The Aztecs Part 1 After travelling south from Northern America, the Aztecs arrived in a vast Mexican valley in the 13th century AD. There they were enslaved, and almost exterminated, by the Culhuacan people, who were already living in the valley. The Culhuacan banished the Aztecs, to a tiny island in the middle of a shallow, marshy lake. Arriving on the island, a prophet, called Tenoch, saw an eagle tearing at a snake on a cactus. Claiming he had seen this in a previous dream, the Aztecs excitedly settled down on the island and started to build an empire. By using sticks, mud and human faeces, the Aztecs built man-made islands so that they could spread out and support their rapidly growing population. The Aztecs named their capital …show more content…
They believed the world was created and destroyed 5 times over by the disagreeing gods, who blew out the sun. No one could survive without a sun, so the gods met up in Teotihuacan (“The place where the gods are born”), where a god called Nanahuatzin sacrificed himself to become the sun. But the gods saw that the sun wasn’t moving because Nanahuatzin wanted them to sacrifice themselves too. Grudgingly, the gods obliged and got their hearts pulled out by the feathered snake god Quetzalcoatl. So the Aztecs believed that for the sun to keep moving, they too had to have human sacrifices. Attempting to please the gods, the Aztecs got a bit carried away and sacrificed over 50 000 slaves every year. That makes 1000 a week, 6 an hour, and 1 every 10 minutes! The belief that human (and sometimes animal) sacrifices were necessary was fuelled by the environment in which the Aztecs lived. One example was the fear they had that the sun would not come out and their crops would die. Basically, they believed it would lead to the end of the world. This fear was partly justified because the sun barely shone through the clouds in the 6 months from May to October. This led to poor crop yield during this