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Tlacaelel I
Tlacaelel I (1397 – 1487) ( nci, Tlācaēllel , "Man of Strong Emotions," from "tlācatl," person and "ēllelli," strong emotion) was the principal architect of the Aztec Triple Alliance and hence the Mexica (Aztec) empire. He was the son of Emperor Huitzilihuitl and Queen Cacamacihuatl, nephew of Emperor Itzcoatl, father of poet Macuilxochitzin, and brother of Emperors Chimalpopoca and Moctezuma I. During the reign of his uncle Itzcoatl, Tlacaelel was given the office of Tlacochcalcatl, but during the war against the Tepanecs in the late 1420s, he was promoted to first adviser to the ruler, a position called '' Cihuacoatl'' in Nahuatl, an office that Tlacaelel held during the reigns of four consecutive ''Tlatoque'', until his death in 1487. Tlacaelel recast or strengthened the concept of the Aztecs as a chosen people, elevated the tribal god/hero Huitzilopochtli to top of the pantheon of gods, and increased militarism. In tandem with this, Tlacaelel is said to have incr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Codex Mendoza
The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex, believed to have been created around the year 1541. It contains a history of both the Aztec rulers and their conquests as well as a description of the daily life of pre-conquest Aztec society. The codex is written in the Nahuatl language using traditional Aztec pictograms with a translation and explanation of the text provided in Spanish. It is named after Don Antonio de Mendoza (1495-1552), the viceroy of New Spain, who supervised its creation and who was a leading patron of native artists. Mendoza knew that the ravages of the conquest had destroyed multiple native artifacts, and that the craft traditions that generated them had been effaced. When the Spanish crown ordered Mendoza to provide evidence of the Aztec political and tribute system, he invited skilled artists and scribes who were being schooled at the Franciscan college in Tlatelolco to gather in a workshop under the supervision of Spanish priests where they could recreate the docu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cihuacoatl (position)
The cihuacoatl ( nci-IPA, cihuācōātl, siwaːˈkoːaːtɬ, for "female twin"), was a supreme leader under the Tlatoani (Aztec emperor), or an esteemed advisor, within the Aztec Empire system of government. Officeholders * Tlacaelel (1420s–1487); office created for him * Tlilpotoncatzin (1487–1503) * Tlacaelel II (1503–1520) * Matlatzincatzin (1520) * Tlacotzin (1520–1525); final officeholder In popular culture The position features in four historical novels by Simon Levack. See also *Class in Aztec society Aztec society was traditionally divided into social classes. They became sophisticated once the Mexica people settled and began to build the Aztec Empire. The class structure was so elaborate that it impressed the Spanish almost as much as Aztec ... Aztec society Heads of state in North America {{Gov-job-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Civilization
The Maya civilization () of the Mesoamerican people is known by its ancient temples and glyphs. Its Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. It is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors. The Archaic period, before 2000 BC, saw the first developments in agricul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chichimeca
Chichimeca () is the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples who were established in present-day Bajio region of Mexico. Chichimeca carried the meaning as the Roman term "barbarian" that described Germanic tribes. The name, with its pejorative sense, was adopted by the Spanish Empire. For the Spanish, in the words of scholar Charlotte M. Gradie, "the Chichimecas were a wild, nomadic people who lived north of the Valley of Mexico. They had no fixed dwelling places, lived by hunting, wore little clothes and fiercely resisted foreign intrusion into their territory, which happened to contain silver mines the Spanish wished to exploit." In spite of not having temples or idols, they practiced animal sacrifice, and they were feared for their expertise and brutality in war. The Spanish invasion resulted in a "drastic population decline of all the peoples known collectively as Chichimecas, and to the eventual disappearance as peoples ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Templo Mayor
The (Spanish: Main Temple) was the main temple of the Mexica people in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Its architectural style belongs to the late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica. The temple was called ' in the Nahuatl language. It was dedicated simultaneously to Huitzilopochtli, god of war, and Tlaloc, god of rain and agriculture, each of which had a shrine at the top of the pyramid with separate staircases. The central spire was devoted to Quetzalcoatl in his form as the wind god, Ehecatl. The Great Temple devoted to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, measuring approximately at its base, dominated the Sacred Precinct. Construction of the first temple began sometime after 1325, and it was rebuilt six times. The temple was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521, and the Mexico City cathedral was built in its place. The Zócalo, or main plaza of Mexico City today, was developed to the southwest of Templo Mayor, which is located in the block between Semi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Oklahoma Press
The University of Oklahoma Press (OU Press) is the publishing arm of the University of Oklahoma. Founded in 1929 by the fifth president of the University of Oklahoma, William Bennett Bizzell, it was the first university press to be established in the American Southwest. The OU Press is one of the leading presses in the region, and is primarily known for its titles on the American West and Native Americans, though the press publishes texts on other subjects as well, ranging from wildlife to ancient languages.Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopaedia of Oklahoma History and Culture Tornadoes and severe weather are another focus. The press releases around 80 books every year. A profile of the University of Oklahoma Press from 2018 quotes OU President David Boren as saying: "The OU Press is one of the crown jewels of the University of Oklahoma.” The Arthur H. Clark Company (founded 1902) was a major printer of publications related to the history of the Western United States. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florentine Codex
