100 Fun Facts About Aztecs

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

Mexico City rose from the rubble: after the siege the Spanish razed Tenochtitlan and rebuilt on the same island site, so the Aztec city lies beneath today's streets.

Along what did people walk across the lake into the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan?

Raised causeways ran out to the island, broken by gaps whose bridges could be pulled up to cut the city off from an attacker.

What did the people usually called Aztecs call themselves?

Mexica was their own name for themselves; 'Aztec' was a rare label until nineteenth-century historians made it the standard one.

From which legendary homeland did the Aztecs say their ancestors had migrated?

Aztlan gave them the name: in their language 'Aztecatl' means a person from Aztlan, a place whose real location, if it had one, is unknown.

Which language did the Aztecs speak?

Nahuatl reached English by way of Spanish: coyote and chili are both Aztec words, borrowed after the conquest.

Whose 1843 history of the conquest of Mexico made 'Aztec' the standard name worldwide?

William H. Prescott's widely read account fixed a label that earlier writers had only begun to use; the people themselves never called their empire Aztec.

What legendary sign showed the Aztecs where to found Tenochtitlan?

An eagle on a cactus eating a snake now sits at the centre of Mexico's flag, though some early Aztec pictures of the scene show the eagle alone.

Before founding Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs lived by serving stronger cities as what?

Hired soldiers: the Aztecs fought other cities' battles before settling in the lake marshes in the 1300s, by which time students had been taught at Oxford for more than two centuries.

Aztec kings boasted of descent, through their first ruler Acamapichtli, from which earlier civilisation they revered?

Toltecs were the Aztecs' model of civilisation, so Tenochtitlan's elders chose Acamapichtli, whose mother came from a royal house claiming their blood, to found the dynasty.

Which city joined Tenochtitlan and Texcoco as the third member of the Aztec Triple Alliance?

Tlacopan was a rebel city of the very state the alliance overthrew, yet it stayed the junior partner, taking one share of tribute for every two that went to each ally.

Which records were reportedly burned under the Aztec ruler Itzcoatl?

Old chronicles were burned, a later Aztec account says, because not everyone should know them; a grander official past was then written in their place.

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

Nezahualcoyotl saw his father killed when Azcapotzalco's forces took his city, and spent years as a fugitive before returning to help destroy that power and win back his throne.

What title did the Aztec emperor hold?

Huey Tlatoani means 'Great Speaker': the ruler spoke for the city, and the office was filled by election among the royal kin rather than passing automatically to a son.

Which western rival state routed Axayacatl's invading Aztec army in the 1470s and was never conquered?

The Tarascans of Michoacán destroyed the invading army, then lined the border with forts; the frontier held until the Spanish arrived.

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

80,400 is the figure in later accounts, but it would mean a killing every few seconds, day and night, for four days; historians think the true toll was far lower.

The twin shrines atop the Great Temple honoured the rain god Tlaloc and which war god, patron of Tenochtitlan?

Huitzilopochtli's shrine stood for Coatepec, the mountain where myth says he sprang from his mother fully armed and cut down his sister, whose carved image lay at the foot of the steps.

Tezcatlipoca, the 'Smoking Mirror', was the Aztec god of what?

Night, magic, prophecy and fate were his: he is shown with a polished black mirror in place of the foot he lost to the earth monster, the kind of mirror seers used to read the future.

Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, was the god of what?

Wind, sky and stars: as Ehecatl he was the wind itself, and as Venus, the morning star that vanishes and returns, he stood for death and rebirth.

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

260 days made up the count: each day had a number and a sign such as Crocodile, and priests read the pairing to judge whether the day was lucky.

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

Every 52 years all fires were put out, and priests kindled a new one on a sacrificial victim's chest; its flame was then carried to relight the hearths of the city.

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

Star demons, the tzitzimimeh, would swoop down to devour humankind, it was believed, if the priests failed to kindle the new flame on the hilltop.

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

The fifth: the four earlier suns had been destroyed in turn by jaguars, wind, rain and water, and the Aztecs believed their own was doomed to end as well.

