Metztitlán (

Otomi The Otomi (; ) are an Indigenous people of Mexico inhabiting the central Mexican Plateau (Altiplano) region. The Otomi are an Indigenous people of the Americas who inhabit a discontinuous territory in central Mexico. They are linguistically rel ...

: Nziʼbatha) is a town and one of the 84

municipalities of Hidalgo Hidalgo is a state in central Mexico divided into 84 municipalities. According to the 2020 Mexican census, Hidalgo is the 16th most populous state with inhabitants and the 26th largest by land area spanning . Municipalities in Hidalgo are a ...

, in central-eastern

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

. The municipality covers an area of 814.7 km². As of 2005, the municipality had a total population of 20,123.

Etymology

From

Náhuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller pop ...

''Metztli'' 'moon' and ''tlan'' 'place' so its meaning would be: 'Place of the moon'. The town is named after the

Aztec The Aztecs ( ) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the Post-Classic stage, post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central ...

moon goddess,

Meztli In Aztec mythology, Mētztli (; also rendered Meztli, Metzi, literally "Moon") was a god or goddess of the moon, the night, and farmers. See also *List of lunar deities A lunar deity is a deity who represents the Moon, or an aspect of it. L ...

History

Prehistory

Notable in the prehistory of the local town of Fontezuelas, the Fontezuelas skeleton is a ''Homo sapiens'' skeleton initially assumed to be of

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58

of a ''

Glyptodon ''Glyptodon'' (; ) is a genus of glyptodont, an extinct group of large, herbivorous armadillos, that lived from the Pliocene, around 3.2 million years ago, to the early Holocene, around 11,000 years ago, in South America. It is one of, if not th ...

'' directly over the specimen, and was most likely placed by other humans. It was named as a new

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

based on outdated race science, and rigorous descriptions did not find many osteological peculiarities. Many did not accept claims as a distinct taxon as such.

16th century

Before the Spanish colonization of the region in 1519, Metztitlán was the site of a powerful, independent

state, unconquered by the

Aztec Empire The Aztec Empire, also known as the Triple Alliance (, Help:IPA/Nahuatl, �jéːʃkaːn̥ t͡ɬaʔtoːˈlóːjaːn̥ or the Tenochca Empire, was an alliance of three Nahuas, Nahua altepetl, city-states: , , and . These three city-states rul ...

. According to Professor Michael E. Smith, this small kingdom's independence was fortified and maintained as a result of the mountainous terrain in the valley surrounding it. Professor Smith wrote that the factors behind the state's enduring independence was due to the fact that "there were few resources of interest to the (Aztec) Empire in this area, and the final emperors may have decided that Metztitlán was not worth the effort." In April and September 1811, two indigenous revolts occurred in the city, ending in the deaths of 1225 people. The city was elevated to municipality status in 1869.

References

Municipalities of Hidalgo (state) Populated places in Hidalgo (state) {{Hidalgo-geo-stub