News reports
New Hieroglyphic Stairway Found at El Palmar in Campeche Mexico
It is not often that a young archaeologist stumbles upon a spectacular find. Kenichiro Tsukamoto, a young Japanese archaeologist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona, has found a “mountain” of texts in a recently discovered hieroglyphic stairway at the site of El Palmar in Campeche, Mexico. Funded in part by the [...]
{More»} Maya
Conquest of Yucatan. General information on the history of the Maya»
1511 – 20 people with Valdivia boarded a boat without a sail, escaping from sinking caravels and without supplies. They drifted 13 days in the sea. Reaching the coast of Yucatan, they fell into the hands of evil cacique, who sacrificed Valdivia and four men, and then hosted a feast of their bodies. Others were [...]
Olmec
Of the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica»
Almost all of the world’s earliest civilizations have arisen in river valleys, and the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica was no exception. The Olmec heartland is a low lying, crescent-shaped area along Mexico’s Gulf Coast, about 200 km long and 100 km broad (at its widest point). Within this compact area is found the vast majority [...]
Aztec
Brief history of the Aztec Empire»In the period from 1068 to 1168 AD (Presumably in 1168) Chichimecas tribe left their legendary homeland – the island Aztlan (”the place where herons live”, “the place of herons”). The exact location of the island is unknown, but many researchers believe that it was somewhere in the northern Gulf of California. From the word [...]
Conquest of the Aztecs»
Cortes First March to Tenochtitlan
Upon arrival, Cortes founded a town and called it Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. At about the same time he had all ten of his ships scuttled and sank so that his followers could not escape Emperor Montezuma’s ambassaders eventually appeared in the Spanish camp. They brought with them some [...]
The Aztecs Arrive in the Valley of Mexico»
Following the collapse of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs swept down from the north and wiped out the few remaining survivors and took over the Valley of Mexico. They set up a capital in Tula under a ruler named Topiltzin. Then, Tula itself fell to invaders in 1224. The fall of Tula led the way for the [...]
Aztec Religion»
The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures believed that several successive worlds (4) had existed before ours, and each time mankind had been wiped out by some catastrophic event. This series of worlds were called the “Four Suns.” and the age that we now live in is the fifth.
The ancient Aztecs believed that two beings were [...]
Aztec Architecture»
Unfortunately, the city Tenochtitlan was destroyed by Cortes immediately after the Aztecs were conquered. Today, we find the location of the former central square of Tenochtitlan coincides perfectly with the location of the Zocalo in Mexico City. Buried under the pavement of the modern Zocalo lies a wealth of buried artifacts.
Legend tells us that the [...]
Books
Cronica Mexicayotl by Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc (excerpt) ||| The finding and Founding of Tenochtitlan»The finding and Founding of Tenochtitlan
excerpt from the Cronica Mexicayotl by Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc written in 1609
I.
Here it is told, it is recounted
How the ancients who were called, who were named,
Teochichimeca, Azteca, Mexitin, Chicomoztoca, came, arrived,
When they came to seek,
When they came to gain possession of their land here,
In the great city of Mexico [...]
Ancient Nahuatl Poetry ||| Preface»
ANCIENT
NAHUATL
POETRY,
CONTAINING THE NAHUATL TEXT
OF XXVII ANCIENT MEXICAN POEMS.
BRITON’S LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE,
NUMBER VII.
WITH A TRANSLATION, INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND VOCABULARY.
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON
1890
It is with some hesitation that I offer this volume to the scientific public. The text of the ancient songs which it contains offers extreme and peculiar difficulties to the translator, and I have [...]
