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Aztec society was traditionally divided into social classes. They became sophisticated once the Mexica people settled and began to build the Aztec Empire . The class structure was so elaborate that it impressed the Spanish almost as much as Aztec architecture .
Casta (Spanish:) is a term which means "lineage" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. In the context of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the term also refers to a theoretical framework which postulates that colonial society operated under a hierarchical race-based "caste system".
Aztec society was a highly complex and stratified society that developed among the Aztecs of central Mexico in the centuries prior to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and which was built on the cultural foundations of the larger region of Mesoamerica.
The word Aztec in modern usage would not have been used by the people themselves. It has variously been used to refer to the Aztecs or Triple Alliance, the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico prior to the Spanish conquest, or specifically the Mexica ethnicity of the Nahuatl-speaking tribes (from tlaca). [7]
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.
In Spanish, the book is called “Tu sueño imperios han sido” — a line borrowed from a baroquely beautiful poem that means “your dreams empires have been.”
In 1521, the Aztec Empire was conquered by the Spaniards under Hernán Cortés and a large number of Mesoamerican allies. Tenochtitlan was destroyed and replaced by Mexico City, though the Spanish colonial authorities continued to appoint tlatoque of Tenochtitlan until the office was abolished in 1565.
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 ...