Ancient Americas
Events · 50
- c. 2000 BCE – 250 CEThe Maya Civilization
The First Maya
The Maya emerged from farming villages in the lowlands and highlands of Mesoamerica, cultivating maize, beans and squash. Drawing on the earlier Olmec culture, by the late Preclassic they were raising the first cities, pyramids and monuments.
Reputable source - from c. 300 BCEThe Maya Civilization
Maya Hieroglyphic Writing
The Maya developed the most advanced writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas — a script of hundreds of glyphs combining picture-signs and syllabic sounds, carved on stone monuments and painted in bark-paper books called codices.
Reputable source - Classic Period, 250–900 CEThe Maya Civilization
Divine Kings and the Maya City-States
The Maya were never a single empire but a mosaic of rival city-states, each ruled by a k'uhul ajaw, or 'holy lord,' believed to be semi-divine. Kings recorded their reigns and victories on towering carved stone stelae.
Reputable source - flourished c. 300–850 CEThe Maya Civilization
Tikal, Jewel of the Petén
In the rainforest of northern Guatemala, Tikal — known to the Maya as Mutul — grew into one of the greatest cities in the Americas, its plazas ringed by soaring temple-pyramids rising above the jungle canopy.
Reputable source - 378 CEThe Maya Civilization
Teotihuacan and the Entrada
In 378 CE, according to Tikal's own inscriptions, warriors linked to the great central-Mexican city of Teotihuacan arrived at Tikal. Its king died the same day, and a new dynasty tied to Teotihuacan took power — an event scholars call the 'Entrada.'
Reputable source - founded 426 CEThe Maya Civilization
Copán and the Dynasty of Yax K'uk' Mo
In 426 CE, K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo founded a dynasty at Copán, in modern Honduras — the southernmost great Maya city. Its rulers filled it with the finest sculpture of the Maya world, including a famous stairway inscribed with thousands of glyphs.
Reputable source - 6th–8th centuries CEThe Maya Civilization
Tikal and Calakmul: The Superpower Rivalry
For generations Tikal and its great northern rival Calakmul waged a struggle for supremacy, drawing lesser cities into two vast networks of alliance. Calakmul engineered Tikal's defeat in 562, but Tikal roared back to triumph in 695.
Reputable source - Pakal reigned 615–683 CEThe Maya Civilization
Palenque and Pakal the Great
In the western city of Palenque, K'inich Janaab' Pakal reigned for nearly 70 years and raised exquisite temples. His tomb, deep inside the Temple of the Inscriptions, was discovered intact in 1952, its lid carved with a masterpiece of Maya art.
Reputable source - Classic PeriodThe Maya Civilization
The Mesoamerican Ball Game
The Maya played a ritual ball game on stone courts, driving a heavy rubber ball with their hips through the effort of two teams. More than sport, it re-enacted myth and cosmic struggle — and could end in the sacrifice of the losers.
Reputable source - Classic PeriodThe Maya Civilization
Maya Astronomy, Mathematics, and the Calendar
Maya priests tracked the sun, moon and Venus with remarkable precision and used a base-20 mathematics with a symbol for zero. They kept interlocking calendars, including the Long Count, which measured time in vast cycles of thousands of years.
Reputable source - Classic PeriodThe Maya Civilization
Maya Religion and the Popol Vuh
The Maya saw the world as saturated with k'uh, sacred energy, and maintained the cosmos through ritual — including bloodletting and human sacrifice. Their mythology survives in the Popol Vuh, which tells of the creation and the Hero Twins who outwit the lords of the underworld.
Reputable source · 2 sources - Classic PeriodThe Maya Civilization
Maya Art and Architecture
Maya builders raised step-pyramids, palaces and observatories using corbelled vaults, adorning them with sculpture, painted stucco and glyphs. Their painters and potters produced vivid murals and finely modelled figurines of astonishing realism.
Reputable source - c. 800–900 CEThe Maya Civilization
The Classic Maya Collapse
Over the 9th century, one after another the great southern lowland cities — Tikal, Palenque, Copán — stopped raising monuments and were abandoned. The population fell dramatically as the Classic Maya world unravelled.
