# data[].attributes.body
Jason and Toby

# data[].attributes.body
Grace and Xander

# data[].attributes.body
Emmett

# data[].attributes.body
grant and emma

# data[].attributes.body
KAILEA

# data[].attributes.body
Allison and Amanda

# data[].attributes.body
Aztec, Maya, Inca

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Maya Civilization
About 2,800 years ago, people known as the Maya lived in farming villages on the Yucatan Peninsula and the highlands to the south. From about A.D. 250 to A.D. 900, they built city-states in Central America that included great pyramid temples and public plazas featuring huge stone columns that recounted their history. Excavations at Tikal, Guatemala, one of the greatest and oldest Maya centers, have revealed thousands of structures and artifacts. The findings include temples, pyramids, ball-playing courts, stone monuments, tools, ceremonial objects, and a great many pottery fragments.

The limestone of the Yucatan Peninsula was easily quarried and used for building and tool making. In the south, volcanoes stretched over the highlands and yielded valuable resources. The fertile volcanic soil allowed the people to grow crops.

Incan Civilization
The Inca began settling in the Valley of Cuzco in the Andes Mountains of central Peru around the year 1200. Between 1440 and 1500, they expanded their empire until it extended nearly 2,500 miles from north to south and included as many as 16 million people. The lands they occupied included mountains, coastal desert, and low-lying jungle.

The Incan central government at Cuzco maintained a strong military and passed laws to create official customs and an official language and calendar. The Inca engineered 14,000 miles of roads, including tunnels and bridges, and built the great fortress of Sacsahuaman. They also developed highly advanced terracing and irrigation methods to allow farming in difficult mountain terrain.

Aztec Civilization
The center of the Aztec civilization was in the Valley of Mexico, a huge high-elevation basin in the Sierra Madre Mountains. This valley had a mild climate that was good for agriculture. The surrounding lowlands offered a hotter, wetter tropical climate and an abundance of natural resources.

Around 1325, the Aztecs settled on an island in Lake Texcoco, where they built their capital and largest city, Tenochtitlán. They called themselves the Mexica (pronounced me-shee-ka) and became accomplished corn farmers, warriors, and temple builders. The ceramic shown here is one of a pair of life-size statues discovered during the recent excavation of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán. The statues stood guard at the doorway of the meeting room of the Aztec warriors. The aggression and warrior skill of the Aztecs allowed them to conquer neighboring people. Eventually, the empire stretched over most of central Mexico and included millions of people.

Civilizations Measure Time and Record Information

The Maya built their great cities between A.D. 250 and A.D. 900. Their accomplishments included the development of complex writing and mathematical systems and impressive advances in astronomy. They used two calendars. One calendar was based on a solar year, while the other was a kind of sacred almanac. A sophisticated three-symbol numerical system allowed the Maya to record numbers into the millions.

The Aztec civilization, which emerged beginning in the 1200s, is considered the greatest of the civilizations that developed in Mesoamerica, the area extending from central Mexico to Honduras. Settling first on an island in Lake Texcoco, the Aztecs expanded their control to most of central Mexico. Like the Maya, the Aztec used a sacred calendar and a 365-day agricultural calendar. The Aztec writing system was based on glyphs, symbols that stand for sounds or words. The few remaining Aztec books, called codices, provide rich depictions of Aztec legends, beliefs, and daily life.

At about the same time that the Aztecs flourished in Mexico, the highly developed Incan Empire flourished in the Andes Mountains and along the west coast of South America. The vast Incan Empire had a central government that established laws, developed a complex road system, planned cities, and created farmlands along the sides of mountains. Unlike the Aztecs and the Maya, the Inca did not develop a writing system. Records of inventories were kept on bundles of knotted cords called quipus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Maya Civilization About 2,800 years ago, people known as the Maya lived in farming villages on the Yucatan Peninsula and the highlands to the south. From about A.D. 250 to A.D. 900, they built city-states in Central America that included great pyramid temples and public plazas featuring huge stone columns that recounted their history.

# data[].attributes.body
timeline

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Aztecs built a formidable empire in Central America until the Conquistadors arrived.

# data[].attributes.body
Historia, cultura, origen, civilizacion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Brebe presentación de la historia, extensión geográfica y vestimenta de la civilización azteca.

# data[].attributes.body
resumen

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Los Aztecas (Historia resumida) - Apuntes y Monografías

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
El control político del valle central de México, muy poblado y con una rica agricultura, se sumió en la confusión después del año 1100. El poder pasó más y más a manos de los aztecas, probablemente una tribu procedente del norte que había emig

# data[].attributes.body
video summary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Aztec Empire Summary - by Sandra Alvarez

# data[].attributes.body
Infographic video

# data[].attributes.body
What happened to the Aztecs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ask History: What Happened to the Aztecs? | History

# data[].attributes.body
Crash Course

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Water and Classical Civilizations: Crash Course World History 222

# data[].attributes.body
Kahn Academy/Crash Course

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Spanish Empire, silver, & runaway inflation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In which John Green explores how Spain went from being a middling European power to one of the most powerful empires on Earth, thanks to their plunder of the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries.