The ''Florentine Codex'' is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it: ''La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España'' (in English: ''The Universal History of the Things of New Spain''). After a translation mistake, it was given the name ''Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva España''. The best-preserved manuscript is commonly referred to as the ''Florentine Codex'', as the codex is held in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Italy. In partnership with Nahua men who were formerly his students at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, Sahagún conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and edited his findings. He worked on this project from 1545 up until his death in 1590. The work consists of 2,400 pages organized into twelve books; more than 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists provide vivid images of this era. It documents the culture, religious cosmology ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Burning
Book burning is the deliberate destruction by fire of books or other written materials, usually carried out in a public context. The burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question. Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book's contents or author, intended to draw wider public attention to this opinion, or conceal the information contained in the text from being made public, such as diaries or ledgers. In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Examples include the burning of books and burying of scholars under China's Qin Dynasty (213–210 BCE), the destruction of the House of Wisdom during the Mongol siege of Baghdad (1258), the destruction of Aztec codices by Itzcoatl (1430s), the burning of Maya codices on the order of bishop Diego de Landa (1562), and the burning of Jaffna Public Lib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumptuary
Sumptuary laws (from Latin ''sūmptuāriae lēgēs'') are laws that try to regulate consumption. '' Black's Law Dictionary'' defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, etc." Historically, they were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures, often depending on a person's social rank. Societies have used sumptuary laws for a variety of purposes. They were used to try to regulate the balance of trade by limiting the market for expensive imported goods. They made it easy to identify social rank and privilege, and as such could be used for social discrimination. They could also be used to prevent, or at least reduce opportunities for political bribery and corruption. The laws often prevented commoners from imitating the appearance of aristocrats, and could be used to stigmatize di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tlaxcala (Nahua State)
Tlaxcala ( 'place of maize tortillas') was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico. During the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Tlaxcala allied with the Spanish Empire against the Aztecs, supplying a large contingent for and sometimes most of the Spanish-led army that eventually destroyed the Aztec Empire. History The Tlaxcalans arrived in Central Mexico during the Late Postclassic. They first settled near Texcoco in the valley of Mexico, between the settlement of Cohuatlinchan and the shore of Lake Texcoco. After some years the Tlaxcallans were driven out of the valley of Mexico and moved to the east, splitting into three groups along the way. While one group continued north towards the modern state of Hidalgo and another remained in the vicinity of Texcoco, a third group arrived in the modern valley of Tlaxcala, where they established the city of Tepetícpac Texcallan under the leadership of Culhuatecuhtli Quanex. Over the subsequent years, the Tlaxcallan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flower War
A flower war or flowery war ( nah, xōchiyāōyōtl, es, guerra florida) was a ritual war fought intermittently between the Aztec Triple Alliance and its enemies from the "mid-1450s to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519." Enemies included the city-states of Tlaxcala, Huejotzingo, and Cholula in the Tlaxcala-Pueblan Valley in central Mexico. In these wars, participants would fight according to a set of conventions. During the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Tlaxcala allied with the Spaniards against the Aztecs, being eager to see their longtime flower war enemies overthrown. Origins Texcocan nobleman Ixtlilxochitl gives the "fullest early statement concerning the origin as well as the initial rationale" of the flower war. From 1450 to 1454, the Aztecs had suffered from crop failure and severe drought; this led to famine and many deaths in the central Mexican highlands. Ixtlilxochitl reports that the flower war began "as a response" to the famine: "the priests ... of M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting. Human sacrifice was practiced in many human societies beginning in prehistoric times. By the Iron Age with the associated developments in religion (the Axial Age), human sacrifice was becoming less common throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia, and came to be looked down upon as barbaric during classical antiquity. In the Americas, however, human sacrifice continued to be practiced, by some, to varying degrees until the European colonization of the Americas. Today, human sacrifice has become extremely rare. Modern secular laws treat human sacrifices ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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