Basic Information
- The rise of the Aztec empire really began in 1150 with the fall of the Toltec empire.
- By 1200, the Valley of Mexico contained a number of moderately sized city-states. The Aztec, who arrived in the Valley about 1248, adopted some of the key organizational and ideological principles which they learned from the refugee Toltecs.
- By 1519 was the most powerful Mesoamerican kingdom of all time.
- They obtained over 80,000 square miles through many parts of what is now central and southern Mexico.
- Fifteen million people, living in thirty-eight provinces and residing in 489 communities, paid tribute to the Emperor Moctezuma II in Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the great empire.
- Moctezuma I, who took power in 1440, was a great warrior who was remembered as the father of the Aztec empire.
- The Aztec calendar, common in much of Mesoamerica, was based on a solar cycle of 365 days and a ritual cycle of 260 days; the calendar played a central role in the religion and rituals of Aztec society.
- The Aztec community began in the middle of a lake but later became the capital of an empire. Aztec was consisting of a diversity ethnic group that lived in the area which stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf coast.
- The city's trade, agriculture, religion and societies were one of the major factors in the ability to survive and build a strong foundation for their leadership and livelihood.
- All male children in the Aztec Empire were called Telpochalli. The women regard as subordinate to their man. Above everything else, they were required to behave with sexual abstinence and high morals.
- The Aztecs did not have a specific political structure.