Download File - Mr. Williams

• Writing – Used picture writing but did not
develop an Alphabet
• Aztec Calendar - 365 day calendar
• Medicine - Doctors practiced their medicine
and operations on human sacrifices and
with dead bodies from wars. They got a lot
of their medicine from plants.
• Education
• Public education for boys and girls
starting at age 13
• They taught lessons in citizenship,
history and tradition, religious
ceremonies and arts and crafts.
• Boys learned methods of warfare; girls
learned singing and dancing skills
• The Aztecs believed it was a
religious duty to be a warrior.
• Used swords, bows and arrows,
javelins, clubs and slings for
weapons.
• Aztecs went to war to get tribute
(what losers gave to winners) and
sacrificial victims for religious
ceremonies.
• Goal of Aztec warfare was capture,
not kill.
• Members of losing tribe became
slaves or sacrifices.
• Montezuma – most famous Aztec
ruler; ruled from 1466-1520 and
was a strong leader who enlarge
the Aztec Empire.
• In 1519, Spanish conquistador
Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico.
At first, Montezuma believed he
was a representative of
Quetzalcoatl, the god who had
departed centuries earlier and
promised he would someday
return.
• He offered fold to the foreigners
and gave them a palace to use
while they were in the city.
• Eventually, tensions arose as the
Spanish wanted Aztec land and gold.
They took Montezuma hostage and
began to pillage the city. In 1520 (a
year after arriving) the people
revolted, killed many Spanish, and
drove them out of the city.
• Meanwhile, disease hit – no naturally
immunity or prior exposure to
European diseases such as small pox or
measles.
• Cortes recruited the Aztecs’
enemies to help them conquer
Tenochtitlan.
• Cortés and his allies headed to the
capital with 500 soldiers and 16
horses.
• Spanish advantages:
• Aztec weakened from disease
• Horses (Aztecs afraid of them)
• Guns and cannons
• After four months, the city surrendered.
• According to the Spanish, Montezuma’s
own people became angry with his
policies and killed him.
• Cortes leveled pyramids, temples, and
palaces and used the stones to build
government buildings and churches for
the Spanish.
• Rivers and canals were filled in.
• Books, records, and art were destroyed
• Aztec were forced to become Christians,
and many were enslaved.
• Diseases continued to spread and killed 7
million Native Americans within 50 years.
So, how were both
European and
Native American
cultures changed
after European
contact with the
Aztecs?
•
Aztec 25 Facts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGyVRAtZbRk
•
HH Aztec Gardening, Priest Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG8WRKpdqc&list=PLf2z9xGWCE6_jN7xmf7Pi3KaElkDg6ir_&index=6
•
HH Aztec Shopping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oarNOjHHMjc&list=PLo3mWDVC320YN
GHt3eCygEl868Ld1y0eS&index=5
•
HH Aztec Masterchef https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5-GLDwfb-o
•
What Happened to Aztecs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3kWJfkqT0g&list=PLf2z9xGWCE6_jN7x
mf7Pi3KaElkDg6ir_
•
Coroner Report Aztec Sacrifice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQKJRnPpIxw