Mesoamerica, comprised of modern southern Mexico, Guatemala,
What core features characterized Aztec life and rule?
Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras, was a land of city-states after about 800 c. E. Following the decline of ancient cultural forebears such as Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN) in the Mexican highlands and the classic Maya in the greater Guatemalan lowlands, few urban powers, with the possible exception of the Toltecs, managed to dominate more than a few neighbors at a time.
This would change with the arrival in the Valley of Mexico of a band of former gatherer-hunters from a mysterious northwestern desert region they called Aztlan (ost-LAWN), or “place of cranes.” As newcomers these “Aztecs,” who later called themselves Mexica (meh-SHE-cah, hence “Mexico”), would suffer a number of humiliations at the hands of powerful city-dwellers centered on Lake Texcoco, now overlain by Mexico City. The Aztecs were at first regarded as coarse barbarians, but as with many conquering outsiders, in time they would have their revenge (see Map 16.2).
MAP 16.2 The Aztec Empire, 1325-1521
Starting from their base in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), the Aztecs quickly built the most densely populated empire in the americas. their first objective was the Valley of Mexico itself, where the aztecs made strategic alliances and conquered neighboring city-states on the margins of Lake texcoco. A line of aztec kings greatly extended the empire, conquering chief-doms and city-states throughout Mexico’s central highlands and down to the pacific and Gulf coasts. Not all peoples fell to the Aztec war machine, including the Tlaxcalans to the east of Tenochtitlan and the Tarascans to the west. Also unconquered were the many nomadic peoples of the desert north and the farming forest peoples of the southeast.
World History
