape Verde islands were exchanged for gold, slaves, ivory and Guinea pepper. The Crown officially organized this trade with Guinea, every caravel had to get a government license, the treaty delimited the spheres of influence of the two countries, establishing the principle of the Mare clausum. It was confirmed in 1481 by the Pope Sixtus IV, in the papal bull Æterni regis, thus, the limitations imposed by the Alcáçovas treaty were overcome and a new and more balanced worlds division would be reached at Tordesillas between both emerging maritime powers. Seven months before the treaty of Alcaçovas, King John II of Aragon died, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the last Moorish king out of Granada in 1492 after a ten-year war. The Catholic Monarchs then negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west, Castile was already engaged in a race of exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus discoveries inaugurated the Spanish colonization of the Americas and these actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from north to south, as well as the easternmost parts of Asia. The treaty of Tordesillas was confirmed by Pope Julius II in the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis on 24 January 1506, Spains expansion and colonization was driven by economic influences, a yearning to improve national prestige, and a desire to spread Catholicism into the New World. The Catholic Monarchs had developed a strategy of marriages for their children in order to isolate their long-time enemy, the Spanish princes married the heirs of Portugal, England and the House of Habsburg. Following the same strategy, the Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Catalan-Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars beginning in 1494. As King of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Venice for control of Italy, these conflicts became the center of Ferdinands foreign policy as king. Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Holy League against France and this war was less of a success than the war against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in its control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre
6.
Tlaxcala (Nahua state)
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Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico. The Tlaxcalans arrived in Central Mexico during the Late Postclassic and they first settled near Texcoco in the valley of Mexico, between the settlement of Cohuatlinchan and the shore of Lake Texcoco. After some years the Tlaxcallans were driven out of the valley of Mexico and moved to the east, over the subsequent years, the Tlaxcallan state expanded with the foundations of Ocotelulco and Tizatlán. The fourth major settlement, Quiahuiztlan, was founded by members of the Tlaxcallan group that had remained in the valley of Mexico. Ancient Tlaxcala was a republic ruled by a council of between 50 and 200 chief political officials and these officials gained their positions through service to the state, usually in warfare, and as a result came from both the noble and commoner classes. Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged in a state of perpetual war, as a result of their alliance with the Spaniards, Tlaxcala had hidalgo privileged status within Spanish colonial Mexico. After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan and the rest of Mexico, Tlaxcala was allowed to survive and preserve its pre-Columbian culture. In addition, as a reward to the Tlaxcalans unyielding loyalty to the Spanish, conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes the first battle between the Spanish force and the Tlaxcalteca as surprisingly difficult. Xicohtencatl the Younger was later condemned by the Tlaxcaltecan ruling council, due to protracted warfare between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcala, the Tlaxcala were eager to exact revenge, and soon became loyal allies of the Spanish. Even after the Spanish were expelled from Tenochtitlan, the Tlaxcala continued to support their conquest, Tlaxcala also assisted the Spanish in the conquest of Guatemala. Following the Spanish Conquest, Tlaxcala was divided into four fiefdoms by the Spanish corregidor Gómez de Santillán in 1545 and these fiefdoms were Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac, and Tizatlan. At this time, four houses or lineages emerged and claimed hereditary rights to each fiefdom. During the colonial period, the Tlaxcalan people were regarded as being of higher status, however, the indigenous population who had been living in Tlaxcala were reduced to a small minority. It was painted by Tlaxcalteca artists under Spanish supervision, crónica Mexicayotl was written by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, in Nahuatl and Spanish, in the last decades of the 16th century. Mexico, Manuel Orozco y Berra, Leyenda, fargher, Lane F. Richard E. Blanton and Verenice Y. Egalitarian Ideology and Political Power in Prehispanic Central Mexico, The Case of Tlaxcallan, xicotencatl, rethinking an indigenous Mexican hero, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, UNAM. Land and Succession in the Indigenous Noble Houses of Sixteenth-Century Tlaxcala, invading Guatemala, Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars. University Park, Pennsylvania, USA, Pennsylvania State University Press, Spanish language description of the historiography of Tlaxcala Article in Sciencemag about archeological findings at Tizatlan
7.
Aztec Empire
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The Aztec Empire, or the Triple Alliance, began as an alliance of three Nahua altepetl city-states, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. The Triple Alliance was formed from the faction in a civil war fought between the city of Azcapotzalco and its former tributary provinces. Despite the initial conception of the empire as an alliance of three self-governed city-states, Tenochtitlan quickly became dominant militarily. By the time the Spanish arrived in 1519, the lands of the Alliance were effectively ruled from Tenochtitlan, the alliance waged wars of conquest and expanded rapidly after its formation. Aztec rule has been described by scholars as hegemonic or indirect, the Aztecs left rulers of conquered cities in power so long as they agreed to pay semi-annual tribute to the Alliance, as well as supply military forces when needed for the Aztec war efforts. In return, the imperial authority offered protection and political stability, the state religion of the empire was polytheistic, worshiping a diverse pantheon that included dozens of deities. Many had officially recognized cults large enough so that the deity was represented in the temple precinct of the capital Tenochtitlan. The imperial cult, specifically, was that of Huitzilopochtli, the distinctive warlike patron god of the Mexica, peoples in conquered provinces were allowed to retain and freely continue their own religious traditions, so long as they added the imperial god Huitzilopochtli to their local pantheons. The word Aztec in modern usage would not have used by the people themselves. The name comes from a Nahuatl word meaning people from Aztlan, for the purpose of this article, Aztec refers only to those cities that constituted or were subject to the Triple Alliance. For the broader use of the term, see the article on Aztec civilization, Nahua peoples descended from Chichimec peoples who migrated to central Mexico from the north in the early 13th century. According to the pictographic codices in which the Aztecs recorded their history, Early migrants settled the Basin of Mexico and surrounding lands by establishing a series of independent city-states. These early Nahua cities were ruled by petty kings called tlahtohqueh, most of the existing settlements, which had been established by other indigenous peoples before the Nahua migration, were assimilated into Nahua culture. These early city-states fought various small-scale wars with other, but due to shifting alliances. The Mexica were the last of Aztlan migrants to arrive in Central Mexico and they entered the Basin of Mexico around the year 1250 AD, and by then most of the good agricultural land had already been claimed. The Mexica persuaded the king of Culhuacan to allow them to settle in a relatively infertile patch of land called Chapultepec, the Mexica served as hired mercenaries for Culhuacan. After they served Culhuacan in battle, the appointed one of his daughters to rule over the Mexica. According to mythological native accounts, the Mexica instead sacrificed her by flaying her skin, when the king of Culhuacan learned of this, he attacked and used his army to drive the Mexica from Tizaapan by force
8.
Pedro de Alvarado
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Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalvas exploration of the coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico and he is considered the conquistador of much of Central America, including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Historiography portrays that indigenous people, both Nahuatl-speakers and speakers of languages, called him Tonatiuh, meaning sun in the Nahuatl language. Yet he was also called Red Sun in Nahuatl, which allows a variety of interpretations, whether this epithet refers to Alvarados red hair, some esoteric quality attributed to him, or both, is disputed. Pedro de Alvarado was flamboyant and charismatic, and was both a brilliant military commander and a cruel, hardened man and his hair and beard were blond, which earned him the name of Tonatiuh from the Aztecs, the name of one of their sun gods. He was handsome, and presented an appearance, but was volatile. He was ruthless in his dealings with the peoples he set out to conquer. Historians judge that his greed drove him to excessive cruelty, and he was a poor governor of territories he had conquered, and restlessly sought out new adventures. His tactical brutality, such as the massacre in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan and he was also accused of cruelty against fellow Spaniards. Alvarado was little suited to govern, when he held governing positions and his letters show no interest in civil matters, and he only discussed exploration and war. Alvarado stubbornly resisted attempts by the Spanish Crown to establish ordered taxation in Guatemala, american historian William H. Prescott described Alvarados character in the following terms, Alvarado was a cavalier of high family, gallant and chivalrous, and warm personal friend. He had talents for action, was possessed of firmness and intrepidity, while his frank, but, underneath this showy exterior, the future conqueror of Guatemala concealed a heart rash, rapacious, and cruel. He was altogether destitute of that moderation, which, in the position he occupied, was a quality of more worth than all the rest. Spanish chronicler Antonio de Remesal commented that Alvarado desired more to be feared than loved by his subjects, in his easy recourse to violence, Alvarado was a product of his time, and Alvarado was not the only conquistador to have resorted to such actions. Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro carried out deeds of similar cruelty, Pedro de Alvarado was born in 1485 in the town of Badajoz, Extremadura. His father was Gómez de Alvarado, and his mother was Leonor de Contreras, Pedro de Alvarado had a twin sister, Sarra, and four full-blood brothers, Jorge, Gonzalo, Gómez, and Juan. Pedro had a half brother, also named Juan, referred to in contemporary sources as Juan el Bastardo. Very little is known of Pedro de Alvarados early life before his arrival in the Americas, during the conquest of the Americas, tales of his youthful exploits in Spain became popular legends, but their veracity is doubtful
9.