What were the chinampas that fed the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan?

Artificial farming islands were built up from lake mud and plants, and fresh mud dredged from the canals between them kept the plots fertile enough to crop all year round.

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

Cacao beans were small change, with a rabbit priced at about thirty, and they were worth enough that cheats passed off fakes made of wax or dough.

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

Tlatelolco shared Tenochtitlan's island as a separate city with its own king until 1473, when its larger neighbour conquered it and absorbed the market.

Who were the pochteca, who also spied for Aztec rulers?

Travelling merchants: the pochteca traded far beyond the empire's borders, and some went disguised in local dress to scout cities the Aztecs meant to attack.

In the Aztec ballgame, players mostly struck the heavy rubber ball with which part of the body?

Hips did most of the work, cushioned by thick belts, because the solid rubber ball could weigh a few kilos and break bones.

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

Take captives in war: a youth could cut off his boyhood lock of hair only after his first prisoner, and four earned him the jaguar warrior's suit.

Which Aztec codex lists conquered towns alongside the tribute each one owed the empire?

Codex Mendoza was painted for the Spanish court about twenty years after the conquest, but by one early account French privateers seized the ship carrying it, and it has sat in an English library since 1659.

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

Bernardino de Sahagún spent decades questioning Aztec elders and had native scribes record their answers, until royal officials ordered him to hand over all his papers.

The amanteca were Aztec craftsmen specialising in which luxury craft?

Featherwork outlived the empire: after the conquest the amanteca, named for their home quarter of Amantlan, turned to making feather mosaics of Christian images.

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

Poetry was 'flower and song' because Aztec speech liked to name one idea with a pair of images; in the same way 'water and mountain' meant a city.

What was a tzompantli in the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan?

A skull rack: digging beside the Great Temple site from 2015, archaeologists found a tower of hundreds of skulls and were surprised to see women's and children's among them.

Which Aztec ruler welcomed Hernán Cortés into Tenochtitlan in November 1519?

Moctezuma II lodged the Spaniards in a palace as honoured guests; before long Cortés held his host captive in his own city, hoping to forestall an attack.

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

The Tlaxcalans fought Cortés hard at first, then sent thousands of warriors against their old enemy; Spain repaid them with privileges such as tax exemptions.

Which Aztec ruler drove the Spanish out of Tenochtitlan in 1520, only to die within months?

Cuitláhuac is said to have warned his brother, the previous emperor, never to let the Spaniards in; he died, probably in an epidemic, after a reign put at 80 days to four months.

What did Cortés have specially built for the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan?

Warships: thirteen small sailing vessels, built with gear from the ships he had wrecked on the coast, gave the Spanish command of the lake around the city.

Where was the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc, executed on Cortés's orders?

On an expedition to Honduras: Cortés took the captive emperor along for fear he would raise a revolt if left behind, then hanged him on the march over a rumoured plot.

What do Spanish accounts call the June 1520 night when Cortés's men were driven out of Tenochtitlan with heavy losses?

La Noche Triste, the 'Sad Night': Cortés lost a large part of his force fleeing in the dark, some of the men dragged under the lake by the looted gold they carried.

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

Smallpox arrived with a Spanish expedition in 1520 and tore through people who had no immunity to it, killing much of the Aztec leadership before the siege began.

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

Buried in the capital's main square after the conquest, the stone turned up face down during building work, then hung on the cathedral wall for nearly a century.

The colossal Coatlicue statue shows the Aztec earth goddess wearing a skirt made of what?

Entwined snakes form the skirt that gives Coatlicue her name, 'Serpent Skirt'; soon after the statue was unearthed, the colonial authorities had it buried again.

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

Obsidian blades are slivers of volcanic glass sharper than a steel razor; conquistadors claimed a single blow from the sword could take off a horse's head.

Which of these food words did English borrow from the Aztecs' language?

Tomato comes from the Aztec word tomatl, which Spanish turned into tomate; potato, by contrast, goes back to a Caribbean Taíno word for the sweet potato.

