Historians have come up with other claims as to the rise of the Aztec Empire that does not involve the influence of gods. They believe that sometime around 1100 CE, city-states that existed in the central Mexico region competed with each other for scarce resources and power. Over the course of several hundred years, the city-states of Texcoco and Tepenec rose to dominance and went to war in 1428. The Texcoco defeated the Tepenec because they formed an alliance with another city-state called Tenochtitlan, which was later joined by a formerly Tepanec city called Tlacopan. Texcoco, Tenochtitlan, and Tlacopan became known as the Triple Alliance, who together formed the Aztec Empire. 

Eventually, Tenochtitlan, the city that the Aztecs build on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco became the most powerful of the three cities, the capital of the Aztec Empire, and its ruler was referred to as the supreme ruler, or the huey tlatoque ('high king').