Conquistador
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Conquistadors /kɒŋˈkɪstəˌdɔːrz/ is a term used to refer to the soldiers and explorers of the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire in a general sense. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Asia, conquering territory and they colonized much of the world for Spain and Portugal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Portugal established a route to China in the early 16th century, sending ships via the southern coast of Africa, human infections gained worldwide transmission vectors for the first time, from Africa and Eurasia to the Americas and vice versa. The spread of diseases, including smallpox, flu and typhus. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports, by the late 16th century silver imports from America provided one-fifth of Spains total budget. The conquistadors were professional warriors, using European tactics, firearms and their units would often specialize in forms of combat that required long periods of training that were too costly for informal groups. Their armies were composed of Iberian and other European soldiers. Native allied troops were largely equipped with armament and armour that varied geographically. Some groups consisted of men without military experience, Catholic clergy which helped with administrative duties. These native forces often included African slaves and Native Americans and they not only fought in the battlefield but served as interpreters, informants, servants, teachers, physicians, and scribes. India Catalina and Malintzin were Native American women slaves who worked for the Spaniards, Castilian law prohibited foreigners and non-Catholics from settling in the New World. However, not all conquistadors were Castilian, many foreigners Hispanicised their names and/or converted to Catholicism to serve the Castilian Crown. For example, Ioánnis Fokás was a Castilian of Greek origin who discovered the strait that bears his name between Vancouver Island and Washington State in 1592, german-born Nikolaus Federmann, Hispanicised as Nicolás de Federmán, was a conquistador in Venezuela and Colombia. The origin of people in mixed expeditions was not always distinguished. Castilian law banned Spanish women from travelling to America unless they were married and accompanied by a husband, women who travelled thus include María de Escobar, María Estrada, Marina Vélez de Ortega, Marina de la Caballería, Francisca de Valenzuela, Catalina de Salazar. Some conquistadors married Native American women or had illegitimate children, European young men enlisted in the army because it was one way out of poverty. Catholic priests instructed the soldiers in mathematics, writing, theology, Latin, Greek, and history, Kings army officers taught military arts. An uneducated young recruit could become a leader, elected by their fellow professional soldiers
10.
Tenochtitlan
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Mexico-Tenochtitlan, commonly known as Tenochtitlan was a Mexica located on an island in Lake Texcoco, in the Valley of Mexico. Founded on June 20,1325, it became the capital of the expanding Aztec Empire in the 15th century, at its peak it was the largest city in the Pre-Columbian Americas. It subsequently became a cabecera of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, today the ruins of Tenochtitlan are located in Mexico Citys downtown. Tenochtitlan was one of two Nahua āltēpetl on the island, the other being Tlatelolco, traditionally, the name Tenochtitlan was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl and nōchtli and is often thought to mean, Among the prickly pears rocks. However, one attestation in the late 16th-century manuscript known as the Bancroft dialogues suggest the second vowel was short, Tenochtitlan covered an estimated 8 to 13.5 km2, situated on the western side of the shallow Lake Texcoco. At the time of Spanish conquests, Mexico City comprised both Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, the city was connected to the mainland by causeways leading to the north, south, and west. The causeways were interrupted by bridges that allowed canoes and other traffic to pass freely. The bridges could be pulled away, if necessary, to defend the city, the city was interlaced with a series of canals, so that all sections of the city could be visited either on foot or via canoe. Lake Texcoco was the largest of five interconnected lakes, since it formed in an endorheic basin, Lake Texcoco was brackish. During the reign of Moctezuma I, the levee of Nezahualcoyotl was constructed, estimated to be 12 to 16 km in length, the levee was completed circa 1453. The levee kept fresh spring-fed water in the waters around Tenochtitlan and kept the brackish waters beyond the dike, two double aqueducts, each more than 4 km long and made of terracotta, provided the city with fresh water from the springs at Chapultepec. This was intended mainly for cleaning and washing, for drinking, water from mountain springs was preferred. Most of the population liked to bathe twice a day, Moctezuma was said to take four baths a day. According to the context of Aztec culture in literature, the soap that they most likely used was the root of a plant called copalxocotl, and to clean their clothes they used the root of metl. Also, the classes and pregnant women washed themselves in a temazcalli, similar to a sauna bath. This was also popular in other Mesoamerican cultures, and some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream. I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never heard of or seen before. The city was divided into four zones, or campan, each campan was divided into 20 districts, there were three main streets that crossed the city, each leading to one of the three causeways to the mainland of Tepeyac, Ixtapalpa, and Tlacopan
11.
Aztec
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The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries. The Nahuatl words aztecatl and aztecah mean people from Aztlan, a place for the Nahuatl-speaking culture of the time. Often the term Aztec refers exclusively to the Mexica people of Tenochtitlan, situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who referred to themselves as Mēxihcah Tenochcah or Cōlhuah Mexihcah. From the 13th century, the Valley of Mexico was the heart of Aztec civilization, here the capital of the Aztec Triple Alliance, the Triple Alliance formed a tributary empire expanding its political hegemony far beyond the Valley of Mexico, conquering other city states throughout Mesoamerica. At its pinnacle, Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions, as well as achieving remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments. Subsequently, the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the ruined Aztec capital, the term extends to further ethnic groups associated with the Aztec empire such as the Acolhua and Tepanec and others that were incorporated into the empire. In older usage the term was used about modern Nahuatl speaking ethnic groups. In recent usage these ethnic groups are referred to as the Nahua peoples. Linguistically the term Aztecan is still used about the branch of the Uto-Aztecan languages that includes the Nahuatl language and its closest relatives Pochutec, to the Aztecs themselves the word aztec was not an endonym for any particular ethnic group. Rather it was a term used to refer to several ethnic groups, not all of them Nahuatl speaking. In the Nahuatl language aztecatl means person from Aztlan and this usage has been the subject of debate in more recent years, but the term Aztec is still more common. For the same reason the notion of Aztec civilization is best understood as a horizon of a general Mesoamerican civilization. Particular to the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan was the Mexica patron God Huitzilopochtli, twin pyramids, the Aztec Empire was a tribute empire based in Tenochtitlan that extended its power throughout Mesoamerica in the late postclassic period. Soon Texcoco and Tlacopan became junior partners in the alliance, which was de facto led by the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, the empire extended its power by a combination of trade and military conquest. The political clout of the empire reached far south into Mesoamerica conquering cities as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala, the Nahua peoples began to migrate into Mesoamerica from northern Mexico in the 6th century. They populated central Mexico, dislocating speakers of Oto-Manguean languages as they spread their influence south. As the former nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples mixed with the civilizations of Mesoamerica, adopting religious and cultural practices. During the Postclassic period they rose to power at such sites as Tula, in the 12th century the Nahua power center was in Azcapotzalco, from where the Tepanecs dominated the valley of Mexico
12.
