History of the Aztecs History of the Aztecs The Aztecs were a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. They called themselves Mexicah (pronounced [meˈʃikaʔ]). The capital of the Aztec Empire was Tenochtitlan. During the empire, the city was built on a raised island in Lake Angels. Modern-day Mexico City was constructed on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish colonisation of the Americas reached the mainland during the reign of Hueyi Tlatoani Moctezuma II (Montezuma II). In 1521, Hernán Cortés, along with an allied army of other Native Americans, conquered the Aztecs through germ warfare (germ theory not
Aztec creator gods one will come to a cataclysmic end. Tezcatlipoca was generally represented with a stripe of black paint across his face and an obsidian mirror in place of one of his feet. The post-Classic (after ad 900) Maya-Quiche people of Guatemala revered him as a lightning god under the name Hurakan ("One Foot"). Other representations show Tezcatlipoca with his mirror on his chest. In it he saw everything; invisible and omnipresent, he knew all the deeds and thoughts of humans. By Aztec times (14th–16th century ad), Tezcatlipoca's manifold attributes and functions had brought him to the summit of the divine hierarchy,