The Aztec’s worshiped many gods (deities). The most worshiped god in the Aztec culture was Huitzilopochtli, whose name meant left handed hummingbird. An interesting characteristic of Huitzilopochtli is he was born full grown. He was the god of sun and war and was a cultural god. Coatlícue, his mother became pregnant by placing feathers under her breasts.…
It tells the story of the crucial developing point of the Aztec culture where their “Azteca” ancestors arrived in the Basin of Mexico in the early 14th century and at that spot they saw an eagle land, and this said to them that this is the direction they needed to be going and made a shrine to their god, Huitzilopochtli. From there, the novel continues on to discuss the creation of the various cities and the complexities of the creation of this new culture from a new “Triple Alliance” of the Tezcoco, Tenochtitlan-Tlateloco, and Tlacopan who would eventually go on to become the “Mexica”…
His name comes from the cognate of the words huitzlin, meaning hummingbird, and opochtli, meaning left. Warriors were believed to be reincarnated as hummingbirds and the south was considered to be the left side of the world to the Aztecs; therefore, Huitzilopochtli translated to “resuscitated warrior of the south” (Huitzilopochtli: Aztec God). Apart from hummingbird motifs, Huitzilopochtli is also often associated with eagles. Huitzilopochtli was conceived by his mother, Coatlique, regarded as the mother goddess who also gave birth to the moon and stars. Huitzilopochtli guided the Aztecs through the long migration from their original home of Aztlan to the Valley of Mexico.…
The Aztecs had to please the sun gods by giving them human sacrifice. They had to kill over 10,000 people a year, so the sun gods would give them food…
In Artifact 1, a drawing from the Codex displays the gods Xipe Totec and Quetzalcoatl (Aztecs). One of the most important rituals in Aztec religion was human sacrifice. Thousands of people were sacrificed each year. There was 18 months in each cycle. Their was a ritual sacrifice in each month.…
In recent discussions of the Aztec Society , a controversial issue has been whether to highlight the Aztec’s achievements or human sacrifice. On the one hand, some argue that the Aztecs should be remembered for their achievements, as that is what fueled their society and allow them to build such a vast empire. From this perspective it is easy to see how the Aztecs achievements greatly contributed to the construction of their great empire. On the other hand, however, others argue that human sacrifices are what built their empire, and what they should be remembered for. Many historians also argue that human sacrifice was a practice that was embedded in their daily lives and religious practices, a practice that made them unique and themselves.…
Both the Inca and Aztecs used their religious ambitions to justify the use of warfare as a means to expand their land. The Aztecs religious beliefs began to change and was seen most notable during the change of power to the Triple Alliance. Mentioned earlier, the sun god Huitzilopochtli became the dominate god of the people. The new comitology required more human sacrifices than ever seen before. “…Not only was the need for human sacrifice more pronounced, but there could now be no limits to its scale: the greater the number of captives offered on the sacrificial alter, the greater would be the strength of the gods” (Conrad and Demes, 44).…
Human sacrifice is perhaps one of the most significant themes in the primary source of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s The History of the Conquest of New Spain. In his volume of Castillo’s eyewitness account, Davíd Carrasco writes two interpretive essays entitled “The Exaggerations of Human Sacrifice” and “Human Sacrifice/Debt Payments from the Aztec Point of View.” As the name suggests, “The Exaggerations of Human Sacrifice” aims to dispute the misrepresentations in Díaz del Castillo’s reports and the bona fide extent in which human violence in the Aztec society was executed. “Human Sacrifice/Debt Payments from the Aztec Point of View” details the Aztecs’ perspective on the ritual killings. Carrasco reasonably argues that the ritual killings of…
Through the collection of poetry from the works titled, When My Brother Was An Aztec, Natalie Diaz delves deep into her childhood trauma through very imaginative and often unexpected ways. This collection is broken up into three sections, the first section focuses on the racism and oppression that Diaz experienced growing up as a Native American woman with poems such as “The Gospel of Guy No-Horse” which approaches this topic through humor. The second section of poems emphasizes how Diaz was consumed by her bother and his drug habits through poems like “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs.” While section three concentrates on Diaz’s life outside of her brother through poems such as “Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love.” Although…
In his book “Daily Life of the Aztecs: People of the Sun and Earth,” David Carrasco successfully explained the life of the Aztecs, so the reader could better comprehend what the Aztecs went through. Carrasco effectively accomplished reliving the Aztecs life in 282 pages which was constructed of a preface, a chronology of Central Mexico, nine chapters, notes, glossary, selected bibliography, and an index. The “Daily Life of the Aztecs: People of the Sun and Earth,” was published in 1998 by The Greenwood Press. From the preface of the book, we discovered that the author’s thesis is, “attempt[ing] a new interpretation of the complex relationships between cultural practices, social order, and religious myths and symbols. The book is organized as…
Chocolate has an important role in Mayan and Aztec culture. Known as chocolatl to the Aztecs and Xocolatl for the Mayans, they are believed to be the first cultures to discover and domesticate cocoa pods in 1900 BCE. Chocolate was very prominent in their societies and it was present in their marital celebrations and, even funeral rituals. Cocoa beans were so valuable back in this era. It was a form of currency which was mainly used by the Aztecs for exchanging food, clothing, taxes, and even offerings to their gods.…
While the primary motivation for war in other past civilizations was greed or political rivalries, sometimes under the guise of religious or just causes, sometimes not, the Aztecs were driven by what they perceived to be a necessity to maintain the balance of the world. They cite their religious beliefs back to the “Four Hundred Cloud serpents” who had lost their way in worshipping the sun, and as a result faced their demise at the end of the godly war. These people believed that waging war was what the gods wanted, and it is noted multiple times that they yearned for these practices to end. The main purpose of any war was to gain prisoners for sacrifice, which again, whilst now clearly abhorrent, was solely for religious purposes. “To keep the sun moving in its course, so that the darkness should not overwhelm the world forever, it was necessary to feed it every day with its food, ‘the precious water’—that is, with human blood” (Soustelle 96-97).…
The Spanish soldiers were ready to repel against Cortes because of the promise of riches (most had been shipped back to Spain). Cortes agreed that the soldiers deserved their pay and asked Spain to give it up. Cortes goal was to colonize Mexico into a powerful Spanish empire. The Aztecs were a group of Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Aztec culture had complex mythological and religious traditions.…
As well, the Aztecs believed that without human blood the sun would not rise again (Cartwright). The sacrifices to the sun are generally attributed to the god, Tezcatlipoca, who raises the sun physically up into the sky each morning. Another myth is that the god Ethecatl-Quetzalcoatal went to the underworld and created humanity from stolen bones, making the Aztecs believe that they needed to repay the gods for the crime of their…
The Aztec Empire was once a powerful force in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica that fell from power during the early 16th century when the Spanish arrived and began conquering the so called New world. This conquest was hastened by their advanced technology and by the introduction of foreign disease’s that the Natives did not have resistance too. What many people don’t consider though is the possibility that the Aztec’s themselves also contributed to their downfall with their own beliefs regarding human sacrifices and the actions they took to ensure it was possible. These sacrifices they held so dear and their action could have harmed them in the end by encouraging the surrounding tribes to ally themselves with the Spanish and by harming their population and military strength. These ritualistic sacrifices the Aztecs performed and believed in played a major role in their downfall during the Spanish conquest of the new world.…