Gli aztechi.

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The main unit of Aztec political organization was the city state, in Nahuatl called the altepetl, meaning "water-mountain". Each altepetl was led by a ruler, a tlatoani, with authority over a group of nobles and a population of commoners. The altepetl included a capital which served as a religious center, the hub of distribution and organization of a local population which often lived spread out in minor settlements surrounding the capital. Altepetl were also the main source of ethnic identity for the inhabitants, even though Altepetl were frequently composed of groups speaking different languages. Each altepetl would see itself as standing in a political contrast to other altepetl polities, and war was waged between altepetl states. In this way, Nahuatl speaking Aztecs of one Altepetl would be solidary with speakers of other languages belonging to the same altepetl, but enemies of Nahuatl speakers belonging to other competing altepetl states. In the basin of Mexico, altepetl was composed of subdivisions called calpolli, which served as the main organizational unit for commoners. In Tlaxcala and the Puebla valley, the altepetl was organized into teccalli units headed by a lord (Nahuatl languages: tecutli), who would hold sway over a territory and distribute rights to land among the commoners. A calpolli was at once a territorial unit where commoners organized labor and land use, since land was not in private property, and also often a kinship unit as a network of families that were related through intermarriage. Calpolli leaders might be or become members of the nobility, in which case they could represent their calpollis interests in the altepetl government. [61] [62] de Durand-Forest, Jacqueline e Michel Graulich. " Sul paradiso perduto nel Messico centrale ". Antropologia attuale 25.1 (1984): 134–35. Stampa. The Aztecs were also known as the Tenochca (from which the name for their capital city, Tenochtitlan, was derived) or the Mexica (the origin of the name of the city that would replace Tenochtitlan, as well as the name for the entire country).

La religione azteca si può definire sincretica, cioè si è sviluppata prendendo elementi da altre religioni di culture mesoamericane. La religione azteca era caratterizzata dal dualismo e dall’opposizione. Il mondo stesso sarebbe nato da un dio duale, maschile e femminile allo stesso tempo, da cui nacquero molti dei, che a loro volta diedero vita alla Terra, al Cielo e al Regno dei morti. At first, the Mexica in Tenochtitlan were one of a number of small city-states in the region. They were subject to the Tepanec, whose capital was Azcapotzalco, and had to pay tribute to them. In 1428, the Mexica allied with two other cities—Texcoco and Tlacopan. They formed the Aztec Triple Alliance and were able to win the battle for regional control, collecting tribute from conquered states. In 1428, under their leader Itzcoatl, the Aztecs formed a three-way alliance with the Texcocans and the Tacubans to defeat their most powerful rivals for influence in the region, the Tepanec, and conquer their capital of Azcapotzalco. Itzcoatl’s successor Montezuma (Moctezuma) I, who took power in 1440, was a great warrior who was remembered as the father of the Aztec empire.

Main article: Aztec mythology Aztec cosmological drawing with the god Xiuhtecuhtli, the lord of fire in the center and the four corners of the cosmos marked by four trees with associated birds, deities and calendar names, and each direction marked by a dismembered limb of the god Tezcatlipoca. [95] From the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer Gran parte della scultura era decorativa delle opere monumentali e le grandi costruzioni assieme alla pittura con vividi colori privi di sfumature sempre simbolica che decorava gli edifici esternamente e con affreschi interni seguendone la composizione architettonica. Chipman, Donald E. (2005). Moctezuma's Children: Aztec Royalty Under Spanish Rule, 1520-1700. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-72597-3. Huey Tzompantli': Fearsome tower of human skulls unearthed in Mexico City". The Yucatan Times. 21 July 2017. Archived from the original on 12 January 2023 . Retrieved 14 July 2021.

Il nome Aztechi però era usato dagli Europei, nella loro lingua, il nahuatl, essi si chiamavano Mexica o Tenochca. Furono chiamati “ Aztechi” dagli Spagnoli per il mitico paese di provenienza “ Aztlán”, che significa “terra del sole”. Il luogo di origine degli Aztechi non è ancora certo: secondo la mitologia azteca essi provenivano da una zona del Messico settentrionale.

