Table of contents for Aztecs in Aztecs

As in many other cultures, the Aztecs often looked to the stars in the night sky to provide guidance or answers for many of life’s great questions. One of the spectacular phenomena they may have observed is a supernova. These dramatic cosmic events occur when a massive star reaches the end of its life and explodes, producing an incredibly bright flash of light that can radiate for days, months, or in some cases even years before eventually fading from view. Even though it may have been hundreds or thousands of light years away, a supernova would have been visible from Earth in the night sky, and sometimes during the day too. This was the case with a supernova that occured in 1054 CE around 6,500 light years away. This event…

01 Battles were staged to capture victims To fulfil their quota of human sacrifices, the Aztecs struck a deal with their neighbours, the Tlaxcalans, who shared similar beliefs. Both sides agreed to engage in ritualistic battles called flower wars, in which noble warriors would face-off in close combat to secure the rights to prisoners who could then be sacrificed. 02 It was a bloody affair The sacrifical victim would be taken to the top of a temple pyramid, where they would be laid down on a stone dais. A priest would then cut open their chest, pull out their stillbeating heart and triumphantly hold it up to the gods, before kicking the limp, lifeless body down the temple pyramid’s steps to be cut into pieces by the people. 03 Even…

When the Spanish arrived in Tenochtitlán they were amazed by what they saw. But of all the things that captured their imagination, it wasn’t the extraordinary buildings, the temples or the sophisticated canal system – it was the lavish food and drink they encountered that really astounded them. Indeed, one of the most fascinating descriptions we have of Aztec culture is the account of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a Spanish solider under Hernán Cortés, who led the first expedition to Mexico in 1519. In The True History of the Conquest of Mexico (New Spain), he describes in rich detail a lavish banquet held by Aztec leader Moctezuma II: “His cooks had upwards of thirty different ways of treating meats and they had earthen vessels so contrived as to keep them…

Chocolate’s sacred place in Aztec culinary culture meant it was a favourite at special feasts and banquets and not the casual drink that is as freely available as tea and coffee at our favourite café chains. But rather than sweetening it with sugar, which wasn’t known to them, the Aztecs embraced the bitterness, adding chilli peppers and even mushrooms to the drink. It was the Spanish who first experimented with drinking it hot in the 16th century, adding their own condiments and spices such as vanilla and cinnamon. This recipe does not contain sugar and is intended to emulate the chocolate that the Aztecs would have known. Ingredients: • 1 cup (300-500ml) of hot water• 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate (cooking chocolate)• 3 tablespoons of honey• ⅛ teaspoon salt• ½…

Named after the viceroy who commissioned the work, the Codex Mendoza was created in the 1540s and shines a light on Aztec economic, political and social history. The frontispiece (see image above) is especially appropriate when looking at the social life of late Aztec society. The city of Tenochtitlan is represented by the central image of the eagle and cactus and it is then divided into four separate sections defined by the crossing blue lines. Within these four sections are 10 seated figures, clearly of high birth. Nine of them are dressed in white robes and they wear their hair in a manner that signifies their prowess as warriors. Set apart by the colouring of his skin, his connection to a cactus that links to the central image, and by…

CUITLÁHUAC: 10TH TLATOANI (1520) When the Spanish arrived, Cuitláhuac warned his brother Moctezuma not to let them into Tenochtitlán, and he was right to be weary – he ended up being imprisoned. Anger and resentment built in the city until he was chosen to be the new tlatoani around the time of the Night of Sadness. Cuitláhuac tried unsuccessfully to form an anti-Spanish alliance and would have achieved much more, but he only ruled for 80 days before becoming one of the many to die from the greatest – if unintended – weapon of the Spanish: smallpox. CUAUHTÉMOC: 11TH TLATOANI (1520–21) The final Aztec ruler had similarly been against Spanish presence from the beginning, which was chiefly why he was elected at such a young age to lead. Thought to…

Cortés did battle with thousands of Aztec warriors during his campaign of exploration in Central America. They were a fearsome people from warrior societies based around two predators – the eagle and the jaguar. Many dressed in the image of these animals to terrify enemies. Warriors could only join these societies if they had captured enemy soldiers or become renowned as great warriors through the rank and file of the Aztec military. Their weapon of choice was the macuahuitl sword, a club-like weapon with obsidian blades sticking out of the ends, which the warriors would use to beat their victims to death. Up against these deadly warriors were the conquistadors. They were rarely regular soldiers, although most of Cortés’ men would have had some military experience. They were few in…

