The Aztecs

The journey of the Aztec people to becoming one of the most widely known Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilization began with them crossing over the Bering Strait while following the mammoth herds during earths last Ice Age. The Aztecs always referred to themselves as Mexica (Meh-shee-kah). According to their legend they came from Chicomoztoc (Tchi-koh-moss-tock), the seven caves from north called Aztlan (Ahst-lahn), the place of whiteness and they were to travel through the land until Huitzilopochtli, their patron God showed them a sign. Their life as nomads would last 150 years when a sign from Huitzilopochtli, an eagle with a serpent in it's mouth perched on a cactus appeared marking the end of their wondering years/the end of their journey.The place they settled into was Lake Texcoco.

On the islands of Lake Texcoco the Aztecs built a marvelous city called Tenochtitlan. After the invasion of the Spanish Conquistadors, Tenochtitlan was referred to as "The Venice on the New World". Tenochtitlan was a beautiful, well-run city with a ceremonial plaza paved with stone.  Two temples matching the design of the Maya pyramids were built in honor of Huitzilopochtli, the God of Sun and War and the rain God. The city was connected to the mainland by raised roads and people traveled by canoes through the city as there were canals instead of streets. At the height of Aztec civilization, around 1300-1500 AD, more than 200,000 people lived in Tenochtitlan. It was bigger than any city in Europe at the time.

The Aztecs were, in 1323, expelled from the lands of the most illustrious ruling line of the period, the Colhuacan, because of the Aztec sacrifice of a Colhua gift: a Toltec princess intended as a wife for the Aztec chief. The sacrifice was meant as a unique compliment; the Aztecs believed that the princess would then become a war goddess. They then traveled to the southwestern shores of the lakes that once surrounded Mexico City and settled upon two marshy islands. By 1345, the land had been mostly reclaimed upon their islands. The swamps were drained, and the lands were suitable for farming. Despite these accomplishments, the Aztecs still had tribal social and political organization. They spread out in 1428, crushing their enemies and took control of central Mexico. They instituted reforms throughout their newly-taken land. All books of the conquered peoples were burned because they contained no cotice of the people of Tehochtitlan, the Aztec's city. By the time of his death in 1502, Ahuitzotl, the Aztecs' eighth ruler had expanded their territory immensely. He then ruled most of the land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. He also brought about a cultural flowering. Schools were established at this time, the arts and literature were encouraged, and architectural advancements were made. The Aztec forms of religion and war were highly intermingled; their wars were shrouded in religion and their religion thrived on prisoners taken from wars for sacrifice. The Aztecs believed that war was a tribute to a battle of the gods in the sky, called The Battle of the Sun. It was considered an honor to have died on the battlefield, all of those who were permitted to die in battle were supposed to be a tribute to the chief war god, Huitzilopochtli, thus priests were not exempt from the law requiring every man to bear arms. Each city contained at least four arsenals, all of which were always kept fully stocked. This was the product of a highly military state.

Aztec religion was based on complex cycles. The Aztec's year was broken into eighteen months of twenty days each, with another five days at the beginning of each year, and each month had it's own set of ceremonies that every Aztec had to participate in. The Aztecs also used a 260 day almanac year in which every day was assigned to a deity, as well as each week and month which were linked to other deities. Their days were broken into hours of approximately 64.5 minutes each in which each of the twenty-two hours were associated with a god or goddess. The Aztec pantheon is reminiscent of, although much more extensive than, other western civilizations whose pantheons included a divinity for each city, town, and hamlet. The Aztecs believed everything worked in set cycles . Thus, if a hurricane or war occurred in one place, a hurricane or war would occur at that location every set number of years, a theory that many western historians seem to have picked up. This intense cyclic worship may very well have been originated by conservative priests who saw the populace slacking in their worship and/or changing in some other way (i.e. evolving socially in ways that these priests found distasteful or unhealthy). They instituted this intense worship so to keep the populace to the ways of life that were closer to their images of ideal. As a society becomes more complex, as there is great evidence of in Aztec culture, the individuals will tend to forget the older ways that their ancestors were forced to accept as a means of life. The religion of the Aztecs was controlled by a hierarchy that relied almost totally upon its priests. These priests had more than enough power to keep the Aztec society in orthodox, cyclical, rigid forms of worship.

 In one city alone, there were more than five thousand priests. These priests maintained tight control on education, the sciences, of course the city's religion, and the calendar. The calendar was an important facet in the religion of the Aztecs. The priests, in the effort to keep the populace from changing their customs or in their belief of it, taught that man was constantly on trial with their testy gods. The gods could take away life at a moments notice if only they judged man to be insufficient for the gods' whims. The priests instituted strict prayer and ritual, especially in a time period that occurred once every fifty-two years. This was a time that the Aztecs believed was judgment day, and so the worship was intensified. The people prayed, fasted, and even mutilated themselves to show themselves to the gods as worthy of life. Only at that time were the fire pits in the Aztec temples extinguished, after which in every temple the priests would wait for a sign, probably in their zeal and desperation they looked for any sort of sign, and probably found, for the most part, insignificant natural happenings that had no deep meaning. After the omen was found, a fire was lighted in the chest of a living victim, and the fires of the temple were lit from this fire. When the Spaniards came into the picture, Diaz del Castillo reported that there were "piles of human skulls....there were more than one thousand of them." at just one temple. It is obvious that the Aztec religion was one based on complexities created by a strong hierarchy of priests trying to keep the Aztec's life uncomplex, although at the risk of making the life more complicated. The religious hierarchy supported human sacrifice in their doctrines, and a great cyclical form of worship. Human sacrifice was not an idea that was new to the area; the Aztecs were not innovators, but the Aztecs grew socially and intellectually (as well as militarilaly) as no other civilization of thier area had been able.