50 Fun Facts About Aztecs

Which modern metropolis stands on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan?

The Spanish founded it on the site after the city fell in 1521.

On which body of water was Tenochtitlan built?

The city rose on unpromising swampy islets and grew to perhaps 200,000 people.

What did the people usually called Aztecs call themselves?

Their god Huitzilopochtli told them on the migration that they were no longer Azteca.

The word 'Aztec' means 'people from' which mythical place?

It was a legendary homeland to the north claimed by several central Mexican peoples.

Which language did the Aztecs speak?

About 1.5 million people still speak it today, mostly in central Mexico's mountains.

Who first used 'Aztec' in its modern sense in 1810?

Prescott's 1843 history of the conquest spread the term worldwide.

According to legend, what vision showed the wandering tribe where to found their city?

The image is now Mexico's national coat of arms.

In what year is Tenochtitlan usually said to have been founded?

The royal dynasty followed in 1376 with the election of Acamapichtli.

Who was elected the first ruler of the Tenochtitlan royal dynasty in 1376?

For its first fifty years the dynasty paid tribute to the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco.

The Aztec Empire was a Triple Alliance formed in 1427 between Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and which city?

The three joined to defeat the Tepanec state of Azcapotzalco, which had dominated the valley.

Which ruler of Tenochtitlan forged the Triple Alliance and defeated Azcapotzalco?

He then conquered the chinampa cities of the southern lake, including Xochimilco.

Which Texcocan ruler, remembered as a poet, allied with Tenochtitlan against Azcapotzalco?

Poems are attributed to him, though whether he really wrote them is debated.

What title did the Aztec emperor hold?

It means 'Great Speaker'; the second-ranking office was the Cihuacoatl.

Which state defeated Axayacatl's army in 1478-79 and was never conquered by the Aztecs?

The Purépecha of Michoacán also supplied the Aztecs with bronze tools through trade.

How many prisoners were reportedly sacrificed at the Great Temple's 1487 rededication, a figure scholars doubt?

Ahuitzotl invited subject rulers to watch; not enough skulls have ever been found to support even conservative counts.

The two shrines atop the Great Temple were dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc and which other deity?

One represented the Hill of Sustenance, the other Coatepec, the Serpent Mountain.

Tezcatlipoca was the deity of what?

The four principal gods were Tlaloc, Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.

Quetzalcoatl was the deity of what?

His name means 'feathered serpent'; Tezcatlipoca was his mythic adversary.

How many days were in the Aztec ritual calendar, the tonalpohualli?

It combined 20 day-signs with the numbers 1 to 13 and was used mainly for divination.

How often did the two Aztec calendars realign, prompting the New Fire Ceremony?

All fires were put out, pottery smashed, and a new fire drilled on the breast of a sacrificial victim.

What did the Aztecs fear might devour the earth during the New Fire Ceremony's fireless night?

The fear was that the fifth sun, the current age, would end.

According to the Legend of the Suns, which sun or age were the Aztecs living in?

Each earlier age had ended in cataclysm as Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl destroyed each other's creations.

What were chinampas?

The raised beds yielded on average seven crops a year and were tended by canoe.

What was used as money for small purchases in Aztec markets?

A small rabbit cost 30 beans, a turkey egg three, and a tamal just one; cotton cloths served for big buys.

Cortés reported that the great market of which city was visited by 60,000 people a day?

Tenochtitlan's sister city on the northern part of the island had been conquered by Axayacatl.

Who were the pochteca?

They also served as judges and supervisors of the Tlatelolco market.

What were the Aztec nobility called?

Nobles made up about five percent of the population; commoners were the macehualtin.

What did a commoner have to do to win privileges similar to a noble's?

Each captive brought the right to new emblems, weapons and garments.

Which document lists subject towns alongside the goods they paid in tax?

Its place-name glyphs also demonstrate the phonetic side of Aztec writing.

Which Franciscan friar compiled the bilingual Florentine Codex with Aztec informants?

It remains one of the richest sources on Aztec life, in Spanish and Nahuatl.

The amanteca were craftsmen specialising in what?

They paid no taxes and were named for the Amantla neighbourhood where they lived.

What did the Aztec phrase 'in xochitl in cuicatl' - 'the flower, the song' - mean?

Such paired metaphors, or diphrasisms, were central to Aztec poetics.

What was a tzompantli in the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan?

It displayed the skulls of sacrificial victims near the Great Temple.

Which Aztec ruler received Cortés on the causeway into Tenochtitlan on 8 November 1519?

He invited the Spaniards in as guests and soon found himself their prisoner.

Which people, traditional enemies of the Aztecs, became Cortés's key allies?

Tens of thousands of them joined the final assault on Tenochtitlan.

Cuitláhuac, who took the throne in 1520, ruled for only how long?

He probably died in the smallpox epidemic that ravaged the city in 1520.

On what date did Tenochtitlan fall and Cuauhtémoc get captured?

It marked the start of Spanish rule in central Mexico.

Where was Cuauhtémoc executed on Cortés's orders in 1525?

He was tortured and hanged supposedly for treason during the ill-fated march south.

What is the name for the June 1520 night when the Spanish were driven out of Tenochtitlan?

In 2021 Mexico City officially renamed it the Victorious Night (Noche Victoriosa).

Which disease swept Tenochtitlan in 1520-21 and was decisive in its fall?

Further epidemics struck in 1545 and 1576, and the indigenous population collapsed.

The Aztec sun stone, rediscovered in 1790, was found where?

The 24-tonne monolith is now the centrepiece of the National Anthropology Museum.

The 2.7-metre Coatlicue statue depicts an earth goddess wearing a skirt made of what?

It was dug up in the Zócalo in 1790, the same year as the sun stone.

The macuahuitl, the standard Aztec close-combat weapon, was a wooden sword edged with what?

Obsidian can hold an edge sharper than a steel razor blade.

Which of these English words is NOT borrowed from the Aztec language?

Chili, tamale, chipotle and pozole are also Nahuatl; potato comes from Taíno via Spanish.

Which Mexican muralist made Aztec imagery ubiquitous after the Revolution of 1910-20?

The indigenismo movement turned the Aztec past into a source of national pride.

What were the low-intensity ritual skirmishes the Aztecs staged against rival cities such as Tlaxcala called?

Motecuzoma I began them, perhaps as a strategy of exhaustion; Moctezuma II later intensified them against Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco.

Which brother and chief advisor of Motecuzoma I is credited with the great political reforms of his reign?

He held the office of Cihuacoatl and is seen as the architect of the ideology that consolidated the nobles' power.

Which ruler's failed coronation campaign against the Otomi secured only 40 prisoners, showing weakness?

He died suddenly in 1485, possibly poisoned by his brother and war leader Ahuitzotl, who took the throne next.

What was the calmecac, found inside Tenochtitlan's sacred precinct?

The walled precinct also held the Great Temple, other shrines, the ballcourt and the tzompantli skull rack.

Which grain, alongside maize, beans, squash and chilies, was one of the Aztecs' main crops?

Every family also kept a garden plot for fruits, herbs and medicinal plants, and human waste was collected as fertiliser.