Around the same time Notre Dame Cathedral was being built in Paris, a group of destitute nomads descended into the cradle of North American civilization. Eventually, the Aztecs formed a wealthy and infamously bloody empire. Today, it is known as the empire built on human sacrifice that fell to the burgeoning Spanish colonial empire. The Aztecs were the last of a long and prestigious line of Mesoamerican empires. This article will tell the story of their arrival in and conquest of the Mexico Valley within the context of wider Mesoamerican history.The Eagle and the SerpentMexican Coat of Arms, depicting themes from the Aztec foundational myth. Source: Wikimedia CommonsOnce there was a people who lived in the land of Aztlan. Aztlan was a paradise on Earth and her seven different peoples dwelt in seven different caves. The tribes of Aztlan wanted for nothing, for all was provided to them. But a terrible conspiracy was unhatched. Tyrants called the Azteca Chicomoztoca came to rule over the land. They forced the peoples of Aztlan to live by their rules and practice their lifestyle, which ran against their free ways of living. Chafing under the rule of the Azteca Chicomoztoca, one people named the Mexica made an exodus from the land of Aztlan. They would escape the rule of tyrants.Guided by the High Priest of Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird god, the Mexica left Aztlan and wandered South. Through the deserts of modern-day Arizona and Northern Mexico, they survived by hunting, foraging, and making war on the other tribes they ran into along the way. Soon the high desert bristled into forested mountains, and the Mexica stumbled into a fertile land populated not by scattered tribes but by great cities that encircled a humongous lake. They had found their way into the Mexican highlands and the Valley of Mexico, made abundant by rich volcanic soil.Resting in the middle of that valley, ringed by wetlands flush with fish and game, was massive Lake Texcoco. There, a vision of an eagle eating a snake atop a prickly pear cactus in the middle of that very lake was given to the Mexica. It was thus foretold that the location of the good omen was to be the place the wandering Mexica would make their new home. A marshy island off the Western banks of Lake Texcoco was that place. Here the Mexica could settle in their new home: the city of Tenochtitlan.Painting of Tenochtitlan on Lake Texcoco. Source: National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico CitySo goes the foundational myth of the Aztec people. It is not far from the truth. The Mexica originated north of modern-day Mexico on the Colorado Plateau as one of many Uto-Aztecan-speaking peoples in the region. They spoke a language called Nahuatl (part of the larger Uto-Aztecan language family) and were related to indigenous groups such as the Paiute, the Utes, the Hopi, and the Shoshone. Though they spoke different languages, these groups had similar lifestyles, roaming the scorching desert valleys and snow-capped peaks of the Colorado Plateau as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Also, like their cousin tribes, the Mexica were said to be violent and confrontational, according to other indigenous peoples. Unlike their cousins, however, the Nahuatl-speaking Mexica migrated south to the Mexico Valley around the beginning of the 13th century CE. There, they were met with civilization.The Birth of Mesoamerican CivilizationMap of the major civilizations of Central Mexico. Source: Wikimedia CommonsCentral Mexico is one of the four known centers of independent agricultural development, alongside the Fertile Crescent, North China, the Indus Valley, and the Andes Mountains. Possibly as early as the 8th millennium BCE, Mesoamericans were cultivating maize, beans, and squash. Known collectively as the Three Sisters by many Native American groups, the people of Central Mexico also cultivated many other well-known crops such as cacao, vanilla, tomatoes, tobacco, cotton, and rubber.Many millennia before the nomadic Mexica would enter the scene, the Mesoamericans had become sedentary peoples. Gradually they formed larger and larger settlements. They created complex cultures and societies. Villages became towns; towns grew into cities; cities expanded into giant urban sprawls. Civilization had been founded in the West.Patterns of EmpireOlmec colossal head, 1960. Source: Caldwell Kvaran ArchivesFirst came the Olmecs along the coast, contemporary with the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Middle East. Then Maya city states, centers of high culture and innovation, sprouted up in the southern lowlands around the same time Classical Greece and Rome were flourishing. There was a long history of cities in central Mexico too, but by 100 CE, it was Teotihuacan which would become the predominant urban center of the Mexico Valley. It was awash with the sounds of industry and made war on its neighbors, particularly the Mayans, whose cities they often dominated.Though Teotihuacan would decline in the 6th century CE, it had established a pattern of empire in Mesoamerica. It remains uncertain if Teotihuacan qualifies as an empire by modern standards. Even if it wasnt, subsequent states would create empires based on inherited precedents they had cultivated. Dominate your neighbors, make them vassals, and become the main economic center of your new empire.It was a pattern the Toltecs were quick to copy. Based out of the city of Tula or Tollan (both names are accepted), the Toltecs created a proper empire. They grew in prominence as the Teotihuacans collapsed, likely filling a power vacuum in the region. The Toltecs controlled many cities, either by subjugation or by relegating the conquered to tributary states. Their empire was ruled by a fabulous, famous, and vicious dynasty of monarchs, supposedly established in 752 CE. Yet by the end of the 12th century, their empire too fell into obscurity, superseded by violent and warlike