ch 7

• history of the Home

  • the Aztecs saw an eagle sitting on a cactus pn island in a swampy, salt water lake called Lake Texcoco
  • At a height of over 2000 meters above sea level, and surrounded by active and dormant volcanoes, this was to be the Aztec’s new home. 
  • The place where the Aztecs decided to settle was Mexico
  • It was a challenging physical environment, but the Aztecs were willing to adapt.
• geography

  • for the Aztecs, a mountain was more than just a physical site, it was a sacred site that through its height, brought people physically closer to the gods.
  •  for the Aztecs, the world consisted of 2 landscapes – physical and sacred that were closely connected.
  • the temples that the Aztecs built to worship their gods were pyramids in the shape of mountains
• pros and cons of mountians

  pros - protected the city from attack, holy site

  cons - Because the mountains were so steep, rainstorms often caused flash floods in low-lying areas OR kept clouds out which meant no rain
• aquaduct - built to bring in fresh water from underground springs outside the city in orer to have fresh drinking water
• chinampas

  - floating gardens built in the water around tenochitilan to grow thier crops

  • The first step was to drive stakes into the lakebed in a rectangular shape. Then the builders laid reed mats within the stakes and piled soil on top. They repeated the process until they had a thick sandwich of mud and mats rising above the water’s surface. 
• beliefs

  •  the Aztec decision about where they should live was based on a command from their god Huitz
  • he Aztecs believed that the gods controlled every aspect of their world and they looked to these gods for signs on how to live. Although the Aztecs had many gods, they believed some weregreater than others.
• codex and codices

  • large libraries of books in which they wrote information about thier society
  • codices are sources for us to understand the Aztecs way of life
  • The Spanish unfortunately destroyed almost all of the Aztec codices when they conquered the Aztecs.
  • Later however, codices were created by Aztec codex - makers under careful Spanish supervision
  • An Aztec codex contains images only as the Aztecs did not use an alphabet
• the aztec calendar - had a solar calendar and a sacred calendar, both were accturate and based on the movement of celestial bodies. The Aztecs believed that there were four eras before the present one and each had been destroyed. the calendars were intertiwined with the gods
• Human sacrifice

  • for the Aztecs, killing another person as a sacrifice had a deeply religious significance
  • it was the strongest expression of their devotion to the gods, as they believed the victims blood nourished the gods
  • If Tonatiuh and the other gods were not fed the blood of sacrificial victims, the Aztecs believed that the world would end. 
• War and the Aztects

  • war was important to the aztects as it gave them a way to capture new victims for sacrifice
  • The authorities required many human sacrifices to keep the gods happy, and therefore, the prime objective in battle was not to kill the enemy but to capture  him alive. 
• steps of human sacrifice

  1. victim is placed on a sacrificial stone
  2. the priest would cut through the victims chest with an obsidian blade
  3. the heart would be grabbed out of the chest and held towards the sky in honour of the sun god
  4. the body would either be cut in pieces and send them to important people as an offering, or use the pieces for ritual cannibalism. 
• tenochitilan

  • aztec philosophers believed  the Earth was a round flat disc divided into 4 sections. in the middle, where the sections met like pieces of a pie, was Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec  empire
  • The city itself was also divided in to 4 sections, which symbolized the 4 directions (north, south, east and west). Right in the middle of the city was a large square, which contained a number of temples, including the Great Temple (Templo Mayor).
• temples

  • the Aztecs believed that the gods lived in the skies and other places.
  • they thought mountains were sacred places – the mountaintop was that much closer to heaven, the home of the gods.
  • Aztec priests sometimes built temples on mountaintops, where they believed the physical and spiritual worlds met.
  • Tenochtitlan itself had hundreds of temples. Most of them were built in a pyramid shape to resemble a sacred mountain. The most magnificent of these was the great temple in Tenochtitlan, the physical and spiritual center of the universe for the Aztec people 
• cemeteries

  • there were no cemeteries, bodies were tied up in a crouched
  • Then, while prayers were chanted, the body was sprinkled with water and offered gifts of incense, clothing and coloured thread.
  • The Aztecs believed that it took a common person 4 years to reach the lowest level of the underworld and that he or she needed to take a small dog as a guide.
  • Therefore, the dead dog and body were burned together and their ashes buried under the earth floor of the person’s hut. position with cloth
  • noble people were buried with a ceremony