Moctezuma II
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During his reign the Aztec Empire reached its greatest size. Through warfare, Moctezuma expanded the territory as far south as Xoconosco in Chiapas and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and he changed the previous meritocratic system of social hierarchy and widened the divide between pipiltin and macehualtin by prohibiting commoners from working in the royal palaces. The portrayal of Moctezuma in history has mostly been colored by his role as ruler of a defeated nation, the biases of some historical sources make it difficult to understand his actions during the Spanish invasion. Moctezuma had many wives and concubines but only two women were his Queens – Tlapalizquixochtzin and Teotlalco and he was also a King Consort of Ecatepec because Tlapalizquixochtzin was Queen of that city. His many children included Princess Isabel Moctezuma — and sons Chimalpopoca, the Nahuatl pronunciation of his name is. It is a compound of a noun meaning lord and a meaning to frown in anger. The Aztecs did not use numbers, they were given retroactively by historians to more easily distinguish him from the first Moctezuma. The Aztec chronicles called him Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, while the first was called Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina or Huehuemotecuhzoma, the descriptions of the life of Moctezuma are full of contradictions, and thus nothing is known for certain about his personality and rule. He did not wear his hair long but just over his ears and his face was rather long and cheerful, he had fine eyes, and in his appearance and manner could express geniality or, when necessary, a serious composure. He was very neat and clean, and took a bath every afternoon and he had many women as his mistresses, the daughters of chieftains, but two legitimate wives who were Caciques in their own right, and only some of his servants knew of it. He was quite free from sodomy, the clothes he wore one day he did not wear again till three or four days later. He had a guard of two hundred chieftains lodged in rooms beside his own, only some of whom were permitted to speak to him. It was stated that he had reigned for seventeen years, and was the best king they ever had in Mexico, I have spoken of the sorrow we all felt when we saw that Montezuma was dead. We even blamed the Mercederian friar for not having persuaded him to become a Christian, Moctezuma in particular is depicted unfavorably as a weak-willed, superstitious, and indulgent ruler. Historian James Lockhart suggests that the people needed to have a scapegoat for the Aztec defeat, unlike Bernal Díaz, who was recording his memories many years after the fact, Cortés wrote his Cartas de relación to justify his actions to the Spanish Crown. His prose is characterized by descriptions and explanations, along with frequent personal addresses to the King. They came in two columns, pressed very close to the walls of the street, which is wide and beautiful. Mutezuma came down the middle of street with two chiefs, one on his right hand and the other on his left
13.
Mexica
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The Mexica or Mexicas were an indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico, known today as the rulers of the Aztec Empire. The Mexica were a Nahua people who founded their two cities Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco on raised islets in Lake Texcoco around AD1300, after the rise of the Aztec Triple Alliance, the Tenochca Mexica assumed a senior position over their two allied cities, Texcoco and Tlacopan. The Mexica are eponymous of the placename Mexico Mēxihco and this area was expanded upon in the wake of the Spanish conquest and administered from the former Aztec capital as New Spain. Like many of the peoples around them, the Mexica spoke Nahuatl, the form of Nahuatl used in the 16th century, when it began to be written in the alphabet brought by the Spanish, is known as Classical Nahuatl. Nahuatl is still today by over 1.5 million people
14.
Gulf of Mexico
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The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. The U. S. states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas border the Gulf on the north, Atlantic and Pacific coasts, or sometimes the south coast, in juxtaposition to the Great Lakes region being the north coast. One of the seven main areas is the Gulf of Mexico basin. The Gulf of Mexico formed approximately 300 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics, the Gulfs basin is roughly oval and is approximately 810 nautical miles wide and floored by sedimentary rocks and recent sediments. It is connected to part of the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits between the U. S. and Cuba, and with the Caribbean Sea via the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba, with the narrow connection to the Atlantic, the Gulf experiences very small tidal ranges. The size of the Gulf basin is approximately 1.6 million km2, almost half of the basin is shallow continental shelf waters. The basin contains a volume of roughly 2,500 quadrillion liters, the consensus among geologists who have studied the geology of the Gulf of Mexico, is that prior to the Late Triassic, the Gulf of Mexico did not exist. It was created by the collision of plates that formed Pangea. As interpreted by Roy Van Arsdale and Randel T. Cox, geologists and other Earth scientists agree in general that the present Gulf of Mexico basin originated in Late Triassic time as the result of rifting within Pangea. The rifting was associated with zones of weakness within Pangea, including sutures where the Laurentia, South American, first, there was a Late Triassic-Early Jurassic phase of rifting during which rift valleys formed and filled with continental red beds. Second, as rifting progressed through Early and Middle Jurassic time and it was at this time that tectonics first created a connection to the Pacific Ocean across central Mexico and later eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. This flooded the basin created by rifting and crustal thinning to create the Gulf of Mexico. While the Gulf of Mexico was a basin, the subsiding transitional crust was blanketed by the widespread deposition of Louann Salt. Initially, during the Late Jurassic, continued rifting widened the Gulf of Mexico and progressed to the point that sea-floor spreading, at this point, sufficient circulation with the Atlantic Ocean was established that the deposition of Louann Salt ceased. During the Late Jurassic through Early Cretaceous, the occupied by the Gulf of Mexico experienced a period of cooling. The subsidence was the result of a combination of stretching, cooling. Initially, the combination of stretching and cooling caused about 5–7 km of tectonic subsidence of the central thin transitional
15.
Massacre in the Great Temple
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The Massacre in the Great Temple of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was an episode in the Spanish conquest of Mexico that happened on May 22,1520, of the Julian Calendar. During his absence, Moctezuma asked deputy governor Pedro de Alvarado for permission to celebrate Toxcatl, but after the festivities had started, Alvarado interrupted the celebration, killing almost everyone present at the festival, men, women, and children alike. The few who managed to escape the massacre climbing over the walls proceeded to inform the community of the treacherous Spaniards atrocity, while differing so on Alvarados specific motive, both accounts are in basic agreement that the celebrants were unarmed and that the massacre was without warning and unprovoked. They came into the patio, armed for battle and they came to close the exits, the steps, the entrances, The Gate of the Eagle in the smallest palace, The Gate of the Canestalk and the Gate of the Snake of Mirrors. And when they had closed them, no one could get out anywhere, once they had done this, they entered the Sacred Patio to kill people. They came on foot, carrying swords and wooden and metal shields, immediately, they surrounded those who danced, then rushed to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off both his arms, then they cut off his head that it flew off, falling far away. At that moment, they attacked all the people, stabbing them, spearing them. They struck some from behind, who fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out and they cut off the heads of some and smashed the heads of others into little pieces. They struck others in the shoulders and tore their arms from their bodies and they struck some in the thighs and some in the calves. They slashed others in the abdomen and their entrails fell to the earth, there were some who even ran in vain, but their bowels spilled as they ran, they seemed to get their feet entangled with their own entrails. Eager to flee, they found nowhere to go, some tried to escape, but the Spaniards murdered them at the gates while they laughed. Others climbed the walls, but they could not save themselves, others entered the communal house, where they were safe for a while. Others lay down among the victims and pretended to be dead, but if they stood up again they would see them and kill them. The blood of the warriors ran like water as they ran, forming pools, and the Spaniards walked everywhere, searching the communal houses to kill those who were hiding. They ran everywhere, they searched every place, when outside, shouting began, Captains, Mexicas, come here quickly. Come here with all arms, spears, and shields, oh Mexica captains, have been annihilated. Then a roar was heard, screams, people wailed, as they beat their palms against their lips, quickly the captains assembled, as if planned in advance, and carried their spears and shields
16.