Having conquered its neighbours one by one, by the 16th century the Inca tribe had created the preeminent American empire. Their domain reached its zenith during the rule of Huayna Capac, stretching 4,000 kilometres along the western coast of South America, with awe-inspiring stone fortresses and temples connected via an elaborate network of roads. While the Inca boasted a more cohesive domain than the Aztecs, they too were decimated by the smallpox outbreak and many of their vassal clans resented their authority. When the adventurous Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro set off with 180 men and 30 horses, Huayna Capac had recently died, leading to a civil war between his sons, Huáscar and Atahualpa. Though Pizarro had already arrived in Peru, he let the brothers exhaust one another, until…

British archaeologists were stunned when they discovered the body of King Richard III in 2012. Six years earlier, Mexican archaeologists thought they may have had their own king-in-the-car-park moment. Aztec emperors were publicly cremated on a platform called a cuauhxicalco, then placed in a ceramic urn and buried. Surrounding the area were trees decorated with colourful paper. Archaeologists think they have uncovered the cuauhxicalco in the form of a 12-metre circular platform decorated with stone serpent heads. Nearby, a withered trunk of an oak tree that grew in a large flowerpot was also found. In 2006, archaeologists working in the Templo Mayor found a stone inscribed with the Aztec date 10 Rabbit, corresponding to 1502, along with burial objects that suggested the interment belonged to an important person. Could this…

Despite being isolated within the deep, dark, unforgiving jungles of Central America, for over 300 years the ancient Aztecs defied their reputation as blood-obsessed barbarians by pioneering many of the scientific and technological advances we take for granted today. What’s more, they did so across a broad range of fields, from astronomy to medicine, hoarding their acquired knowledge within huge libraries of codices that contained the secrets to the vast and impressive society they had built. Unfortunately, much of this knowledge was lost forever when the Spanish conquistadors of Hernán Cortés brought the civilisation to their knees in the early-16th century, with these supposedly heretical texts burned en masse. Luckily, a few records of Aztec scientific knowledge survived and today historians are working tirelessly to unlock their secrets. Read on…

“Aztecs granted prestige to the position of doctor and encouraged them to study the human body and potential remedies” Originally constructed in 1325 and then added to and extended six times afterwards, the massive Templo Mayor citadel of Tenochtitlán was surely one of the wonders of the ancient world, towering over the Aztec city state’s other structures at close to 30 m (90 ft) in height. Indeed, by the time it was eventually sacked and destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century, the pyramid temple consisted of four steep sloped terraces topped with a great platform measuring 80 x 100 m (262 x 328 ft), with a further two sets of stone stairs leading to a pair of grand shrines. Every part of the temple was decorated with…

As with many figures and events in the Aztec empire, it’s not entirely clear whether the man after whom the great lake city was named was actually real. It’s possible Tenoch was a retrospective, fictional character specially designed to shore up the mythical founding of the Aztec Empire – or, he may have been a real person whose role was later embellished for political purposes. Either way, it is said that Tenoch was a senior priest, though never a tlatoani (ruler/king). He had been appointed to his post by a council of elders, and is prominently listed in the Codex Mendoza on its front page, alongside the other leaders. His glyph is a rock and a prickly pear cactus – referring to the legendary symbols that the Aztecs saw when…

One of the most interesting and important Aztec traditions was the New Fire ceremony or the xiuhmolpilli (‘binding of the years’). This was performed only once every 52 years, a full cycle of the Aztec calendar, and it was believed it would prevent the end of the world. It was thought that the shift from one calendar cycle to the next created instability and that the Tzitzimitl – female deities associated with the stars – would descend upon the Earth and devour it. The preparations would begin early, five days before the ceremony, with people staying away from work, fasting, performing ritual cleansing and bloodletting and observing periods of silence. All normal activities would cease, and every citizen was expected to get involved. Commoners would destroy their house utensils, and…

The word chocolate, or chocolati, refers to the cacao bean and water and evokes the taste: ‘bitter water’. Chocolate and the cacao bean have actually been around far longer than even the Aztecs – the Maya consumed it between 500-800 CE. The Aztecs used the cocoa bean as a beverage, a medicine and even as a currency. The Badianus Manuscript – written by a Spaniard but compiled with the help of local Aztecs – reveals how the flowers of the cacao plant were used in baths to help reduce fatigue, to treat stomach bugs, diarrhoea and – combined with liquid from the bark of a silk cotton tree – it could also cure infections. As well as being the primary ingredient in many medicines, it was also used as a…

