Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
The Aztecs were conquered by Spain in 1521 after a long siege of the capital, Tenochtitlan, where much of the population died from hunger and smallpox. Cortés, with 508 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala , and eventually other Aztec tributary states.
The term "Aztec empire" is actually modern and not one used by the Aztecs themselves. The Aztec realm was at its core composed of three Nahuatl-speaking city-states in the densely populated Valley of Mexico. Asymmetries of power elevated one of those city states Tenochtitlan above the other two over time.
Aztec calendar (sunstone) Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (900–1521 CE); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and ...
When Cortés and his men killed one of the Aztec leaders, the Aztecs broke off the battle and left the field. [ 48 ] : 303–05 In this retreat, the Spaniards suffered heavy casualties, losing 860 soldiers, 72 other Spanish members of Cortés' group, including five women, and 1,000 Tlaxcalan warriors.
The Mexica-Aztecs were the rulers of much of central Mexico by about 1400 (while Yaquis, Coras, and Apaches commanded sizable regions of northern desert), having subjugated most of the other regional states by the 1470s. At their peak, the Valley of Mexico where the Aztec Empire presided, saw a population growth that included nearly one million ...
Like many of the peoples around them, the Mexica spoke Nahuatl which, with the expansion of the Aztec Empire, became the lingua franca in other areas. [32] The form of Nahuatl used in the 16th century, when it began to be written in the Latin alphabet introduced by the Spaniards , became known as Classical Nahuatl .
Non-Native American nations' claims over North America, 1750–1999 Political evolution of Central America and the Caribbean since 1700 European nations' control over South America, 1700 to present Around 1000, the Vikings established a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland , now known as L'Anse aux Meadows .