Which Mexican muralist painted Mexico's history, Aztecs onward, on the National Palace walls?

Diego Rivera's National Palace epic grew so vast that it was still unfinished when he died, more than twenty years after he began it.

What name is given to the recurring ritualised battles the Aztecs fought against unconquered neighbouring cities?

Flower Wars gave their dead a 'flowery death', held to be nobler than falling in ordinary battle; one historian sees them as a cheap way to wear down enemies too strong to conquer.

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

Tlacaelel served as chief counsellor to four rulers in a row without ever taking the throne, and is credited with raising the Aztecs' own war god to the top of the pantheon.

In 1978, who struck the huge carved stone that led to the excavation of the Aztecs' buried Great Temple?

Electric company workers digging in the city centre hit a stone disc of a dismembered goddess, and thirteen buildings were then pulled down so the temple beneath could be dug out.

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

A school for nobles' sons as a rule, the calmecac trained future priests and officials; by some accounts commoner boys were admitted too, though most learned to fight at local schools.

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

Amaranth dough, mixed with honey, was shaped into figures of the gods and eaten at festivals, which is why the Spanish are said to have outlawed the crop.

Which invention appears in ancient Mexico only on small children's toys, and was never used by the Aztecs for transport?

The wheel was fitted to little pull-along animal figures found at Mexican sites, yet nobody in Mesoamerica put it to practical use before the 1500s.

Chicle, a tree sap prized by both the Aztecs and the Maya, became the original base of which modern product?

Chewing gum made from chicle began after an American inventor failed to turn the Mexican sap into a rubber substitute; the Aztecs and the Maya had long chewed it.

Which animal did the Aztecs often bury with the dead to guide the soul through the underworld?

A dog was sacrificed and buried with its owner as a guide, and Mexico's hairless Xoloitzcuintle breed still carries the name of the god Xolotl, said to have created it.

Which big cat gave its name to an elite order of Aztec warriors who wore suits and helmets in its image?

Jaguar warriors fought at the battlefront, and the animal was chosen because it was believed to represent the powerful god Tezcatlipoca.

Which Christmas plant did the Aztecs grow as cuetlaxochitl, using it for red dye and fever medicine?

Poinsettia takes its English name from Joel Poinsett, the first United States minister to Mexico, who sent plants home to his South Carolina greenhouses in the 1820s.

What did the Aztec emperor's palace zoo in Tenochtitlan devote one of its two houses entirely to?

Birds of prey had a house of their own, while a second held other birds, reptiles and mammals; the palace also boasted an aquarium of ten salt-water and ten fresh-water ponds.

Which North American animal's English name was borrowed, through Spanish, from the language of the Aztecs?

Coyote is the Spanish form of the Aztec word coyotl, while raccoon, moose and skunk all come from Algonquian languages of eastern North America.

Aztecs honoured women who died doing what as the equals of warriors killed in battle?

Giving birth was seen as a battle of its own, and the spirits of these women, the Cihuateteo or 'Divine Women', were believed to guide the sun down the western sky each afternoon.

Which European capital's museum holds the quetzal-plume headdress long linked to the Aztec emperor who met Cortés?

Vienna keeps the headdress in its Weltmuseum, and although Mexico has repeatedly asked for it back, a joint commission of experts judged it too fragile to travel.

Which drink, often spiced with chili and sweetened with honey, was the prized beverage of Aztec warriors and nobles?

Chocolate was a drink, not a food: the Aztecs stirred the toasted, ground paste into hot or tepid water with maize and spices.

Which organ did Aztec priests cut from sacrificial victims and hold up to the sky as an offering to the sun?

The heart was thought to hold a fragment of the sun's own heat, which the offering released to rejoin the sun.

Which bird, kept by the Aztecs for food, is still called a guajolote in Mexico after its Aztec name?

Turkey was one of the few animals the Aztecs kept for meat, and they linked the bird to the trickster god Tezcatlipoca, perhaps because of its comical behaviour.

Which Nahua woman, one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519, became the interpreter for Cortés?