Nahuatl
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Nahuatl, known historically as Aztec, is a language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimated 1.5 million Nahua peoples, all Nahuan languages are indigenous to Mesoamerica. Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE and it was the language of the Aztecs who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history. This early literary language based on the Tenochtitlan variety has been labeled Classical Nahuatl, today, Nahuan languages are spoken in scattered communities, mostly in rural areas throughout central Mexico and along the coastline. There are considerable differences among varieties, and some are mutually unintelligible, Huasteca Nahuatl, with over one million speakers, is the most-spoken variety. They have all been subject to varying degrees of influence from Spanish, No modern Nahuan languages are identical to Classical Nahuatl, but those spoken in and around the Valley of Mexico are generally more closely related to it than those on the periphery. Nahuan languages exhibit a complex morphology characterized by polysynthesis and agglutination, through a very long period of coexistence with the other indigenous Mesoamerican languages, they have absorbed many influences, coming to form part of the Mesoamerican language area. Many words from Nahuatl have been borrowed into Spanish, and since diffused into hundreds of other languages, most of these loanwords denote things indigenous to central Mexico which the Spanish heard mentioned for the first time by their Nahuatl names. English words of Nahuatl origin include avocado, chayote, chili, chocolate, atlatl, coyote, peyote, axolotl, as a language label, the term Nahuatl encompasses a group of closely related languages or divergent dialects within the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas recognize 30 different individual varieties within the language group labeled Nahuatl, the Ethnologue recognizes 28 varieties with separate ISO codes. Sometimes the label also is used to include the Pipil language of El Salvador, within Mexico the question of whether to consider individual varieties to be languages or dialects of a single language is highly political. This article focuses on describing the history of the group. For details on individual varieties or subgroups, see the individual articles, in the past, the branch of Uto-Aztecan to which Nahuatl belongs has been called Aztecan. From the 1990s onward, the alternative designation Nahuan has been used as a replacement especially in Spanish-language publications. The Nahuan branch of Uto-Aztecan is widely accepted as having two divisions, General Aztec and Pochutec, General Aztec encompasses the Nahuatl and Pipil languages. Pochutec is a scantily attested language, which became extinct in the 20th century, other researchers have argued that Pochutec should be considered a divergent variant of the western periphery. Nahuatl denotes at least Classical Nahuatl together with related languages spoken in Mexico. The inclusion of Pipil into the group is debated, current subclassification of Nahuatl rests on research by Canger, Canger and Lastra de Suárez
17.
Aztec religion
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The Aztec religion is the Mesoamerican religion of the Aztecs. Like other Mesoamerican religions, it had elements of human sacrifice in connection with a number of religious festivals which were held according to patterns of the Aztec calendar. Aztec cosmology divides the world into thirteen heavens and nine earthly layers or netherworlds each level associated with a set of deities. The concept of Teotl is central to the Aztecs, the term is often translated as god, but may have held more abstract aspects of divinity or supernatural energy akin to the Polynesian concept of Mana. The many gods of the Aztecs can be grouped into complexes related to different themes, other deities, for example Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, had roots in earlier civilizations of Mesoamerica and were worshiped by many cultures and by many names. Some gods embodied aspects of nature, a large group of gods were related to pulque, drunkenness, excess, fun and games. Other gods were associated with specific trades, many gods had multiple aspects with different names, where each name highlighted a specific function or trait of the god. Occasionally, two gods were conflated into one, and quite often deities transformed into one another within a single story. Aztec images sometimes combined attributes of several divinities, nicholson classed the gods into three groups according to their conceptual meaning in general Mesoamerican religion. The first group he calls the Celestial creativity – Divine Paternalism group, the second, the earth-mother gods, the third group, the War-Sacrifice-Sanguinary Nourishment group contained such gods as Ome Tochtli, Huitzilopochtli, Mictlantecutli and Mixcoatl. Instead of Nicholsons subtle classification in the following a more impressionist classification is presented, on the state level, religion was controlled by the Tlatoani and the high priests governing the main temples in the ceremonial precinct of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. For example, on the feast of Huey Tozoztli, the ruler himself ascended Mt. Tlaloc, throughout society, each level had their own rituals and deities and played their part in the larger rituals of the community. On the feast of Ochpaniztli, all participated in sweeping the streets. Huixachtlan, lit on the chest of a person by the high priests. The Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan was the head of the cult of Huitzilopochtli and he had special priestly duties in different rituals on the state level. However, the Aztec religious organization was not entirely under his authority, under these religious heads were many tiers of priests, priestesses, novices, nuns and monks who ran the cults of the various gods and goddesses. Sahagun reports that the priests had a strict training, and had to live very austere and ethical lives involving prolonged vigils, fasts. For instance, they often had to bleed themselves and undertake prescribed self-mortifications in the buildup to sacrificial rites, additionally, Sahagun refers to classes of religious specialists not affiliated with the established priesthood
18.
Aztec mythology
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Aztec mythology is the body or collection of myths of Aztec civilization of Central Mexico. The Aztecs were Nahuatl-speaking groups living in central Mexico and much of their mythology is similar to that of other Mesoamerican cultures, according to legend, the various groups who were to become the Aztecs arrived from the north into the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco. The location of this valley and lake of destination is clear – it is the heart of modern Mexico City –, there are different accounts of their origin. In the myth the ancestors of the Mexica/Aztec came from a place in the north called Aztlan, other accounts cite their origin in Chicomoztoc, the place of the seven caves, or at Tamoanchan. The Mexica/Aztec were said to be guided by their god Huitzilopochtli, at an island in Lake Texcoco, they saw an eagle holding a rattlesnake in its talons, perched on a nopal cactus. This vision fulfilled a prophecy telling them that they should found their new home on that spot, the Aztecs built their city of Tenochtitlan on that site, building a great artificial island, which today is in the center of Mexico City. This legendary vision is pictured on the Coat of Arms of Mexico, to the Aztec, the Toltec were the originators of all culture, Toltecayotl was a synonym for culture. Aztec legends identify the Toltecs and the cult of Quetzalcoatl with the city of Tollan. Because the Aztec adopted and combined several traditions with their own earlier traditions, coatlicue was the mother of Centzon Huitznahua, her sons, and Coyolxauhqui, her daughter. She found a ball filled with feathers and placed it in her waistband and her other children became suspicious as to the identity of the father and vowed to kill their mother. She gave birth on Mount Coatepec, pursued by her children, but the newborn Huitzilopochtli defeated most of his brothers and he also killed his half-sister Coyolxauhqui by tearing out her heart using a Xiuhcoatl and throwing her body down the mountain. Our age, the age, or fifth creation, began in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. According to the myth, all the gods had gathered to sacrifice themselves, although the world and the sun had already been created, it would only be through their sacrifice that the sun would be set into motion and time as well as history could begin. The handsomest and strongest of the gods, Tecuciztecatl, was supposed to sacrifice himself but when it time to self-immolate. Instead, Nanahuatl the smallest and humblest of the gods, who was covered in boils, sacrificed himself first. The sun was set into motion with his sacrifice and time began, humiliated by Nanahuatls sacrifice, Tecuciztecatl too leaped into the fire and became the moon. Water deities Tlaloc, rain god Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water, lakes, rivers, seas, streams, horizontal waters, storms, Xipe-Totec, god of force, lord of the seasons and rebirth, ruler of the East. Quetzalcoatl, god of the life, the light and wisdom, lord of the winds, Huitzilopochtli, god of the war, lord of the sun and fire, ruler of the South
19.