nomads from the North. The Nahuatl speakers were entering Mesoamerica in waves, the last of which, according to their own tradition, were the ancestors of the Aztecs. Finally, the Mexica had arrived in Mexico.Tenochtitlan: Venice on SteroidsA Spanish map of Tenochtitlan, Nuremberg, 1524. Source: Newberry Library, ChicagoThe city of Tenochtitlan is said to have been founded in 1325 CE on a small marshy island off the West bank of the shallow Lake Texcoco. The very name Tenochtitlan symbolizes this mythic island, as it translates to prickly-pear rock in Nahuatl. The village that was founded here was not to remain a peripheral settlement for long. Starting off as mercenaries allied with the Tepanec Empire, the Aztecs began building their city and engaging in large-scale warfare.After a century and a half of tumult, subjugation, treachery, and warfare, Tenochtitlan and its inhabitants would prove victorious. The Aztecs, skilled in the art of war, rose to prominence. By 1428, the three most powerful Nahuatl cities of the Mexico ValleyTenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopancombined to form the Triple Alliance, a state that is now colloquially known as the Aztec Empire.In the following decades, Tenochtitlan and the emperor who presided over her became the de facto rulers of the Alliance, for it had become the most powerful of the three. The city was expanded and beautified as befitting such a powerful state. That it had been plopped in the middle of a lake made no difference to Tenochtitlans city planners and engineers. Ingeniously, they built their sprawling city atop islands constructed of reeds and earth, turning Tenochtitlan into a metropolis of winding canals and grand causeways.Fundacion Tenochtitlan, by Roberto Cueva Del Ro, 1986. Source: Wikimedia CommonsTenochtitlan, also known as Mexico, was like a New World love child of imperial Rome, ancient Egypt, and Venice. It was more than just houses they built on these man-made islands. Gardens of spicy peppers, avocados, and tomatoes were abundant. Even mid-sized farms of beans and maize were grown to help feed the multiplying population of Tenochtitlan. By the beginning of the 16th century, it was one of the largest cities in the hemisphere, containing as many as 200,000 inhabitants. This would have made the Aztec capital more populous than contemporary London, Paris, and Rome combined.Aztec ExpansionismMap of the Aztec Empire in 1519. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Aztecs lorded over cities and kingdoms from the Caribbean to the Pacific. They expanded during the rule of huey tlatoani (emperors) such as Itzcoatl and Moctezuma I. Subsequent huey tlatoani consolidated their forefathers acquisitions in the hinterlands (around the same time the Iberian Crowns were ending the Reconquista at the end of the 15th century). Aztec imperialism was a patchwork type of government.When an Aztec army rolled up to an enemy citys doorstep, the besieged could meet the opposing army in the field or capitulate and pay tribute to their new overlords without changing their current system very much. Should they fail in battle, however, subdued rulers were forced to pay tribute or risk being dethroned and replaced by an Aztec puppet. And the tribute that was demanded? Agricultural resources and war captives, of course, the latter of which would be used for religious ceremonies of human sacrifice.Blood for the Hummingbird GodHuitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird God of War, Codex Borbonicus, c. 1520. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThis most infamous element of the Aztecs and their neighbors was crucial to their society. According to the Mexica religion, the Sun god Huitzilopochtli was engaged in a perpetual and daily struggle against his sister, the Moon. In their cosmology, the Moon hungered to eat the Earth. The rising of the sun and the setting of the moon were naturally the divine brother and sister chasing one another around the cosmos in a sort of Ouroboros of sibling rivalry. It was then paramount to Aztec religion that Hutizilopochtli was sufficiently fed, or else an apocalyptic darkness would shroud the world.Aztec Calendar, Codex Borbonicus, c. 1520. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe morbid catch was that he hungered for human flesh, hence the near-constant sacrifice of captives that marked the Aztec liturgical year. The need for fresh and healthy prisoners led to the institution of Flower Wars, ritualized battles fought with the goal not of routing the opponent or holding a piece of territory but of taking as many doomed enemies home alive as possible. From the Pacific to the Caribbean, defeated foes were brought before the pyramids of Tenochtitlan to feed the insatiable hunger of the Sun.A Most Hated EnemyA depiction of human sacrifice, Codex Laud, c. 16th century. Source: Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican StudiesDespite their far-reaching empire, the Aztecs most hated enemy was seated just across the shimmering waters of Lake Texcoco. On a clear day, off to the East, past the distant pyramids of Texcoco, the Tlaxcalan Republic could be seen. Another city-state descended from Mexica settlers, Tlaxcala remained staunchly independent of the Triple Alliance right to the bitter end. Ruled by a senate, this other Nahuatl state was an island of republicanism completely encircled by the Aztec Empire.The Tlaxcalans shared a religion with their Aztec rivals, however, and therefore also depended on Huitzilopochtli to protect them from being devoured by the Moon. They also required ample sacrificial victims. It is no surprise, then, that the majority of the Flower Wars were fought between the rival cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlaxcala. The last began in the Spring of 1519 CE when the Tlaxcalans allied themselves with a little army of hairy, ironclad warriors wielding thin yet indestructible steel rods. The Spanish had arrived.