All about the ancient tribes
When the Aztecs came saw an eagle sitting on a cactus in the marshy territory close to the southwest boundary of Lake Texcoco, they interpreted this as a sign that they should establish their town in this area.
The deity commanded the Aztec people to search for a sign, which was described as an eagle sitting on a cactus with a serpent in its beak. The Aztecs planned to construct a magnificent metropolis on the site where the eagle had positioned itself.
They settled there because, as the story goes, one of their gods advised them to do so after they witnessed an eagle perched on a cactus as it was devouring a snake. They had been looking for this sign for one hundred years before they finally discovered it. They were on a reed-covered island in the shallow waters of Lake Texcoco when they observed the eagle, the cactus, and the snake.
The Aztecs called themselves Culhua-Mexica in order to establish a connection with Colhuacán, which was the cultural epicenter of the most civilized people in the Valley of Mexico at the time. See also: pre-Columbian civilizations, which covers everything from Aztec culture to the period of the Spanish invasion.
Aztecs did not had any protection to the illnesses brought by Europeans. The indigenous people were ravaged by a smallpox epidemic that greatly reduced their capacity for resistance against the Spanish. The epidemic decimated the Aztec people, causing a significant drop in their population and causing an estimated fifty percent of the people living in Tenochtitlan to perish.
Along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca, and Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl was considered to be one of the most significant deities in the Aztec pantheon.
Quetzalcoatl | |
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Planet | Venus (Morning-star) |
Symbol | Feathered Serpent |
Gender | Male |
Region | Mesoamerica |
The national flag of Mexico is vertically striped green, white, and red, and features a coat of arms in the center that depicts an eagle, a cactus, and a snake. The proportion of the flag’s width to its length is 4 to 7.
According to the priests, they had received a message from the gods. The area where the Aztecs spotted an eagle perched atop a cactus while carrying a serpent should be the site of their settlement. After seeing this sign on a swampy island in the middle of the lake, they decided to start constructing a new town there.
In the Mexican coat of arms, which is known in Spanish as the Escudo Nacional de México, which literally translates to ″national shield of Mexico,″ there is a depiction of a golden Mexican eagle sitting on a prickly pear cactus while consuming a rattlesnake. The coat of arms that is used by Mexico.
Coat of arms of Mexico Escudo Nacional de México | |
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Supporters | Oak and laurel leaves, all proper |
This information was given to them by Huitzilopochtli.
Nahua is the name that has come to be used for the Aztecs’ descendants in modern times. More than one and a half million Nahua people make their life in tiny settlements that are spread out throughout wide swaths of rural Mexico. These people make their living mostly by farming and sometimes by selling handicrafts.
During the time that they were in power, the Aztecs farmed vast tracts of land. Corn, beans, and squash were the three most important foods in their diet. They added chiles and tomatoes to these ingredients. They also gathered a species of crayfish-like critter called an acocil, which is common in Lake Texcoco, as well as a type of algae called spirulina, which they baked into cakes.
By the 1500s, they had not only survived, but even triumphed over their adversaries, and they were making every effort to ensure that they would not be forced to regress. They conquered their neighbors, at first the various ethnic groups that lived in the central core of Mexico, and subsequently far further away, by employing both their intelligence and their physical might.
An anthropologist from New York has proposed that the Aztecs didn’t just sacrifice humans atop their holy pyramids for religious reasons; rather, they did so because they were forced to consume people in order to achieve the necessary amount of protein in their diet.
The decline and fall of the Aztec empire. After a protracted siege of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, which took place in 1521, Spain was finally successful in subduing the Aztec people. During the siege, a large portion of the population perished as a result of starvation and disease.