La Malinche spoke both Maya and the Aztec language, and she later bore Cortés a son, Martín, one of the first mestizos.

Which ruined city in the Valley of Mexico did the Aztecs name, believing the gods had created the universe there?

Teotihuacan had fallen centuries before the Aztecs arrived, and they named its main street the Avenue of the Dead because they took the mounds beside it for tombs.

How did the Aztecs regard the five nameless days that closed their 365-day solar year?

As unlucky days, the nemontemi fell outside the eighteen named months of twenty days each that filled the rest of the year.

Which milky alcoholic drink did the Aztecs ferment from the sap of the maguey plant and hold sacred?

Pulque was limited to certain classes of people in Aztec times, and only after the Spanish conquest did it become an everyday drink.

According to Aztec belief, the souls of warriors killed in battle returned as which birds that followed the sun?

Hummingbirds mattered deeply to the Aztecs; a 16th-century friar recorded that the little bird seemed to die in a tree in winter and be reborn in spring.

How did an Aztec emperor usually come to the throne when the previous ruler of Tenochtitlan died?

Elected by nobles, the new emperor had to come from a four-member council of military advisers, a rule meant to keep ambitious lords in check.

In which borough of Mexico's capital can visitors still ride boats along canals surviving from the Aztec lake world?

Xochimilco keeps about 170 km of canals, plied by brightly painted boats called trajineras, and its pre-Hispanic waterways have made it a World Heritage Site.

From the springs of which hill did an Aztec aqueduct carry fresh drinking water into Tenochtitlan?

Chapultepec water mattered because the lake around the island city was brackish; the Aztecs built the channel twice, after a flood destroyed the first.

The Aztec double-headed serpent in the British Museum is a wooden carving covered in a mosaic of which stone?

Turquoise mosaic covers the wooden body, set off by red spiny oyster shell, and the piece may have been among the goods Cortés obtained in Mexico.

What was the Aztec armour called ichcahuipilli made of, which Spanish soldiers often chose over their own steel plate?

Padded cotton, packed tight between two layers of cloth, could stop arrows and even musket shot, and unlike steel it did not rust in the damp Mexican heat.

What was an atlatl, the tool every young Aztec warrior was trained to use alongside the shield and bow?

A dart thrower worked as an extension of the arm, flinging light spears nearly six feet long much harder and farther than a bare hand could.

Which flavouring did the Aztecs acquire a taste for after invading the Totonacs, its first known growers?

Vanilla probably helped tame the bitterness of Aztec drinks, since sugarcane was unknown in Mexico at the time.

Which flower, grown by the Aztecs for medicine and ceremony, now decorates altars and tombs on Mexico's Day of the Dead?

Marigold blooms are known in Mexico as the 'flower of the dead', and the plant reached European gardens only after the Spanish conquest.

The Centzon Totochtin, Aztec gods of drink and ritual intoxication, were imagined as 400 of which animal?

Rabbits stood for the sacred and dangerous sides of ritual drinking; outside set ceremonies, drunkenness could be punished.

To which monarch did Hernán Cortés address the five long letters describing his conquest of the Aztec Empire?

Charles V was hearing from a man with much to justify: Cortés had sailed for Mexico after ignoring a last-minute recall by the governor of Cuba.

What name did Hernán Cortés give the territory he conquered from the Aztecs, which later became a vast viceroyalty?

New Spain eventually stretched from Central America to the Philippines, and it lasted until Mexican independence in 1821.

Which active volcano overlooking the Valley of Mexico has an Aztec name meaning 'smoking mountain'?

Popocatépetl has lived up to its name since 1993, with smoke seen constantly rising from the crater.

Which steamed parcel of maize dough, sold in Aztec markets and carried by Aztec armies, keeps its Aztec name today?

Tamale comes from the Aztec word tamalli, and the husk-wrapped parcels were prized as food that travelled well on hunting trips and long marches.

Which rich Mexican sauce, built on ground chilies, takes its name from the Aztec word for 'sauce'?

Mole comes from the Aztec word molli, which also hides inside guacamole, literally 'avocado sauce'.

