However, many people do not realize that the ancient Aztec people also built pyramids. These pyramids were built to honor certain gods. These pyramids to reach up to twenty stories tall, and they had stairways going all the way up to the very top of the temple. These temples commonly had sacrifices performed on top of them.
Not only did the Aztecan people make beautiful pyramids, they made beautifully carved calendars. There were two of these calendars, one was used as an agricultural calendar. This calendar is very similar to one all people used today. It 365 days divided into 18 months with 20 days in each month. The extra five days were considered unlucky days for the Aztecs. The other calendar was the calendar of the gods. There were 20 signs and 13 number depicted on the stone calendar, and each gods was given specific weeks and days.
The Aztec empire was strong, yet all empires inevitably come to an end. A Spanish explorer named Hernando Cortes came to the Gulf of Mexico to see if the stories he had heard about the Aztecs were true. Cortes brought five hundred men along with him, and unknowingly he also brought many diseases too. It was not long before these illnesses killed nearly seventy percent of the population, since the Aztecs immune systems could not fight off the foreign