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
Olmecs Olmec chronology came to a head at a 1942 Tuxtla Gutierrez conference, where Alfonso Caso declared that the Olmecs were the "mother culture" (""cultura madre"") of Mesoamerica. Shortly after the conference, radiocarbon dating proved the antiquity of the Olmec civilization, although the "mother culture" question generated considerable debate even 60 years later. The name "Olmec" means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec, and was the Aztec name for the people who lived in the Gulf Lowlands in the 15th and 16th centuries, some 2000 years after the Olmec culture died out. The term "rubber people" refers to