# data[].attributes.body
Civilization & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mythical Entrance into Mexico

This lesson will describe the Aztecs' origins and impressive empire, their social and religious structures, their accomplishments and, finally, their downfall at the hands of Spanish conquistadors. So, how did it all start? The exact origin of the Aztecs isn't clear, but historians believe that they were nomadic hunter-gatherers who migrated southward into central Mexico in the late 1200s CE. The mythical origin of the Aztecs is a more popular story.

According to legend, the Aztecs, also known as the Mexica or Tenochca, originated from a mythical land called Aztlan. Guided by Huitzilopochtli, their war and sun god, the Aztecs wandered into the Valley of Mexico in search of a new homeland. Huitzilopochtli, whose name means 'hummingbird on the left' in Nauhuatl, told the Aztecs that they would find their new home on the spot where the cactus grows and the eagle sits happily. When they came across a large lake spotted with marshy islands, there, on one of the islands, they viewed an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a snake. The Aztecs had found their new home.

The Aztecs Build an Empire

The Aztecs named their new city Tenochtitlan. Building on the middle of a lake was no simple task, but the Aztecs adapted. They drained the swamps and built waterways so that they could use canoes to link the city together. They engineered bridges to connect to the surrounding lakeshores. Floating gardens on raised beds of soil, called chinampas, provided crops such as corn, beans, squash and chili peppers.

Numerous marketplaces were filled with these crops, as well as textiles, bird feathers, building materials and other goods acquired through trade with the nearby city-states that already occupied Mexico. In addition to using the bartering system, cacao beans were also used as a type of currency. The highly sought-after chocolate drink made from these beans, however, was reserved for the nobility.

With successful agriculture, the population of Tenochtitlan surged and extended communities popped up on the shores of the lake, later named Lake Texcoco. Between 200,000 and 400,000 people are estimated to have lived in Tenochtitlan's urban area by around 1500 CE. As the Aztec population grew, so did their influence over their neighbors. When they had first arrived in Mexico, the Aztecs hired themselves out as warriors for local rulers. Warfare was an important part of the Aztec lifestyle, with boys beginning their warrior training at a young age.

Over time, these superior fighting skills were used to conquer others. By 1500 CE, 6-12 million people lived under the rule of the Aztec Empire, which stretched east to the Gulf of Mexico, west to the Pacific Ocean and all the way south to Guatemala. Conquered peoples were forced to pay tribute to the Aztec emperor in the form of goods such as jade, obsidian, gold and corn.

The Aztecs developed a very structured social hierarchy, consisting of the nobles, the intermediate class and the commoners. The emperor was the head of the nobility. The emperor lived a life of grand luxury. According to some accounts, the emperor Montezuma II had a palace with walls of gold, a swimming pool, and a zoo with exotic animals.

Government officials, military leaders and priests were also part of the noble class. They lived closer to the city center on large estates. The intermediate class was composed of merchants and skilled artisans. Commoners included fishermen, farmers, soldiers and other craftspeople. Non-landowning serfs tied to the land of nobles made up the next tier of this group. Below this group were slaves, many of whom were captured in battles against other city-states.

The Aztecs were polytheistic, or worshiped multiple deities. They believed in approximately 1,000 gods, some of whom were adopted from pre-existing civilizations like the Toltec. Gods represented different aspects of agriculture or natural phenomenon, such as the rain god, Tlaloc, or Xipe Totec, the god of spring. Temples and step pyramids filled the city center and small altars filled family homes.

Various ceremonies held to appease the gods often involved human sacrifices. Most sacrificial victims were prisoners of war. One form of human sacrifice was cutting out the heart of a victim and offering it to the sun god, Huitzilopochtli. In another ceremony, Aztec priests danced around wearing the flayed skin of sacrificial victims in order to please Xipe Totec and mark a new growing season.

Aztec Accomplishments

Religious ceremonies were organized throughout the year using a sophisticated calendar system. A farming calendar was also used in planning a successful harvest. The Aztec calendar sun stone offers insight into the Aztec's in-depth understanding of astronomy, including the movement of the sun, stars and planets.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
the aztecs: civilization & culture - video & lesson transcript | study.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Aztecs: Civilization & Culture - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This lesson will describe the Aztecs' origins and impressive empire, their social and religious structures, their accomplishments and, finally, their downfall at the hands of Spanish conquistadors. So, how did it all start? The exact origin of the Aztecs isn't clear, but historians believe that they were nomadic hunter-gatherers who migrated southward into central Mexico in the late 1200s CE.