Aztec Civilization Essay Research Paper The Aztec

Aztec Civilization Essay, Research Paper The Aztec Indians created a great civilisation in Central Mexico, making its extremum in the 1500 s. Being late reachings to the country, and because of their strong adjacent states, they were forced to populate in the boggy western countries of the Lake Texcoco. Because of the boggy milieus, the Aztecs used clay to make illumination islands in the swamps. These islands are called chinampas, or drifting gardens, and were used as agrarian lands. On these fertile islands they grew maize, squash, veggies, and flowers. Bing an agriculturally dependent imperium, the Aztec s faith was based extremely on the forces of nature and worshipped them as Gods. The God of war, Huitzilopochtli, was the most of import divinity. They had many other of import Gods, such as Tlaloc, the God of rain, Quetzalcoatl, the God of air current and of acquisition, and Tenochtitlan, the Sun God. The Aztecs believed in order to pacify these and many other Gods that they needed to execute human forfeits. The chief intent of the great Aztec pyramids was, in fact, human forfeits. They besides believed that there were lucky and luckless yearss for baptism and to declare war on, which were decided by a priest. Most art and architecture in the Aztec civilisation was based on their faith. There are many brilliantly colored wall paintings and pictures on walls and on bark which depict spiritual ceremonials, along with big graven images of Gods. One of the most astonishing and celebrated of the Aztec s art works is a immense calendar rock that weighs 22 dozenss and is 12 pess in diameter. On the rock is a image of what the Aztecs thought the existence was like. The Sun God is in the center, with the celestial spheres environing it, and images of people made out of cherished rocks. The Aztec signifier of authorship was in pictographs, or little images typifying objects or sounds. The Aztec enumeration system used pictographs besides, and was based on the figure 20. For illustration, a flag represented 20, a fir tree R epresented 20 times 20, or 400, and a pouch represented 400 times 20, or 8000. The capitol of the Aztec Empire was Tenochtitlan, which was built where contemporary Mexico City is. It was given the nickname Venice of the New World, because it had many canals. During the height of the Aztec civilisation, the population of this great metropolis numbered more than 200,000. This made it one of the most populated metropoliss in the ancient universe. The metropolis was connected to the mainland by 3 causeways, which, when flooded, served as protective butchs. In the metropolis aqueducts, which was likely the first type of indoor plumbing, brought fresh H2O into places. Many people used canoes to go through the metropolis. Most of the houses were made up of clay and distorted branchlets, but the aristocracy and priests had plastered brick or rock houses. In 1519, Spanish adventurer Hernando Cortes and more than 500 other Spaniards landed on the shores of Mexico in hunt of gold. The Aztecs welcomed the Spaniards and gave them gifts, because they thought they were Gods. Cortezs became greedy when he saw the tremendous sum of wealths that the Aztecs had. He took the Aztec leader, Montezuma, surety, and forced him to curse commitment to Spain. There the Spanish remained without opposition until, in Cortes absence, one of the officers massacred over 200 Aztecs while they had gathered for a spiritual ceremonial. This caused the Aztecs to revolt, and they drove the Spanish to the sea. Montezuma was killed in the combat, so he was replaced with a new leader, named Cuitlahuac. He merely ruled a few months, and so he died of a disease. Montezuma s nephew Cuauhtemoc so took over. The Spanish retreated to a nearby metropolis and rallied together to siege Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs were no lucifer for the Spanish arms, and they surrendered in Augus t of 1521. This marked the terminal of the last of the staying Native American Indians. Today, most of the posterities of the Aztec civilisation live in Mexico, where the Aztec Empire used to boom.