Download Aztec Empire

AZTEC EMPIRE
1325 to 1519
Where?


Central Mexico
Island in Lake Texcoco
 Called

Tenochtitlan
Advantages
 Lots
of food
 Fertile soil on edges of
lake

Disadvantages
 Little
farmland
Rise to Power

Alliances
 Cities
around Lake
Texcoco

Tribute
 Payment
in goods or
food

Didn’t force people to
adopt their way of life
Adaptations

Chinampas
 Floating
gardens
 Increased usable land

Canals
 Built
across island
 Move goods
 Travel

Causeways
 Connect
island to
mainland
Government

King



Selected by nobles
Had blessing of gods
Advisors (5 total)


4 = military commanders
1 = prime minister



Lesser officials
No centralized government
FOR EMPIRE


Managed day-to-day
government operations
Local chiefs still had power
Need New Conquest &
Need to Honor Gods…
Take a break…
in the How box

Check TCI chapter 25
and fill in important
notes about the Aztec
religious beliefs,
practices, gods, and…
yeah, that.
 20,000
average per
year
 80,000 in 1 four day
festival at the Great
Temple (of the Sun.)
in the WHO box

Check TCI chapter 25
and fill in important
notes about the Aztec
Social Classes & Class
Structure:
 How
many classes?
 Titles?
 Roles/Responsibilities?
Religion

Polytheistic
 Over

100 gods
Human Sacrifice
 Sun
god needs blood
to rise
 Thousands of people a
year
 Priests conducted
ceremony
Class Structure

5 classes
 Emperor
& royalty
 Officials, Generals,
& Priests
 Commoners
 Highest
group pochteca:
merchants & “spies”
 Peasants/Serfs
 Slaves
 Very
Similar to Maya
Aztec Calendar Stone


Sacred calendar
Used to plan
ceremonies
 Sacrifices
 Festivals
Codex


Recorded history
Writing system
 Pictograms

Handwritten/drawn
Fall of the Empire

Moctezuma (1502)
 King
at height of
empire

Hernan Cortes
 Conquistador
 Lands
in 1519
 Believed to be a god
(Quetzalcoatl) by the
Aztec
''The Cholultec chiefs received Cortés coolly, and warned him that Montezuma
had commanded him to go no further; he was not welcome in Mexico. Cortés
also discovered that Montezuma had ordered that the Spanish not be fed by
the Cholultecs, a development that greatly alarmed the Spaniards. ''
Fall of the Empire

''The Encounter
Between Hernando
Cortes and
Montezuma II”
from "Le Costume
Ancien Et Moderne"
 Print by Gallo Gallina''


On arriving in the New World to conquer the
Aztec Empire he bought 400 men and burned
his ships which meant the only way to survive
was to win.
By sheer chance he arrived in sync with an
Aztec prophecy of the coming of a God and
he simply marched into the capital asking the
emperor to tell his people to back down.
The rest is history…
“We went there to serve God, and also
to get rich” -Bernal Diaz del Castillo
The Death of a Figurehead
The Aztecs Resist
Cortes Returns to Tenochtitlan
Fall of the Empire

How the Spanish won
 Horses,
smallpox,
gunpowder
 Cut off supplies
 Block
causeways
 Translator
 Malintzin
 Native
 Tired
Troops
of paying tribute