Chi erano gli aztechi, dove si stanziarono, fin dove si estendeva il loro impero

G. Filoramo (a cura di), Religioni dell’America precolombiana e dei popoli indigeni, Roma-Bari. Laterza 1990. Sometimes the term also includes the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan's two principal allied city-states, the Acolhuas of Texcoco and the Tepanecs of Tlacopan, who together with the Mexica formed the Aztec Triple Alliance that controlled what is often known as the "Aztec Empire". The usage of the term "Aztec" in describing the empire centered in Tenochtitlan, has been criticized by Robert H. Barlow who preferred the term "Culhua-Mexica", [13] [15] and by Pedro Carrasco who prefers the term "Tenochca empire". [16] Carrasco writes about the term "Aztec" that "it is of no use for understanding the ethnic complexity of ancient Mexico and for identifying the dominant element in the political entity we are studying". [16] Main article: Mexican featherwork Aztec feather shield displaying the "stepped fret" design called xicalcoliuhqui in Nahuatl (c.1520, Landesmuseum Württemberg) Cline, Sarah (2000). "Native Peoples of Colonial Central Mexico". The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 2. Mesoamerica Part 2. Cambridge University Press. pp.187–222. ISBN 978-0-521-65204-9.

Haskett, R.S. (1991). Indigenous rulers: An ethnohistory of town government in colonial Cuernavaca. University of New Mexico Press. Epigrapher Alfonso Lacadena has demonstrated that the different syllable signs used by the Aztecs almost enabled the representation of all the most frequent syllables of the Nahuatl language (with some notable exceptions), [111] but some scholars have argued that such a high degree of phoneticity was only achieved after the conquest when the Aztecs had been introduced to the principles of phonetic writing by the Spanish. [112] Other scholars, notably Gordon Whittaker, have argued that the syllabic and phonetic aspects of Aztec writing were considerably less systematic and more creative than Lacadena's proposal suggests, arguing that Aztec writing never coalesced into a strictly syllabic system such as the Maya writing, but rather used a wide range of different types of phonetic signs. [113] Lopez Luhan, Leonardo. "Tenochtitlán: Centro Cerimoniale." Archeologia dell'antico Messico e dell'America centrale: un'enciclopedia. ed. Evans, Susan Toby e David L. Webster. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 2001. 712–17. Stampa.The first Aztec murals were from Teotihuacan. [128] Most of our current Aztec murals were found in Templo Mayor. [128] The Aztec capitol was decorated with elaborate murals. In Aztec murals, humans are represented like they are represented in the codices. One mural discovered in Tlateloco depicts an old man and an old woman. This may represent the gods Cipactonal and Oxomico. See also: Society in the Spanish Colonial Americas José Sarmiento de Valladares, Count of Moctezuma, viceroy of Mexico A 260-day ritual calendar was used by Aztec priests for divination, alongside a 365-day solarcalendar. At their central temple in Tenochtitlan, Templo Mayor, the Aztecs practiced both bloodletting (offering one’s own blood) and human sacrifice as part of their religious practices. The Spanish reaction to Aztec religious practices is believed to be partially responsible for the violence of the Spanish conquest. Un altro aspetto che giocò un ruolo fondamentale fu il fatalismo dell’élite. Un’ antica leggenda riguardava Quetzalcoatl, il “serpente piumato” dio civilizzatore che aveva rifiutato i sacrifici umani e per questo era stato cacciato via dagli altri dei.

Carrasco, David (2012). The Aztecs: A very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1953-7938-9. The Aztec greatly appreciated the toltecayotl (arts and fine craftsmanship) of the Toltec, who predated the Aztec in central Mexico. The Aztec considered Toltec productions to represent the finest state of culture. The fine arts included writing and painting, singing and composing poetry, carving sculptures and producing mosaic, making fine ceramics, producing complex featherwork, and working metals, including copper and gold. Artisans of the fine arts were referred to collectively as tolteca (Toltec). [109] Cooper Alarcón, Daniel (1997). The Aztec palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.In other contexts, Aztec may refer to all the various city states and their peoples, who shared large parts of their ethnic history and cultural traits with the Mexica, Acolhua and Tepanecs, and who often also used the Nahuatl language as a lingua franca. An example is Jerome A. Offner's Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco. [17] In this meaning, it is possible to talk about an "Aztec civilization" including all the particular cultural patterns common for most of the peoples inhabiting central Mexico in the late postclassic period. [18] Such a usage may also extend the term "Aztec" to all the groups in Central Mexico that were incorporated culturally or politically into the sphere of dominance of the Aztec empire. [19] [nb 3]