Aztec calendar
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The Aztec or Mexica calendar is the calendar system that was used by the Aztecs as well as other Pre-Columbian peoples of central Mexico. It is one of the Mesoamerican calendars, sharing the basic structure of calendars from throughout ancient Mesoamerica, the calendar consisted of a 365-day calendar cycle called xiuhpohualli and a 260-day ritual cycle called tonalpohualli. These two cycles formed a 52-year century, sometimes called the calendar round. The xiuhpohualli is considered to be the calendar, since it is based on the sun. The tonalpohualli consists of a cycle of 260 days, each day signified by a combination of a number from 1 to 13 and this cycle of number and day signs would continue similarly until the 20th week, which would start on 1 Rabbit, and end on 13 Flower. It would take a full 260 days for the two cycles to realign and repeat the sequence back on 1 Crocodile, the set of day signs used in central Mexico is identical to that used by Mixtecs, and to a lesser degree similar to those of other Mesoamerican calendars. Each of the day signs also bears an association with one of the four cardinal directions, there is some variation in the way the day signs were drawn or carved. Those here were taken from the Codex Magliabechiano, wind and Rain are represented by images of their associated gods, Ehecatl and Tlaloc. Other marks on the stone showed the current world and also the worlds before this one, each world was called a sun, and each sun had its own species of inhabitants. The Aztecs believed that they were in the sun and like all of the suns before them they would also eventually perish due to their own imperfections. The 260 days of the calendar were grouped into twenty periods of thirteen days each. Scholars usually refer to these weeks as trecenas, using a Spanish term derived from trece thirteen. The original Nahuatl term is not known, each trecena is named according to the calendar date of the first day of the thirteen days in that trecena. In addition, each of the twenty trecenas in the 260-day cycle had its own deity, In ancient times the year was composed of eighteen months. The days of the year were counted twenty by twenty, Diego Durán Xiuhpohualli is the Aztec year count. One year consists of 360 named days and 5 nameless and these extra days are thought to be unlucky. The year was broken into 18 periods of twenty days each, the Aztec word for moon is metztli but whatever name was used for these periods is unknown. Through Spanish usage, the 20-day period of the Aztec calendar has become known as a veintena
20.
Aztec medicine
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The Aztec medicine concerns the body of knowledge, belief and a ritual surrounding human health and sickness, as observed among the Nahuatl-speaking peoples in the Aztec realm of central Mexico. The Aztecs knew of and used an extensive inventory consisting of hundreds of different medicinal herbs, elements of traditional medicinal practices and beliefs are still found among modern-day Nahua communities, often intermixed with European or other later influences. Establishing a treatment for any given ailment depended first upon determining the nature of its cause, disease had an ambivalent or dualistic aspect, representing an imbalanced state but at the same time its presence could indicate the existence of a communion with the supernatural world. Aztec use of entheogens Mesoamerican medicine Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel, handbook to Life in the Aztec World. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, verdadera medicina, cirugía y astrologia en tres libros dividida. Pestilence and Headcolds, Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico
21.
Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
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Human sacrifice was a religious practice of the pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, as well as other Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya and the Zapotec. The extent of such practices is debated by modern scholars, for example, Bernal Díazs The Conquest of New Spain includes eyewitness accounts of human sacrifices, as well as descriptions of the remains of sacrificial victims. In addition, there are a number of accounts of human sacrifices written by Spanish friars. The literary accounts have been supported by archeological research, a wide variety of explanations and interpretations of the Aztec practice of human sacrifice have been proposed by modern scholars. Most scholars of Pre-Columbian civilization see human sacrifice among the Aztecs as a part of the cultural tradition of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. The practice of sacrifice was widespread in the Mesoamerican and in the South American cultures during the Inca Empire. Like all other known pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, the extant sources describe how the Aztecs sacrificed human victims on each of their eighteen festivities, one festivity for each of their 20-day months. It is unknown if the Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice before they reached the Anahuac valley and started absorbing other cultural influences. The first human sacrifice reported in the sources was the sacrifice and skinning of the daughter of the king Cóxcox of Culhuacán, several ethnohistorical sources state that under the guidance of Tlacaelel, the importance of human sacrifice in Aztec history grew. The Aztecs would perform a series of rituals on nearby tribesmen, sacrifice them using an obsidian knife and they would end the sacrificing when he had finished drinking and he was no longer thirsty. This ritual would go on for a whole weekend so as to please the gods, Sacrifice was a common theme in Mesoamerican cultures. In the Aztec Legend of the Five Suns, all the gods sacrificed themselves so that mankind could live. Some years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a body of Franciscans confronted the remaining Aztec priesthood and demanded, under threat of death, the Aztec priests defended themselves as follows, Life is because of the gods, with their sacrifice they gave us life. What the Aztec priests were referring to was a central Mesoamerican belief, everything on earth is tonacayotl—spiritual flesh-hood. All things—earth, crops, moon, stars and people—spring from the severed or buried bodies, fingers, humanity itself is macehualli, those deserved and brought back to life through penance. A strong sense of indebtedness was connected with this worldview, indeed, nextlahualli was a commonly used metaphor for human sacrifice, and, as Bernardino de Sahagún reported, it was said that the victim was someone who gave his service. Human sacrifice was in this sense the highest level of an entire panoply of offerings through which the Aztecs sought to repay their debt to the gods. Even the stage for human sacrifice, the massive temple-pyramids, was a mound, crammed with treasures, grains, soil and human
22.
Templo Mayor
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The Templo Mayor was one of the main temples of the Aztecs in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Its architectural style belongs to the late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica, the spire in the center of the adjacent image was devoted to Quetzalcoatl in his form as the wind god, Ehecatl. The Great Temple devoted to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, measuring approximately 100 by 80 m at its base, construction of the first temple began sometime after 1325, and it was rebuilt six times. The temple was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521 to make way for the new cathedral, today, the archeological site lies just to the northeast of the Zocalo, or main plaza of Mexico City, in the block between Seminario and Justo Sierra streets. The site is part of the Historic Center of Mexico City, after the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Templo Mayor, like most of the rest of the city, was taken apart and covered over by the new Spanish colonial city. The Temple’s exact location was forgotten, although by the 20th-century scholars had an idea where to look for it. This was based on the work done at the end of the 19th century. Leopoldo Batres did some work at the end of the 19th century under the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral because at this time. In the first decades of the 20th century, Manuel Gamio found part of the southwest corner of the temple, however, it did not generate great public interest in excavating further because the zone was an upper-class residential area. In 1933, Emilio Cuevas found part of a staircase and beam, in 1948, Hugo Moedano and Elma Estrada Balmori excavated a platform containing serpent heads and offerings. In 1966, Eduardo Contreras and Jorge Angula excavated a chest containing offerings that was first explored by Gamio, the push to fully excavate the site did not come until late in the 20th century. On 21 February 1978, workers for the company were digging at a place in the city then popularly known as the island of the dogs. It was so named because it was elevated over the rest of the neighborhood. Just over two meters down, the diggers struck a pre-Hispanic monolith and this stone turned out to be a huge disk of over 3.25 meters in diameter,30 centimeters thick and weighing 8.5 metric tons. The relief on the stone was later determined to be Coyolxauhqui, Huitzilopochtlis sister, from 1978 to 1982, specialists directed by archeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma worked on the project to excavate the Temple. Initial excavations found many of the artifacts were in good enough condition to study. Efforts coalesced into the Templo Mayor Project, which was authorized by presidential decree, to excavate,13 buildings in this area had to be demolished. Nine of these were built in the 1930s and four dated from the 19th century and these objects are housed in the Templo Mayor Museum
23.
Aztec warfare
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The Aztec state was centered on political expansion and dominance of and exaction of tribute from other city states, and warfare was the basic dynamic force in Aztec politics. Thus, only specifically chosen men served in the military, the sacrifice of war captives was an important part of many of the Aztec religious festivals. Warfare was thus the driving force of both the Aztec economy and religion. There were two main objectives in Aztec warfare, the first objective was political, the subjugation of enemy city states in order to exact tribute and expand Aztec political hegemony. The second objective was religious and socioeconomic, the taking of captives to be sacrificed in religious ceremonies and these dual objectives also influenced the kind of warfare practiced by the Aztecs. Warriors were essential to Aztec life and culture, at birth, an Aztec boy would receive two symbols of being a warrior. A shield would be placed in his hand, and an arrow would be placed in his right. After a short ceremony the newly born boys umbilical cord, shield and these parts would symbol the rise of a warrior. Each shield and arrow would be specifically for that boy and would resemble his family. These birth rituals show the importance of culture to the Aztecs. As for girls, at birth their umbilical cord would be buried usually under the family fireplace, since all boys starting at age 15 were trained to become warriors Aztec society as a whole had no standing army. Therefore, warriors would be drafted to a campaign through a Tequital, outside of battle, many warriors were farmers and tradesmen. They would learn their trade from their father, warriors would be married by their early twenties and would be a vital part of Aztec daily life. They would work a certain trade usually passed on through family status, warriors would be lower class citizens, that when called upon would engage in battle. Being a warrior did, however, present a way to move up in Aztec society, the warriors life was a chance to change ones social status. If they were successful as a warrior they would be presented with gifts, if they reached the rank of Eagle or Jaguar warrior they would be considered as nobles. They would also become full-time warriors working for the city-state to protect merchants and they resembled the police force of Aztec society. Aztec culture valued appearance, and appearance defined people within society, warriors had a very distinct appearance
24.
