The Aztec Empire 1350

The Aztec Empire began in 1350 in Mesoamerica. Tehochtitlan, the capital, is located in modern day Mexico City. The Aztecs conquered land and other cities, becoming Mesoamerica’s most powerful empire. Although the Aztecs were able to gain power through overtaking other villages and routinely sacrificed people for religious purposes, nevertheless they also held great importance in their trade and had social development outside of violence and sacrifice.

The Aztec Empire was polytheistic and believed that in order to please the gods they were required to perform sacrifices. The Aztecs are painted removing a heart for sacrifice, the Spanish requested the painting to perhaps depict the Aztecs as uncivilized and bloodthirsty giving the reason to overtake the empire (Doc 2). The Spanish could villainize the Aztecs in order to have reason to take over the “uncivilized” empire. When Bernal Diaz del Castillo describes a sacrifice he witnessed as bloody and vicious and detailing how the body was dismembered and how the people feasted on the body, could just be an exaggeration to support the idea of the Aztecs being savages (Doc 6).

Sacrifices weren’t always killings of people from foreign conquered villages. A 17-year old Aztec boy told how an enemy warrior was treated as a god on Earth for a year before he is supposed to be sacrificed. Due to the young man being from the Aztec Empire and having more knowledge of Aztec rituals, he was able to accurately describe the event and remain unbiased (Doc 1). Having witnessed the event first hand and seeing the treatment of the man, he was seen as god-like because his sacrifice would keep the gods happy and Aztecs alive. The societal advancement came in part from the chinampas, floating gardens originally from Teotihuacan, which allowed for a surplus of food. The surplus of food led to specialization of labor and allowed people to create expensive goods for trade, increasing trade throughout the empire. The