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 codices Aztec codices Aztec codices ( ) are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Nahuas in pictorial and/or alphabetic form. These codices provide some of the best primary sources for Aztec culture. The pre-Columbian codices mostly do not in fact use the codex form (that of a modern paperback) and are, or originally were, long folded sheets. These sheets were typically made from stretched deerskin or from the fibers of the agave plant. They also differ from European books in that they mostly consist of images and pictograms; they were not meant to symbolize spoken or written narratives. Particularly important colonial-era