Anyone seeing Tenochtitlán for the first time, looking from a surrounding hill upon the city that seemed to have emerged from the water itself, must have been filled utterly with awe at its size and the skill of its makers. To reach it on foot, they would cross the lake by walking along one of three mighty causeways that stretched for miles and were wide enough for over a dozen people to walk side by side. Or they could go by canoe and get closer to the floating gardens, the human-made plots spreading out from the island where farmers grew their crops. They could then delve into Tenochtitlán either on a bustling network of canals, or by the expansive avenues that ran east to west and north to south. These…

The merchants were vital to the expansion and maintenance of the Empire, and provided an invaluable communication system, sharing information that they carried with them on their travels. In the aftermath of war it was usually the merchants who assessed the taxable potential of the conquered town or state in order to formulate the required future levies. There was stratification among the merchants with some working in a small area as itinerant local merchants, the tlanecuilo, who worked a series of markets trading in maize, chilli, turkeys, salt, textiles and cacao. Standing above them in the social strata were the long-distance traders, the pochteca, who brought home more exotic goods from the far-flung corners of the Empire and the landmass. They often undertook great risks, travelling into or through hostile…

One of the most common explanations put forward for why Moctezuma acted in such a deferential manner towards Hernán Cortés was that he believed the Spanish explorer to be serpent god Quetzalcoatl. Supposedly, the arrival of the Spanish coincided with the end of a 52-year cycle of the Aztec calendar, which may be signalled by major, destructive events. Quetzalcoatl was prophesied to return from the east too. So far, everything ties up nicely, and that’s the problem – the story is far too neat in its display of Moctezuma as being overly superstitious and Cortés as being an all-powerful figure. The claim is espoused in the Florentine Codex, written by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and printed five decades after the conquest. It describes a speech given by…

Like the Aztecs, the Tarascans settled in a highland basin, around Lake Pátzcuaro. They too had grown from small settlements into city-states, before conquering a regional empire, led by a pre-eminent dynasty centred around the imperial capital of Tzintzuntzan. However, the Tarascans exercised direct control over its provinces with forced repopulations and regional governors. They worshipped numerous gods, notably Cuerauáperi, the earth goddess of creation, Curicaueri, the sun god and Xaratanga, the moon goddess of fertility. The Tarascans were also masters of metalwork. Their advanced technology allowed them to craft superior armour and weapons of copper and bronze. Some of the peripheral towns the Aztecs captured boasted metalsmiths, and by the time of its demise, the empire was on the cusp of adopting Tarascan copper and bronze smelting techniques –…

When Hernán Cortés walked through the burning city of Tenochtitlán in 1521 he couldn’t be happier. He’d done it. He had endured the jungle, the heat, the hostile natives and the bureaucratic fools in Spain. He had taken the Americas, destroyed the pagan empire of the Aztecs and opened up its wonders for the glory of Spain and, of course, for himself. He glanced at the looting of the natives’ precious metals and the raping of Aztec women in their orderly, architecturally advanced thoroughfares, and dismissed it as fortunes of war; a war that he had won. He could see some of his conquistadors destroy one of the natives’ strange idols, and force the people around it to bow to the Christian cross. He was doing God’s work and as…

Without his translator and wife-to-be, Cortés could probably not have triumphed in Mexico. La Malinche offered a vital connection between his language and that of the Aztecs. La Malinche was one of 20 slaves offered to the conquistadors and served as translator and mediator; it is likely she had previously received formal education, explaining her abilities to speak a number of South American dialects. She became Cortés’s concubine and gave birth to a son, Martín, with Cortés, one of the first people born of mixed Spanish and South American genetic make-up, and died aged around 25. Some see her as a traitor who facilitated the subjugation of her own people but others as an intelligent strategist who made the best of her situation.…

With Tenochtitlán in ruins, Cortés established a temporary headquarters at the neighbouring Coyoacán, where he drew up plans for the new capital, redesigning it in strict accordance to the Spanish Royal Ordinance for the Laying Out of Towns. Once the Nahua had cleaned the streets, the aqueduct would be repaired and the centre flattened, rebuilt with Spanish-style buildings along a grid, with the surrounding neighbourhoods divided into districts, with only one quarter reserved for the city’s previous inhabitants. Aztec monuments and temples made way for Spanish churches, palaces and forts. Stones from the former buildings were reused in the foundations of new ones, lowering costs and symbolising the victory of the Christian god over the Aztec ones. Many Nahua died rebuilding the city, overworked and underfed. The cities of New…