Aztec codices
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Aztec codices are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. These codices provide some of the best primary sources for Aztec culture, the pre-Columbian codices mostly do not in fact use the codex form and are, or originally were, long folded sheets. They also differ from European books in that they mostly consist of images and pictograms, the colonial era codices not only contain Aztec pictograms, but also Classical Nahuatl, Spanish, and occasionally Latin. Some are entirely in Nahuatl without pictorial content, although there are very few surviving pre-conquest codices, the tlacuilo tradition endured the transition to colonial culture, scholars now have access to a body of around 500 colonial-era codices. Colonial-era Nahuatl language documentation is the texts of the New Philology. The Codex Borbonicus is a written by Aztec priests around the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Like all pre-Columbian Aztec codices, it was pictorial in nature. Codex Bornobicus is held at the Library of the National Assembly of France, the Boturini Codex was painted by an unknown Aztec author some time between 1530 and 1541, roughly a decade after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Pictorial in nature, it tells the story of the legendary Aztec journey from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico, rather than employing separate pages, the author used one long sheet of amatl, or fig bark, accordion-folded into 21½ pages. There is a rip in the middle of the 22nd page, unlike many other Aztec codices, the drawings are not colored, but rather merely outlined with black ink. Also known as Tira de la Peregrinación, it is named one of its first European owners. It is now held in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, the Codex Mendoza is a pictorial document, with Spanish annotations and commentary, composed circa 1541. It is divided into three sections, a history of each Aztec ruler and their conquests, a list of the tribute paid by each province. It is held in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, the Florentine Codex is a set of 12 books created under the supervision of Bernardino de Sahagún between approximately 1540 and 1585. It is a copy of original materials which are now lost. Perhaps more than any source, the Florentine Codex has been the major source of Aztec life in the years before the Spanish conquest. Anderson published English translations of the Nahuatl text of the books in separate volumes. A full color, facsimile copy of the codex was published in three bound volumes in 1979
25.
Aztec writing
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Aztec or Nahuatl writing is a pictographic and ideographic pre-Columbian writing system with significant number of logograms and syllabic signs which was used in central Mexico by the Nahua people. The majority of the Aztec codices were burned either by Aztec tlatoani, remaining Aztec codices such as Codex Mendoza, Codex Borbonicus, and Codex Osuna were written on deer hide and plant fiber. The Aztec writing system is adopted from writing systems used in Central Mexico, mixtec writing is also thought to descend from the Zapotec. The first Oaxacan inscriptions are thought to encode Zapotec, partially because of numerical suffixes characteristic of the Zapotec languages, Aztec was pictographic and ideographic proto-writing, augmented by phonetic rebuses. It also contained syllabic signs and logograms, there was no alphabet, but puns also contributed to recording sounds of the Aztec language. While some scholars have understood the system to not be considered a writing system. There are conventional signs for syllables and logograms which act as signs or for their rebus content. Logosyllabic writing appears on painted and carved artifacts, such as the Tizoc Stone. However, instances of phonetic characters often appear within a significant artistic, in native manuscripts, the sequence of historical events are indicted by a line of footprints leading from one place or scene to another. The concepts of motion and walking were indicated by a trail of footprints, a glyph could be used as a rebus to represent a different word with the same sound or similar pronunciation. This is especially evident in the glyphs of town names, for example, the glyph for Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was represented by combining two pictograms, stone and cactus. Aztec Glyphs do not have a set reading order, as do Mayan hieroglyphs, as such, they may be read in any direction which forms the correct sound values in the context of the glyph. However, there is an internal reading order in that any sign will be followed by the sign for the following sound in the word being written. They do not jumble up the sounds in a word, the Aztec numerical system was vigesimal. They indicated quantities up to twenty by the number of dots. A flag was used to indicate twenty, repeating it for quantities up to four hundred, while a sign like a fir tree, meaning numerous as hairs, signified four hundred. The next unit, eight thousand, was indicated by an incense bag, aztecs embraced the widespread manner of presenting history cartographically. A cartographic map would hold an elaborately detailed history recording events, the maps were painted to be reading sequence, so that time is established by the movement of the narrative through the map and by the succession of individual maps
26.
Tlacopan
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Nearby was the city of Tiliuhcan. Founded by Tlacomatzin, Tlacopan was a Tepanec kingdom subordinate to nearby Azcapotzalco, Tlacopan sided with Tenochtitlan and Texcoco in their conquest of Azcapotzalco, becoming a member of the Triple Alliance which formed the nucleus of the Aztec Empire. The ruler of Tlacopan, Totoquihuaztli, then took the title Tepaneca tecuhtli, Tlacopan was to remain a junior partner in the alliance, receiving only a fifth of the tribute gained from joint campaigns with its more powerful allies. The Triple Alliance ended with the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, over the centuries, Mexico City expanded to include the former site of Tlacopan, todays neighborhood of Tacuba in the Mexico City borough of Miguel Hidalgo
27.
Eagle warrior
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Eagle warriors or eagle knights were a special class of infantry soldier in the Aztec army, one of the two leading military orders in Aztec society. They were a type of Aztec warrior called a cuāuhocēlōtl, the word cuāuhocēlōtl derives from the eagle warrior cuāuhtli and the jaguar warrior ocēlōtl. These military orders were made up of the bravest soldiers of noble birth, of all of the Aztec warriors, they were the most feared. The eagles were soldiers of the Sun, for the eagle was the symbol of the Sun, the life of Aztec warriors was one of constant battle, as the primary purpose for this continual warfare was to take prisoners to be sacrificed to their gods. As the Aztec Empire expanded, however, the expansion of the empire in size, in current culture, the eagle warrior is a representation of the Aztec culture, and therefore the Mexican tradition. Some companies use the eagle warrior as a symbol that denotes strength, aggressiveness, competitiveness, aeroMexicos logo, for instance, shows a cuāuhtli. All Aztec boys, both commoners and nobility, learned about weaponry and warfare as part of their basic education. Until the age of fourteen, the education of children was in the hands of their parents, periodically, they attended their local temples, which tested their progress. However, only the best students could progress to become eagle warriors, the empire was split in pieces, kings, nobles, generals, priests, peasants, and finally slaves. Politically, the society was based around the independent city-state, called an altepetl, composed of smaller divisions, economically the society was dependent on agriculture, and also to a large extent on warfare. Other economically important factors were commerce, long distance and local, at the age of 17, young Aztec men became warriors and entered formal military training. The recruits were expected to be brave and noble and those who were of noble lineage also received training in religion, politics, or history by the priests. To achieve adult status, a man had to capture his first prisoner. Aztec warriors could move up in ranking by capturing enemies, after having done 20 or more great deeds, they were eligible to become either a jaguar or eagle warrior. The warriors used a number of weapons, including an atlatl, bows, the Aztec blades were made by setting obsidian within wood. Firestones were flung at enemies using slings made of wool, most Aztec weapons were intended to stun and capture opponents rather than to kill them. The uniforms of eagle warriors signified both courage on the battlefield and physical strength, the Aztecs wore a lightweight close-fitting breastplate which suited the Mesoamerican climate. Their shields were brightly coloured and decorated with feathers, a warriors legs would be covered with leather strips, an archaic version of greaves
28.
