The Aztec Nation Essay -- essays research papers

The Aztec NationA distant sound is heard. It sounds like a deep drum being hit with a good instrument. You hear it again and strain your eyes in the direction of the sound. All around you is dense jungle. Snakes slither between your legs. You hear the sound once again. In front of you is a dense stand of ferns. You part them and look down into a wide open valley. The valley gets so wide and it is so unripened that it takes your breath away. But that is not what you are looking at. You are staring at a huge city with glittering buildings incandescence in the backfire sunlight. Smoke rises up from some of the many houses. You can see and hear children playing in the wide open fields in front of the shining buildings. Lamas and chickens are being bough and sold. You see bags of gold jewelery being bought and sold. Beyond the market place you can watch a religious ceremony. You hear the scream of a person being sacrificed to one of the gods. Beyond the city t here(predicate) are roa ds made of stone and canals full of pedestrians and canoos. Who are these wad and what are they doing here you wonder?The above paragraph describes what an early explorer in Mexico might have seen between 1400 and 1500 AD. The Aztec nation is one of the largest and most advanced Indian nations to ever exist on earth. Just about every part of the Aztec life was advance to such a state that at that time of the world the people were living better than many European nations. The Aztec nation is unique in its history, economy, environment, and way of life then any other nation at that time. historyPerhaps fifteen to twenty-five thousand years ago, small bands of hunting-gathering peoples made their way across the land bridge that was the frozen Bering Strait, migrated southward through what is at present Alaska, Canada, the United States, Central America, South America, and Mexico, settling along the way. One such hunting- gathering group settled in the Central Valley of what is now M exico (Nicholson 1985). thither is a long history of civilizations in the Central Valley of Mexico as early as several centuries before Christ agricultural tribes had already settled, and by the birth of Christ had established as their great religious center Teotihuacn. The history of the Central Valley after circa the tenth century A.D. is o... ... 1988.Hodge, Mary. and Michael E Smith. Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm. Austin, Texas University of Texas Press, 1994.Len-Portilla, Miguel. The Aztec Image of Self and Society. Ed. J. Jorge Klow de Alva. Salt Lake City University of Utah Press, 1992.Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos. The Great Temple of the Aztecs. Trans. Doris Heyden. New York Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1988.Nicholson, H.B. Aztec World Book Encyclopaedia. 1985 ed.Shepperd, Donna Walsh. The Aztecs. New York F. Watts, 1992. Stuart, Gene S. The Mighty Aztecs. capital letter National Geographic, 1981. Weaver, Muriel Porter. The Aztecs, Maya, and Their Predecessors Archeolo gy of Mesoamerica. New York Seminar Press, 1972.Wolf, Leo. The Axtecs A tradition of Religious Human Sacrifice. March 28, 1998. Available http//www2.hmc.edu/sbootn/aztec.htm