Diego Rivera was a prominent Mexican painter whose large frescoes helped establish the mural movement in Mexican art. Between 1922 and his death in 1957, Rivera painted murals in, among other places, Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City and was noted for incorporating Aztec influences into his work. Among his most famous murals is The History of Mexico, commissioned for the stairwell of the National Palace in Mexico City, which he painted between 1929 and 1935. The north section of the mural celebrates the richness of the Aztec world and places the sun at its centre. Here he depicts aspects of the Aztecs’ religion, including the revering of snakes and jaguars. The Aztecs remained a recurring theme in his work. The same is true of…

A E I O U If you needed any further evidence of the advanced state of Aztec learning, then analysis of the society’s alphabet seals the deal. The Aztec alphabet was split into three different sections, utilising pictograms, ideograms and phonograms. Pictograms were symbols representing exactly what they were, so a snake pictogram would mean ‘snake’ and be pronounced ‘snake.’ On the other hand, phonograms were pictures representing sounds, a lot like the vast majority of alphabets today, with letters representing specific sounds that words can be constructed from. The Aztec alphabet contained four basic vowels and a large selection of consonants including cu, hu and ch. Finally, ideograms were the most abstract part of the alphabet, consisting of symbols that represented an entire idea. For example, a footprint symbol…

According to legend, the Aztecs arrived in present-day Mexico from their ancestral, mythical homeland of Aztlán around 1000 CE. They first lived in Chicomoztoc (the mysterious ‘place of seven caves’) and then founded Aztlán, which was an area surrounded by water. Indeed, the word Aztec is said to mean ‘people from Aztlán’, although this was not a word that the citizen of Tenochtitlán (the city founded on the shores of Lake Texcoco) used to refer to themselves. Whether Aztlán ever existed or is just a mythical place is also a point of considerable historical debate, to which there is no clear answer. If it were a real place, some have speculated that it may have been located in what is now northern Mexico – or perhaps even in the southern…

The Aztecs had a huge pantheon of gods, many of which were adopted and developed from different cultures. In general, the many Aztec gods were associated with culture, nature, creation, excess, maize, fertility, trade and death. Tlaloc God of Rain Tlaloc was a hugely important god, not only bringing rain, but also fertility and water. He was feared for his ability to bring thunderstorms, and the cult surrounding him was one of the oldest in all of ancient Mexico. Quetzalcoatl God of life, wind and learning Known as the ‘feathered serpent’, Quetzalcoatl also was the patron god of the Aztec priests and was believed to take the form of the morning star (Venus). Huitzilopochtli God of the sun Huitzilopochtli was the patron god of the Aztecs, and also served as…

Laws governed every aspect of Aztec life and, surprisingly in a god-fearing society, these rules were more often than not based on practicality, not religion. Crime and punishment would vary from city to city, as although they shared a common emperor, the cities were, for all intents and purposes, self-ruling. It is difficult to estimate just how much crime there was in the Aztec Empire, and this is because it was dealt with so quickly and efficiently. There were no prisons, so the system had to be swift and orderly when it came to handing out judgements and punishments. Some of the most serious crimes were murder, stealing crops or public drunkenness (except at a festival – and those over 70 years old were allowed to be drunk to their…

This recipe comes from The Florentine Codex, a similar study of Aztec culture to The Codex Mendoza but written later in the 16th century. While we are using shrimp in this recipe, the Aztecs were known to have added whatever they could find swimming around Lake Texcoco including fish, frogs and even tadpoles. The cactus could be used either raw or cooked. Ingredients • 1 pound cactus paddles (make sure you remove the spikes or thorns)• 2 gloves of minced garlic• 2 medium diced tomatoes• 1 small diced onion• ½ diced jicama (Mexican Turnip)• 2 finely chopped serrano peppers• 3 tablespoons lime juice• Salt• 1 pound of shrimp (or whatever fish is available) 1. Chop the cactus into small pieces and boil for 5-7 minutes2. Cook the shrimp in the…

Aztec society was characterised by a strict social stratification and was wholly dominated by its ruling class, with the kings sitting at the top of the pyramid. The kings were responsible for almost everything that unfolded within their state, whether that involved religious ritual, war, governance, even street cleaning, dancing and the playing of ritual games. The history of these kings, meanwhile, was often beset by intrigue and assassination, family ambition, feud, fire and conquest. The Aztec kings ruled the city states that spread across the valley of Mexico and the surrounding highlands. By the time the Spaniards arrived in 1519, the vast majority of these city states were under the control of the Aztec Empire, and there was a noticeable uniformity in their social structure and architectural embodiment. Each…