Huitzilopochtli
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In the Aztec religion, Huitzilopochtli, is a Mesoamerican deity of war, sun, human sacrifice and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the god of the Mexicas, also known as Aztecs. Many in the pantheon of deities of the Aztecs were inclined to have a fondness for an aspect of warfare. However, Huitzilopochtli was known as the god of war in ancient Mexico. Since he was the god of the Mexica, he was credited with both the victories and defeats that the Mexica people had on the battlefield. The people had to make sacrifices to him to protect the Aztec from infinite night and it is important to remember that the defeat of their patron deity meant the defeat of his people. This is one of the reasons why they were concerned with providing exquisite tribute. Not only was it important for him to survive his battles and he wielded Xiuhcoatl as a weapon, associating him with fire. The name literally means something like Hummingbird South or Hummingbird Left, in the tlaxotecuyotl, a hymn sung in reverence to Huitzilopotchtli, he is referred to as, the Dart-Hurler, the divine hurler, and a terror to the Mixteca. There are a handful of origin mythologies describing the deity’s beginnings, one story tells of the cosmic creation and Huitzilopochtli’s role. According to this legend, he was the smallest son of parents being the creator couple Tonacatecutli and Tonacacihuatl while his brothers were Quetzalcoatl. His mother and father instructed him and Quetzalcoatl to bring order to the world. And so, together they made fire, the first male and female humans, created the Earth, another origin story tells of a fierce goddess, Coatlicue, being impregnated as she was sweeping by a ball of feathers on Mount Coatepec. Her other children, who were fully grown, were the four hundred male Centzonuitznaua. These children, angered by the manner by which their mother became impregnated, conspired to kill her, Huitzilopochtli burst forth from his mother’s womb in full armor and fully grown. He attacked his brothers and sister, defending his mother by beheading his sister. He also chased after his brothers, who fled from him, Huitzilopochtli is seen as the sun in mythology, while his many male siblings are perceived as the stars and his sister as the moon. In the Aztec worldview, this is the reason why the Sun is constantly chasing the Moon and it is also why it was so important to provide tribute and thus sustenance for Huitzilopochtli, and thus the sun
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Tacuba, Mexico City
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Tacuba is a section of northwest Mexico City. It sits on the site of ancient Tlacopan, Tacuba was an autonomous municipality until 1928, when it was incorporated into the Central Department along with the municipalities of Mexico, Tacubaya and Mixcoac. The Central Department was later split up into boroughs, historical Tacuba is now in the borough of Miguel Hidalgo, the area was designated as a Barrio Mágico by the city in 2011. Tacuba was called Tlacopan in the pre-Hispanic period, Tacuba is derived from the former Nahuatl name Tlacopan and means place of the jarilla plant. It was conquered by Azcapotzalco which placed Totoquihuatzin as governor, when the Tenochtitlan and Texcoco decided to ally against Azcapotzalco, Tlacopan did not resist and for this reason is considered to be the third of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Tacuba’s importance led to the construction of a causeway over the lake linking it with Tenochtitlan, today, this causeway still exists as a major thoroughfare called Calzada Mexico-Tacuba. During the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Aztecs succeeded at one point in expelling the Spanish from Tenochtitlan in an event called La Noche Triste, Cortés and his men fled towards Tacuba on the road that still connects it with the historic center of Mexico City. One year later, Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan to conquer it for good, at the intersection of the Mexico-Tacuba Road and Mar Blanco is a still surviving Montezuma cypress tree. According to legend, this is the tree under which Cortés wept, the last ruler of Tacuba was Tetlepanquetzal, who was tortured by Cortés, who suspected that he was hiding treasure. Over the pre-Hispanic ceremonial site, the Franciscans constructed a church dedicate to the Archangel Gabriel, by 1632, the area had sixty haciendas and by the end of the 18th century,28 villages with Tacuba proper having twelve neighborhoods. The main river here was the Remedios, which was the main supply of water. In addition, to agriculture, the area was also an important supplier of lumber, by 1794, the area had 45 villages. In the first third of the 20th century, three important schools were established in Tacuba, the Colegio Militar was moved to Popotla in 1913, closed during the Mexican Revolution and reopend in 1920. The Escuela Nacional de Maestros was opened in 1925 along with the Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria de UNAM, in 1937, the Instituto Politécnico Nacional was opened in Santo Tómas. Since the mid 20th century, Tacuba proper has declined with problems such as crime, Tacuba has major problems with uncontrolled street vending and public transportation, prostitution and other crime. Rehabilitation of Tacuba is under a program designated RENACE, the church and former monastery of San Gabriel is located next to the Tacuba Metro station. The main entrance to the atrium has a gate with three arches. The small atrium is paved with a few trees
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Tepanec
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The Tepanecs or Tepaneca are a Mesoamerican people who arrived in the Valley of Mexico in the late 12th or early 13th centuries. The Tepanec were a culture of the Aztecs as well as the Acolhua and others—these tribes spoke the Nahuatl language and shared the same general pantheon. Reputedly welcomed to the Valley of Mexico by the semi-legendary Chichimeca ruler Xolotl, under their tlatoani, Acolnahuacatl, the Tepanec took over Azcapotzalco from the indigenous inhabitants. In the early 14th century, Tezozomoc brought the Tepanec to their height of power, at that point they controlled all of the Valley of Mexico as well as parts of the Toluca. Native sources say that Tezozomoc lived to the age of over 100 and was legendary for his generalship and statesmanship, the death of Tezozomoc in 1426 brought his sons Tayatzin and Maxtla to the throne, with Maxtla most likely poisoning Tayatzin. In 1428, Maxtla was overthrown by the nascent Aztec Triple Alliance, which included the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan, with the rise of the Aztec empire, Tlacopan became the predominant Tepanec city, although both Tenochtitlan and Texcoco eclipsed Tlacopan in size and prestige
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Battle of Otumba
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The Battle of Otumba was a battle at Otumba de Gómez Farías in 1520. Around the end of March 1519, Hernán Cortés landed with a Spanish conquistador force at Potonchán on the coast of modern-day Mexico. Cortés had been commissioned by Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar of Spanish-controlled Cuba to lead an expedition in the area, which was dominated by the Aztec Empire. At the last moment, though, Cortés permission was revoked, in November, a Spanish force entered the city, and was greeted by its ruler, Moctezuma II. Cortés was forced to leave a garrison of men in Tenochtitlan at the command of one of his lieutenants, Pedro de Alvarado. The Aztecs named a new emperor to replace Moctezuma, whom they regarded now as weak and easily influenced by the Spaniards. Cortés attempted to negotiate a peace, and as a last resort, urged Moctezuma to speak with his people to achieve a truce and this was the state of affairs by the end of June 1520. Desperate to escape the city, and further convinced by a one of the Spaniards claimed to have received. During this attempt at salvation, however, Cortés forces and entourage were cut down. Of the Spanish force of approximately 1300, only less than 500 men at arms escaped with their lives, Cortés then started a retreat to Tlaxcala, during which his force was harassed by Aztec skirmishers, and the Aztec leadership resolved to eliminate them as they withdrew. After being beleaguered on the causeway leading out of the city, the surviving Spanish forces arrived at the plain of Otumba, despite their opponents exhaustion and hunger, the Aztecs failed to capitalise on their numerical superiority by choosing a vast plain as the battlefield. According to conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillos account of the events, the Aztecs regarded the Spaniards as already defeated, and were looking to gain glory from capturing live Spaniards to sacrifice to their gods. The Castilian cavalry spearheaded the attack, breaking through the ranks and decimating the Aztec lines, preparing them for the assault of the Castilian rodeleros, though this approach was successful, the sheer numbers of the Aztecs still menaced to overwhelm the Castilians. The Aztecs, meanwhile, had not encountered Castilians in battle and they were unfamiliar with the use of troops mounted on horses as shock troops, and were taken aback when mounted Spanish soldiers continually charged at them. For all of their numbers, they were unprepared to endure cavalry charges, spaniard success was also thanks to Cortés strategy, he had instructed his troops to strike primarily at the captains and leaders of their opponent. Cortés himself recognized the Aztec leader Matlatzincatl for his armor, headdress. He correctly assumed that defeating their leader and capturing their flag would result in the defeat of the Aztecs. He communicated his idea to his captains and led a charge for Matlatzincatl, followed by Gonzalo de Sandoval, Pedro de Alvarado, Cristóbal de Olid, Juan de Salamanca and Alonso Dávila
32.
