Aztecs Trivia
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100 free Aztecs trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Aztecs trivia for history students, Mexico travellers and anyone who has stood in the National Anthropology Museum staring at the sun stone. The quiz starts with the basics that trip people up: the Aztecs did not call themselves Aztecs, their capital sat on an island in a lake, and their empire was a three-city alliance that ruled by taxes and marriages rather than garrisons. From there it covers the migration from Aztlan and the eagle on the cactus, the founding of Tenochtitlan in 1325, the rulers from Acamapichtli through Itzcoatl, Moctezuma I, Ahuitzotl and Moctezuma II, the Great Temple with its twin shrines to Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli, chinampa farming, the Tlatelolco market and its cacao-bean prices, the pochteca merchants, the 260-day and 365-day calendars and the New Fire ceremony, the writing system, featherwork, poetry, and the debate over human sacrifice. Later rounds turn to Cortés, Tlaxcala, smallpox, the fall of the city on 13 August 1521, Cuauhtémoc's death, and how the eagle ended up on Mexico's flag and 'chocolate' and 'avocado' in every language. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Maya, Inca, Mexico and Spanish conquistadors quizzes.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which modern metropolis stands on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan?
Mexico City
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.
Q 02Along what did people walk across the lake into the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan?
Raised causeways
Raised causeways ran out to the island, broken by gaps whose bridges could be pulled up to cut the city off from an attacker.
Q 03What did the people usually called Aztecs call themselves?
Mexica
Mexica was their own name for themselves; 'Aztec' was a rare label until nineteenth-century historians made it the standard one.
Q 04From which legendary homeland did the Aztecs say their ancestors had migrated?
Aztlan
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.
Q 05Which language did the Aztecs speak?
Nahuatl
Nahuatl reached English by way of Spanish: coyote and chili are both Aztec words, borrowed after the conquest.
Q 06Whose 1843 history of the conquest of Mexico made 'Aztec' the standard name worldwide?
William H. Prescott
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.
Q 07What legendary sign showed the Aztecs where to found Tenochtitlan?
An eagle on a cactus eating a snake
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.
Q 08Before founding Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs lived by serving stronger cities as what?
Hired soldiers
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.
Q 09Aztec kings boasted of descent, through their first ruler Acamapichtli, from which earlier civilisation they revered?
Toltecs
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.
Q 10Which city joined Tenochtitlan and Texcoco as the third member of the Aztec Triple Alliance?
Tlacopan
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.
Q 11Which records were reportedly burned under the Aztec ruler Itzcoatl?
Old chronicles
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.
Q 12Which Texcocan ruler, remembered as a poet, allied with Tenochtitlan against Azcapotzalco?
Nezahualcoyotl
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.
Q 13What title did the Aztec emperor hold?
Huey Tlatoani
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.
Q 21What did the Aztecs fear might devour the earth during the New Fire Ceremony's fireless night?
Star demons
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.
Q 22According to the Legend of the Suns, which sun or age were the Aztecs living in?
The fifth
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.
Q 23What were the chinampas that fed the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan?
Artificial farming islands
Q 14Which western rival state routed Axayacatl's invading Aztec army in the 1470s and was never conquered?
The Tarascans
The Tarascans of Michoacán destroyed the invading army, then lined the border with forts; the frontier held until the Spanish arrived.
Q 15How many prisoners were reportedly sacrificed at the Great Temple's 1487 rededication, a figure scholars doubt?
80,400
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.
Q 16The twin shrines atop the Great Temple honoured the rain god Tlaloc and which war god, patron of Tenochtitlan?
Huitzilopochtli
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.
Q 17Tezcatlipoca, the 'Smoking Mirror', was the Aztec god of what?
Night, magic, prophecy and fate
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.
Q 18Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, was the god of what?
Wind, sky and stars
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.
Q 19How many days were in the Aztec ritual calendar, the tonalpohualli?
260
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.
Q 20How often did the two Aztec calendars realign, prompting the New Fire Ceremony?
Every 52 years
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.
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.
Q 24What was used as money for small purchases in Aztec markets?
Cacao beans
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.
Q 25Cortés reported that 60,000 people a day visited the great market of which sister city of Tenochtitlan?
Tlatelolco
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.
Q 26Who were the pochteca, who also spied for Aztec rulers?
Travelling merchants
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.
Q 27In the Aztec ballgame, players mostly struck the heavy rubber ball with which part of the body?
Hips
Hips did most of the work, cushioned by thick belts, because the solid rubber ball could weigh a few kilos and break bones.
Q 28What did an Aztec commoner have to do to win privileges similar to a noble's?
Take captives in war
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.
Q 29Which Aztec codex lists conquered towns alongside the tribute each one owed the empire?
Codex Mendoza
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.
Q 30Which Franciscan friar compiled the bilingual Florentine Codex with Aztec informants?
Bernardino de Sahagún
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.