Portal:Mexico/Selected article archive/October 2007
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Aztecs were a tribe that inhabitated part of Mesoamerica, more than 500 years ago, which ended with the arrival of Europeans to the New World. Sometimes it also includes their two principal allies, the people of Texcoco and Tlacopan, with whom they built an extensive empire in the late Postclassic era in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries; sometimes it is used to refer to all the Nahua peoples. The nucleus of the Aztec Empire was the Valley of Mexico, where the capital of the Aztec Triple Alliance, the city of Tenochtitlan was built upon raised islets in Lake Texcoco. After the 1521 conquest of Tenochtitlan by Spanish forces and their allies which brought about the effective end of Aztec dominion, the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the now-ruined Aztec capital. The capital of the modern-day nation of Mexico, the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City now covers much of the Valley of Mexico and the now-drained Lake of Texcoco. Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions. For Europeans, the most striking element of the Aztec culture was the practice of human sacrifice which was conducted throughout Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish conquest.