Having been among the last to settle in the Valley of Mexico, the Mexica of Tenochtitlán initially pledged themselves to the powerful Tepanecs on the western shore of Lake Texcoco – helping them conquer new cities, to counter the threat of the Acolhua city-state, Texcoco, on the eastern bank. However, by 1426, Tenochtitlán had grown powerful. Not only was the island-settlement built on fertile land, with an abundance of fish, ducks, frogs and algae, but it was easily defensible, sitting alongside a second market-city, Tlatelolco – where merchants sold exotic goods, such as parrot feathers and jewels. That year, the Tepanec throne was usurped by the anti-Mexica Maxtla, who simultaneously assassinated the Mexica leader, blockaded Tenochtitlán and attacked Texcoco. In response, Tenochtitlán and Texcoco partnered with Tlacopan, besieging the Tepanec…

JEWELLERY A DECORATED SOLDIER WITH BENEFITS Eagle warriors were high-ranking members of Aztec society and were awarded certain privileges as a result. For example, they were given tax-free land, permitted to keep mistresses, eat human flesh and allowed to wear fine jewellery that was not available to the general public. MACUAHUITL A DOUBLE-SIDED WEAPON This popular Aztec weapon was a flat wooden club with blades of volcanic glass, called obsidian, fixed to the sides. It allowed warriors to either injure their enemy with the blunt sides so that they could capture them for sacrifice, or deliver a more fatal blow with the sharp edges. SANDALS FOOTWEAR PRIVILEGES AND LEATHERY LEGS Regular Aztec citizens were not permitted to wear cotton or sandals in the royal palaces, but the eagle warriors could.…

When the Spanish finally captured Tenochtitlán, the heart of the Aztec Empire, the city had endured 80 days of squalor. Following the death of Moctezuma and the initial expulsion of the conquistadors, the population had been decimated by smallpox, which killed Moctezuma’s successor, Cuitláhuac. Besieged by land and sea, the Aztecs wandered among the corpses of their friends and relatives, exhausting every source of fresh water. Dying of hunger, they stripped the trees of bark and ploughed up roots in search of food. As Cortés made his way through the city’s islets, street by street, he destroyed the buildings and used the rubble to fill the canal – turning the city into a stagnant, corpseridden swamp. Once Emperor Cuauhtémoc finally surrendered the Spanish rooted through the city in search of…

What would have happened if the Aztecs hadn’t been conquered by the Spanish? Helen Cowie: It’s easy to imagine that the conquest of the Aztecs was inevitable thanks to the superiority of the weapons used by the Spanish conquistadors (steel swords, crossbows, harquebuses and cannons against obsidian swords, slings and bows and arrows). If we look in detail at the events of the conquest, however, it becomes clear that Cortés’s victory was by no means certain, and that his expedition could quite easily have ended in failure. On several occasions the Spanish stared defeat in the face – most dramatically during the so-called ‘Noche Triste’, when they were forced to flee Tenochtitlán after an ill-judged massacre of Aztec nobles. Without the continued support of indigenous allies such as the Tlaxcallans,…

Perhaps the first ever Aztec archaeological find occurred on 17 December 1790, when a 21-tonne stone block was found buried under the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, but its significance was initially overlooked by Mexico’s early archaeologists. More than three and a half metres across and almost one metre thick, the stone depicts Tonatiuh, the sun god, surrounded by a series of ornate circular carvings. The exact function of the Sun Stone has been deliberated ever since it was found. Was it a calendar, as 19th-century antiquarians believed? Was it a ritual altar, as most modern archaeologists think? Or was it a piece of political propaganda, designed to show Tenochtitlán as the centre of the world? The Sun Stone survived the Spanish conquest for a few decades until Archbishop Alonso…

Of all the contributions the native people have given to modern Mexico, perhaps the most prominent is the country’s name. According to some sources, the native people of what is now known as the Mexican valley or basin emerged from a fertile hill known as Chicomoztoc (Place of the Seven Caves) and inhabited Aztlán (Place of the White Heron), an ancient, water-bounded settlement, whose people were called the Azteca. They emerged on the prompting of the great god Huitzilopochtli and, in The Codex Aubin, it says that upon their departure from Aztlán the god named them the Mexica, the origin of the term Mexican. Over the years, the concept of Aztlán as the place of origin of the pre-Columbian Mexican civilization has become a symbol for various Mexican nationalist and…