La Malinche
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She was one of 20 women slaves given to the Spaniards by the natives of Tabasco in 1519. Later, she became a mistress to Cortés and gave birth to his first son, Martín, the historical figure of Marina has been intermixed with Aztec legends. In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent and she is understood in various and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. The term malinchista refers to a disloyal countryperson, especially in Mexico, La Malinche was born sometime between 1496 and 1501, in the region between the Aztec-ruled Valley of Mexico and the Maya states of the Yucatán Peninsula. She was named Malinalli after the Goddess of Grass, and later Tenepal meaning one who speaks with liveliness, in her youth, her father Cacique of Paynala died, and her mother remarried another Cacique and bore a son. Now a stepchild, the girl was given to people from Xicalango. Bernal Díaz del Castillo claims Malinallis family faked her death by telling the townspeople that a deceased child of a slave was Malinalli. The Xicalango gave the child to the Tobascans, Malinalli was introduced to the Spanish in April 1519, when she was among 20 slave women given by the Chontal Maya of Potonchán after the Spaniards defeated them in battle. At this time, she was probably in her teens or early 20s. Bernal Díaz del Castillo remarked on her beauty and graciousness, she was the one of the slaves whose name he remembered. Cortés singled her out as a gift for Alonso Hernandez Puertocarrero, according to Díaz, she spoke to emissaries from Moctezuma in their native tongue Nahuatl and pointed to Cortés as the chief Spaniard to speak for them. Cortés had located a Spanish priest, Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had spent several years in captivity among the Maya peoples in Yucatán following a shipwreck, thus, he had learned some Mayan, but he did not speak Nahuatl. Cortés used Marina for translating between the Nahuatl language and the Chontal Maya language, then Aguilar could interpret from Mayan to Spanish until Marina learned Spanish and could be the sole interpreter. She accompanied Cortés so closely that Aztec codices always show her picture drawn alongside of Cortés, the natives of Tlaxcala, who formed an alliance with Cortés against Moctezuma, called both Marina and Cortés by the same name, Malintzin. According to surviving records, Marina learned of a plan by natives of Cholula to cooperate with the Aztecs to destroy the small Spanish army and she alerted Cortés to the danger and even pretended to be cooperating with her native informants while Cortés foiled their plot to trap his men. Cortés turned the tables on them and slaughtered many Cholulans, in this manner, she is often considered as a traitor by many and her name is not revered among many locals. Historians such as Prescott generally lost track of Marina after her journey to Central America, some contemporary scholars have estimated that she died less than a decade after the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan at some point in 1529. Historian Sir Hugh Thomas in his book Conquest reports the date of her death as 1551, deduced from letters he discovered in Spain alluding to her as alive in 1550
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Teotihuacan
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Additionally, Teotihuacan exported fine obsidian tools that garnered high prestige and widespread usage throughout Mesoamerica. The city is thought to have been established around 100 BC, the city may have lasted until sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries AD, but its major monuments were sacked and systematically burned around 550 AD. Teotihuacan began as a new center in the Mexican Highlands around the first century AD. This city came to be the largest and most populated center in the pre-Columbian Americas, Teotihuacan was even home to multi-floor apartment compounds built to accommodate this large population. The term Teotihuacan is also used for the civilization and cultural complex associated with the site. The later Aztecs saw these magnificent ruins and claimed a common ancestry with the Teotihuacanos, the ethnicity of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan is also a subject of debate. Possible candidates are the Nahua, Otomi, or Totonac ethnic groups, scholars have also suggested that Teotihuacan was a multi-ethnic state. The city and the site are located in what is now the San Juan Teotihuacán municipality in the State of México. The site covers a surface area of 83 square kilometres and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. It is the most visited site in Mexico. The name Teōtīhuacān was given by the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs centuries after the fall of the city around 550 A. D, the term has been glossed as birthplace of the gods, or place where gods were born, reflecting Nahua creation myths that were said to occur in Teotihuacan. Nahuatl scholar Thelma D. Sullivan interprets the name as place of those who have the road of the gods and this is because the Aztecs believed that the gods created the universe at that site. The name is pronounced in Nahuatl, with the accent on the syllable wa, by normal Nahuatl orthographic conventions, a written accent would not appear in that position. Both this pronunciation and Spanish pronunciation, are used, and both appear in this article. The original name of the city is unknown, but it appears in texts from the Maya region as puh. This naming convention led to confusion in the early 20th century. It now seems clear that Tollan may be understood as a generic Nahua term applied to any large settlement, the early history of Teotihuacan is quite mysterious, and the origin of its founders is uncertain. Around 300 BC, people of the central and southeastern area of Mesoamerica began to gather into larger settlements, Teotihuacan was the largest urban center of Mesoamerica before the Aztecs, almost 1000 years prior to their epoch
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Fall of Tenochtitlan
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The Siege of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, was a decisive event in the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The conquest of Mexico was a stage in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In April 1519 Hernán Cortés, the Chief Magistrate of Santiago, Cuba, came upon the coast of Mexico at a point he called Vera Cruz with 508 soldiers,100 sailors, and 14 small cannons. Velázquez revoked Cortés right to lead the expedition once he realized that Cortés intended to exceed his mandate, after Cortés sailed, Velázquez sent an army led by Pánfilo de Narváez to take him into custody. Cortés followed this tactic when he and his men established the city of Veracruz, an inquiry into Cortés action was conducted in Spain in 1529 and no action was taken against him. As he moved inland Cortés came into contact with a number of polities who resented Aztec rule, Cortés clashed with some of these polities, among them the Totonacs, the latter surrounded his army on a hilltop for two agonizing weeks. This is now believed to be an invention of the conquerors, most scholars agree that the Aztecs, especially the inner circle around Moctezuma, were well convinced that Cortés was not a god in any shape or form. Moctezuma sent a group of noblemen and other emissaries to meet Cortés at Quauhtechcac and these emissaries brought golden jewelry as a gift, which greatly pleased the Spaniards. According to the Florentine Codex, Lib, Moctezuma also ordered that his messengers carry the highly symbolic penacho of Quetzalcoatl de Tula to Cortés and place it on his person. As news about the strangers reached the city, Moctezuma became increasingly fearful and considered fleeing the city. Cortés continued on his march towards Tenochtitlan, before entering the city, on November 8,1519 Cortés and his troops prepared themselves for battle, armoring themselves and their horses, and arranging themselves in proper military rank. Four horsemen were at the lead of the procession, the indigenous soldiers wore cotton armor and were armed with shields and crossbows, many carried provisions in baskets or bundles while others escorted the cannons on wooden carts. Cortés army entered the city on the flower-covered causeway associated with the god Quetzalcoatl, Cortés was amicably received by Moctezuma. The captive woman Malinalli Tenépal, also known as La Malinche or Doña Marina, translated from Nahuatl to Chontal Maya, Moctezuma was soon taken hostage on November 14,1519, as a safety measure by the vastly outnumbered Spanish. The first captain assigned to him was Pedro de Alvarado. Other Aztec lords were also detained by the Spanish, the palace was surrounded by over 100 Spanish soldiers in order to prevent any attempt at rescue. It is uncertain why Moctezuma cooperated so readily with the Spaniards and it is possible he feared losing his life or political power. It was clear from the beginning that he was ambivalent about who Cortés and his men really were, gods, descendants of a god, ambassadors from a greater king, from the perspective of the tlatoani, the Spaniards might have been assigned some decisive role by fate
Spain
Triple Alliance
