Good day dear Hive friends, first of all I would like to wish you all a pleasant day and hope you are all well and have a weekend full of positive experiences! Today I would like to talk about mythology and hope you can learn something new.
Today I would like to write a little about mythology and shed more light on an important part of this culture in Mesoamerica. The Aztecs lived where Mexico is today between the 14th and 16th Century and were known to have built a powerful empire and had an extremely diverse god cult and worshipped over 1000 gods. The capital of the former empire was Tenochtitlan, which is today's Mexico City and during the 16th century, their empire was conquered by the Spaniard Hernán Cortés (1485 - 1547) and the culture was largely destroyed. The Aztecs were very skilful from a economic point of view and a great influencing factor for the enormous growth were the trade relations as well as conquest campaigns and one of the most important commodities was corn, chillis, pumpkins and they were also known to have built channels to improve the trading routes. The Aztecs were also known for developing their own calendar as well as a number system and also from an artistic point of view, the Aztecs were extremely gifted.
These irrigation systems were also enormously important from an agricultural point of view because it ensured that the soil was fertile and had provided sufficient water, which improved the harvests. Especially the Aztecs were known for their pottery art and also made use of metal and produced works of art or weapons which were also important for trading purposes and they were known as excellent blacksmiths and worshipped Xipe Totec as the protective god of goldsmiths. They also often used obsidian to make weapons or other objects and if you want to learn more about this mineral, here is a contribution from me where I have already discussed this mineral in more detail. To describe the appearance of the aztecs a little more, they often used painted masks that are reminiscent of animals and they also used eye-catching paintings and calls to intimidate their enemies.
Another strategy for expansion was certainly the wars, which were considered very cruel and the Aztecs were known for morally underpinning the areas of the enemies and plundering the raw materials. In less than 100 years they had managed to expand their territory so much with their aggressive warfare and they were also known for making many hostages and the god whom the Aztecs associated with war was huitzilopochtli. With more than 1000 gods, I can of course not go into everyone, but among the most important gods are the rain god Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca who was also worshipped as the god of the night or the moon and similar to other cultures, the Aztecs also worshipped some kings. By the way, the language of the Aztecs was Nahuatl, which today is still spoken by over 1 million people and I would describe the Aztecs as a civilization which were really clever and diverse from different points of view.
Thanks for taking the time to read through my post and I hope you like it and can learn something new about this interesting topic!