The Aztecs

Around the year 1100. In what will later become Mexico and the American Southwest, people are on the move.. ..looking for a new home. Changing weather, scarce food and water, lives threatened, families move south. They migrate. Fleeing their homeland, the legendary land of Aztlan.

They roam the desert for 150 years calling themselves Mexica. In time, they are called the Aztecs, the people from Aztlan. The Aztecs wander into this high, lush valley. Other tribes have arrived before them, claiming all the good land, and built cities. But the Aztecs are skilled fighters; they find work as warriors among these other tribes.

Winning battles for a king, the Aztecs are given a patch of barren land to live on. The king’s daughter is appointed to rule them. But an Aztec god —according to legend —commands the Aztec priests to sacrifice her, skin her, and wear her skin in front of the king. Rage and war results. The Aztecs must escape, homeless again.

But the wandering Aztecs interact with other Mesoamerican people in peaceful ways too. They absorb technology, learn writing, mathematics and science. These show in their art, architecture, religion, and social structures. Years later, the Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli gives them a sign: On a rocky island, in the middle of Lake Texcoco, an eagle eats a snake, on a prickly pear cactus. This will be a new, defendable home.

The city-state: Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs apply the technology they have learned: weaving wattle fences, forming square grids, filling these with plants, rocks and mud... building artificial islands -Chinampas. They create arable land to grow food.. ..even a surplus of food. The Aztec population grows fast.

Bare land becomes gardens and an extremely well organised planned city. Water canals—Aqueducts —bring fresh clean water from mountain springs for drinking and bathing, and channel away the sewage to become fertilizer. By building three drawbridged causeways, The Aztecs connect the city with the mainland, They build canals to transport goods and warriors to distant cities by canoe. In the centre of the city there’s an elaborate temple complex - Templo Mayor. It is the site of human sacrifices.

As is normal in Mesoamerican society, Tenochtitlan pays a tax, a tribute to the city-states with more power. The price: food, goods, and human sacrifices. In 1426 Tenochtitlan, along with two other city-states forms a triple alliance. They fight a war against the most powerful city-state and win. Tenochtitlan, now the dominant power, wages fierce wars of conquest, expanding rapidly.

The Aztec Empire controls most of central Mexico: 220 000 square kilometres, 25 million people in almost 500 towns and cities. One of the largest, most powerful empires on earth. Tenochtitlan is twice the size of both London and Rome in the fifteen hundreds, it is a city-state of 300 000 people. The Aztec empire is now at its height, as Emperor Montezuma cautiously welcomes strange guests into Tenochtitlan... The Spaniard Hernan Cortes and his 250 soldiers —conquistadors— introduce themselves.

Will they be Montezuma’s guests, or his prisoners? The Spaniards soon find Montezuma’s hospitality...really scary. Within days, Cortes takes Montezuma hostage, and leaves Tenochtitlan. He’ll soon be back with many more soldiers. In August 1521, after two years of fighting, the Aztecs are weakened by Spanish diseases such as smallpox and are defeated.

Cortes’ conquistadors capture Tenochtitlan, and reduce the city and Templo Mayor to ruins, upon which Cortes builds a new capital.. for the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Today, Tenochtitlan is sprawling Mexico City with 9 million inhabitants. Lake Texcoco dried up long ago, and has been built over. And descendants of the Aztecs, other tribes, and Spanish conquistadors, are now all Mexicans…