How did the Aztecs write?
The Aztecs wrote using symbols called glyphs or pictographs. They didn’t have an alphabet, but used pictures to represent events, items, or sounds. Only the priests knew how to read and write. They would write on long sheets made of animal skins or plant fibers.
What are the Aztecs known for?
The Aztecs were famous for their agriculture, cultivating all available land, introducing irrigation, draining swamps, and creating artificial islands in the lakes. They developed a form of hieroglyphic writing, a complex calendar system, and built famous pyramids and temples.
What’s a Aztec?
Aztec, self name Culhua-Mexica, Nahuatl-speaking people who in the 15th and early 16th centuries ruled a large empire in what is now central and southern Mexico. The Aztecs are so called from Aztlán (“White Land”), an allusion to their origins, probably in northern Mexico.
What God did the Aztecs worship?
For the Aztecs, deities of particular importance are the rain god Tlaloc; Huitzilopochtli, patron of the Mexica tribe; Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent and god of wind and learning; and Tezcatlipoca, the shrewd, elusive god of destiny and fortune.
What is the Aztec word for sun?
Tonatiuh
What was the largest tribe of Aztecs called?
The Nahuas comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest group in El Salvador. The Aztecs were of Nahua ethnicity, and the Toltecs are often thought to have been as well. Their Nahuan languages, or Nahuatl, consist of many variants, several of which are mutually unintelligible.
What is the name of the Aztec capital?
Tenochtitlan
How many Aztec cities were there?
The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca; Texcoco; and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco.
Who built the Aztec temples?
According to Aztec tradition, the sun and the moon, as well as the rest of the universe, traced their origins to Teotihuacán. More temples have been discovered there than in any other Mesoamerican city. The Teotihuacán built the Pyramids of the Sun and of the Moon between A.D. 1 and 250.
Why did the Aztecs fall?
Lacking food and ravaged by smallpox disease earlier introduced by one of the Spaniards, the Aztecs, now led by Cuauhtemoc, finally collapsed after 93 days of resistance on the fateful day of 13th of August, 1521 CE. Tenochtitlan was sacked and its monuments destroyed.
How did the Aztecs die?
The mysterious epidemic that devastated Aztecs may have been food poisoning. In 1545, an unknown disease struck the Aztec Empire. Over the next five years, the disease—then called “cocoliztli,” or “pestilence”—killed between seven and 17 million people.
How did the Aztecs get smallpox?
The introduction of smallpox among the Aztecs has been attributed to an African slave (by the name of Francisco Eguía, according to one account) but this has been disputed. From May to September, smallpox spread slowly to Tepeaca and Tlaxcala, and to Tenochtitlán by the fall of 1520.
What disease did the Aztecs get?
When Europeans began to explore and colonize other parts of the world, smallpox traveled with them. The native people of the Americas, including the Aztecs, were especially vulnerable to smallpox because they’d never been exposed to the virus and thus possessed no natural immunity.