Aztec Culture

The Mexica culture was a rich mosaic of other Mesoamerican civilization’s religions and customs that was augmented with uniquely Aztec ideas. Aztec religion was based on the need to appease their gods, otherwise the gods would destroy their world. Much of Aztec culture, including their gods, was derived from earlier peoples of the Valley of Mexico. The main Aztec deity, Huitzilopochtli, was the god of the sun, gold, and blood. It was to him that most human sacrifices were dedicated, as the blood of the victims was thought to nourish him in his daily struggle to raise the sun across the sky. Tlaloc, the Aztec deity of rain and fertility, was also offered many sacrifices to appease him and to bring rain to the arid region. Both Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc had temples on the summit of the Templo Mayor, the chief religious building of Tenochtitlan. When the Templo Mayor was completed on December 19, 1487, at least 30 years before the Spanish arrived, the Aztecs sacrificed at least 4,000 captives to commemorate its completion and to honor these two deities. This number has been disputed, as the Aztec record indicated that they themselves had sacrificed over 20,000 people over a span of 4 days, but only 4,000 bodies from this ceremony has been recovered. When Cortes arrived in the city, he commented on the fact that the steps of the Templo Mayor were actually stained red from all of the spilt blood of the past years.

The belief of human sacrifice was not unique to the Aztecs, as most ancient cultures practiced it to some extent or another, but it did become the single driving force for the expansion of their empire and was carried out on a larger scale than any earlier or later people for religious purposes in the New or the Old World. The Aztec empire constructed various anonymous city-states for the sole purpose of warring with them, the foremost among these was Tlaxcala, whom harbored much animosity towards the Aztec because of this. These so called Flower Wars were used to train Aztec warriors and to gather worthy human sacrifices for the Aztec gods.

Aztec culture was highly regimented into classes. These included the warrior Class, the Pipiltin, the merchant class, the Pochteca, and the ruling class, the Tlatocan. Clans were significant to Aztec society, as they represented the class of the people in them. Clans were known as Capulli. Each capulli provided a regiment for the Aztec military, which consisted of roughly 400 men. If any lower class member acted out of their own class, it was punishable by death. This included wearing certain articles of clothing, such as sandals, jewels, and headdresses.