All about the ancient tribes
The Aztecs suffered from the effects of smallpox in more ways than one. To begin, it directly caused the death of a significant number of its victims, mainly newborns and young children.
After 500 years, researchers have finally identified the most likely cause of the Aztecs’ demise. Within five years, an epidemic known as ″cocoliztli,″ which literally translates to ″pestilence,″ was responsible for the deaths of 15 million people, or 80 percent of the population.
According to new research, the Aztec civilization was eradicated by a horrifying sickness known as ″eye-bleeding,″ which killed 15 million people in only five years. When a disease known as cocoliztli spread over the Aztec country in Mexico in the year 1545, it killed an estimated 80 percent of the population, which the scientific community estimates to be up to 15 million people.
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.
The Spanish were able to take control of Tenochtitlan because to their superior armament as well as a terrible outbreak of smallpox that occurred during the 93 days that Cortés’ army laid siege to the city. The triumph of Cortés brought to the fall of the Aztec empire, and the Spanish then started to cement their dominance over what would eventually become the province of New Spain.
Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec Empire, saw its greatest period of prosperity between the years 1325 and 1521 A.D., but it was conquered by Spanish invaders headed by Cortés less than two years after their arrival.
The horrific sacrifices, religion, plagues, and the tactics utilized by the Spanish against the Aztecs were the four key causes that were visible in the demise of the Aztecs..
In his pursuit of riches, glory, and deity, Cortes set his sights on the Aztec people. As a result of these factors, a significant number of individuals living in the Aztec Empire were miserable. A number of them provided assistance to the Spanish conquistadors during their conquest of the empire.
After the triumph, a Triple Alliance was created between the cities of Texcoco, Tenochtitlan, and Tlacopan, a Tepanec city that was rebelling against Tenochtitlan. These three powerful cities embarked on a campaign of territorial expansion, during which they agreed to divide the gains of war, which often took the form of tributes paid by the people they subjugated, among themselves.
Because the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas had no immunity to the European diseases, they were killed in their tens of millions by smallpox and other diseases that had recently been brought over by Europeans. Later, the viruses made their way to South America, where they contributed to the collapse and destruction of great empires such as that of the Aztecs and the Incas.
Only a little amount of meat was consumed on a daily basis; the Aztec diet was predominantly vegetarian, with the exception of grasshoppers, maguey worms, ants, and other types of larvae.
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.
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.
What was the Aztec Empire’s greatest area of operational vulnerability? It was fractured because the people who had been subjugated yearned for their independence. warfare.
What events transpired in the immediate aftermath that ultimately proved to be the undoing of the Aztec empire? Hernan Cortes forms an alliance with Tiaxcala, an adversary of the Aztec people. They launch an assault against the empire.