Politicians and institutions sometimes used the glories of the past empires of the Inca, Aztec or Maya to form a new brand of nationalism after countries won their independence from Spain. In Peru and ...

Before the arrival of Columbus, the Americas were home to diverse and sophisticated civilizations that shaped the continent’s history and culture. This video provides a detailed map-based summary of ...

Between 1345 and 1521 C.E., the Aztec Empire flourished in what is now central and southern Mexico. The Aztecs were highly advanced in agriculture and trade, largely thanks to an elite group of ...

This 18th-century oil painting, part of the Conquest of Mexico series at the Library of Congress, shows Hernán Cortés poised at the gates of the capital of the Aztec Empire. After the expedition ...

(The Aztecs, meanwhile, ruled in Central Mexico, and the P'urhépecha empire prevented them from amassing territory to the north and west.) Arturo Peña Romano Medina/Getty Images The P'urhépecha ...

They did not erect temples and disseminate cultural traditions across the countryside as the ancient Romans or Inca did. Instead, the Aztec maintained what some scholars call "a cheap empire," one ...

The discovery also sheds light on how the Aztec society evolved — introducing more standardized religion and control before the empire fell in 1521 — by showing how obsidian use changed over time.

At the height of their power, the Aztec Empire supported a population of up ... The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya and the Inca being two other well-known examples, were ...

Teaching in Oxford, England, began no later than 1096. Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire, was founded in 1325. Illustration by Meilan Solly / Images: Public domain and Txllxt TxllxT ...