The Aztec Empire

The early origins of the Aztecs are difficult to trace, since their culture relied on oral tradition and pictorial codices rather than a fully developed writing system. Historians believe the Aztecs descended from nomadic groups who entered central Mexico after the collapse of the Toltec civilization, likely working as mercenaries for more established powers before being permitted to settle on a cluster of islands within the shallow Lake Texcoco. Beginning around 1325, the Aztecs built their capital, Tenochtitlán, gradually transforming their small settlement into a sophisticated city through trade, tribute, and continued mercenary service. In 1428, the Aztecs formed the Triple Alliance with the nearby city-states of Texcoco and Tlacopan, launching a surprise attack on the powerful city of Atzcapotzalco that made the alliance the dominant power in the region.

By the early 1500s, Tenochtitlán had grown into a city of at least 200,000 people, connected to the shore by large causeways. Much of the city's land was artificial, created through chinampas, agricultural islands crisscrossed by canals that produced food for the growing population. At the city's center stood the Templo Mayor, a dual pyramid nearly ninety feet tall dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc and the war god Huitzilopochtli. Human sacrifice, a practice with roots reaching back to the earlier Olmec civilization, was central to Aztec religious life. The Aztecs believed the gods needed to be fed with human blood to keep the sun in the sky and the harvests bountiful, and sacrificial victims were often prisoners captured specifically for this purpose during Aztec warfare.

The Aztec Empire held its many conquered territories together through a tribute system that functioned much like a form of economic exchange. At its height, the empire consisted of thirty-eight provinces, each required to submit specific goods based on what it produced, whether rubber, food, cloth, weapons, or laborers for imperial building projects. Aztec society was sharply divided, with enslaved people and landless commoners at the bottom, landed commoners and skilled craftspeople above them, and nobles, who served in the military, courts, and priesthood, at the very top. By the coronation of the emperor Moctezuma II in 1502, the Aztec state had reached the height of its power, even as demands for tribute and sacrificial captives were stirring resentment across the empire, resentment that Spanish conquistadors would soon exploit.

Adapted from Studio Aletheia's World Builders Academy curriculum library, drawing on classical world history resources on the Aztec Empire and Tenochtitlán.