What became of most of the great lake surrounding the Aztec island capital in the centuries after the Spanish conquest?

It was drained to end the floods that kept swamping the colonial city, one of which, in 1629, left most of it under water for five years.

What did the Spanish build beside the ruins of the Aztec Great Temple, reusing the stones of the destroyed shrines?

A cathedral was meant to consolidate Spanish power over the conquered land, and it stands just southwest of the spot where the temple rose.

Which people really built the 'Aztec Ruins' of New Mexico, misnamed by American settlers in the 19th century?

The Pueblo built these great houses in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the site now forms part of the Chaco Culture World Heritage listing.

Which garden flower, used by the Aztecs to treat epilepsy, was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963?

Dahlia stems are long and hollow, and the Aztecs used those of the giant tree species as water pipes.

What is a temazcal, a structure used by the Aztecs and still found across Mexico?

A sweat lodge of this kind has an Aztec name built on the word for 'house', and its steam comes from water poured over heated volcanic stones, which do not crack.

What was amate, the paper used for Aztec codices, made from after being beaten, stretched and dried?

Fig tree bark paper was mostly banned after the Spanish conquest, partly because of its ties to the old religion, and European paper took its place.

What did Aztec cooks soak and cook dried maize in before grinding it into dough for tortillas?

Lime water, an alkaline bath of slaked lime, unlocked the vitamin niacin, which plain maize keeps out of the body's reach.

Which crimson dye did conquered Oaxacan towns pay to the Aztecs as tribute, forty bags apiece each year?

Cochineal is made from tiny insects brushed off prickly pear pads and dried, and in the 16th century it became an important export to Europe.

Which soldier of Cortés wrote, late in life, the eyewitness 'True History' of the conquest of the Aztecs?

Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote to rebut a biography by the commander's chaplain, which he felt glorified Cortés at the expense of the ordinary soldiers.

Which lieutenant, left in charge of Tenochtitlan by Cortés, ordered the massacre of Aztec nobles at the Toxcatl feast?

Pedro de Alvarado claimed the festival was cover for a rebellion; the Aztecs had nicknamed him Tonatiuh, their word for the sun.

Which Aztec god, known as 'Our Lord the Flayed One', was shown wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim?

Xipe Totec stood for renewal: emerging from the old skin after twenty days symbolised rebirth and new growth, like a maize seed shedding its outer layer.

Which algae, sold today as a health supplement, did the Aztecs harvest from their lake and sell as cakes?

Spirulina cakes were described by one of Cortés's soldiers, and French researchers found the algae thriving in the same lake again in the 1960s.

Chalchiuhtlicue, whose name means 'she of the jade skirt', was the Aztec goddess of which part of nature?

Rivers and seas, lakes, streams and storms were all hers, and she also presided over baptism.

What did the Aztecs call the land of the dead, reached after a four-year journey through nine levels?

Mictlan was ruled by Mictlantecuhtli and his wife, and in myth Quetzalcoatl tricked him there to win the bones from which humans were made.

Which Aztec emperor more than doubled the empire's lands, conquering down the Pacific coast as far as Guatemala?

Ahuitzotl, perhaps the greatest military leader of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, began by crushing a Huastec rebellion and later rebuilt Tenochtitlan on a grander scale.

What was the Aztec neighbourhood unit called through which commoners shared out farmland and produced their tribute?

Calpulli means 'large houses', though the word covered a whole community of people who lived together, not a single family of blood relatives.

Which Aztec board game was a race around the board on which players bet blankets, jewels and even their homes?

Patolli players first invoked the god of games, and a space beside the board was set aside for offerings to him.

Which people, based at Azcapotzalco, dominated the Valley of Mexico until three allied cities overthrew them in 1428?

The Tepanecs lost their last great ruler, Maxtla, in that defeat, and one of their own cities joined the victors' alliance.

What status did the children of an Aztec slave automatically hold at birth?

Born free: Aztec slaves did not pass their status on, and many had entered service by choice to pay off debts.