Reputable source - c. 900–1450 CEThe Maya Civilization
Chichén Itzá and the Postclassic
As the southern cities fell, power shifted north to the Yucatán, where Chichén Itzá rose with its great pyramid of Kukulcán and sacred cenote. After Chichén declined around 1200, Mayapán became the last major Maya capital.
Reputable source - c. 12th–14th centuries CEThe Aztec Empire
The Migration from Aztlán
By their own tradition, the Mexica set out from a mythical northern homeland called Aztlán — the source of the name 'Aztec.' Their god Huitzilopochtli, carried as an idol by his priests, is said to have guided them on a long migration south into the Valley of Mexico.
Reputable source · 2 sources - traditionally c. 1325 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Founding of Tenochtitlan
According to legend, the wandering Mexica were told to build their city where they saw an eagle perched on a cactus. They found the sign on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco and founded Tenochtitlan there — the future Aztec capital.
Reputable source · 2 sources - c. 1372–1427 CEThe Aztec Empire
Vassals of Azcapotzalco
For their first century the Mexica were not masters but subjects, paying tribute to the powerful Tepanec city of Azcapotzalco and serving as its mercenaries. Their first tlatoani (ruler), Acamapichtli, governed Tenochtitlan under Tepanec overlordship.
Reputable source - 1428 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Tepanec War and the Triple Alliance
In 1428, under the ruler Itzcoatl, Tenochtitlan joined Texcoco and the rebel city of Tlacopan to crush their former overlord Azcapotzalco. The victors formed a Triple Alliance and shared out the tribute of conquered lands.
Reputable source · 2 sources - ruled Texcoco from 1431 CEThe Aztec Empire
Nezahualcoyotl, Poet-King of Texcoco
Netzahualcoyotl became tlatoani of Texcoco, the Aztec Empire's second city, in 1431. Renowned as a poet, philosopher, lawgiver and engineer, he is remembered for verses meditating on life and mortality and for great public works.
Reputable source - reigned 1440–1469 CEThe Aztec Empire
Moctezuma I and the Expansion of Empire
Motecuhzoma I (Moctezuma the Elder) reigned from 1440 to 1469, launching a sweeping campaign of conquest that carried Aztec armies far beyond the Valley of Mexico and turned the young alliance into a true tribute empire.
Reputable source - c. 1450–1454 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Great Famine of 1450
Around 1450 a devastating famine struck central Mexico. For the Aztecs, such disasters confirmed that the gods hungered, and the crisis is linked to an intensification of human sacrifice meant to keep the gods appeased and the world in balance.
Reputable source · 2 sources - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
Chinampas: The Floating Gardens
The Aztecs fed their vast capital with chinampas — artificial islands of mud and vegetation built up in the shallow lakebed. These intensively farmed 'floating gardens' produced several harvests a year of maize, beans, squash and more.
Reputable source · 2 sources - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
Human Sacrifice and the Flower Wars
To 'feed' the gods, the Aztecs practised ritual human sacrifice, most victims being captured warriors. They even staged the xochiyaoyotl, or 'Flower Wars' — ritualized battles fought largely to take live captives for the sacrificial stone rather than to seize territory.
Reputable source · 2 sources - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
Aztec Religion and the Fifth Sun
The Aztecs worshipped a vast pantheon led by Huitzilopochtli (sun and war), Tlaloc (rain), and Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. They believed they lived in the age of the Fifth Sun, an unstable world that only human sacrifice could keep from collapsing into darkness.
Reputable source · 2 sources - 1473 CEThe Aztec Empire
Axayacatl and the Conquest of Tlatelolco
In 1473 the ruler Axayacatl conquered Tlatelolco, Tenochtitlan's sister city on the same lake and home to the empire's greatest market. Its independence was extinguished and it was absorbed directly into the Aztec capital.
Reputable source - rebuilt over the 14th–16th centuriesThe Aztec Empire
The Templo Mayor: Heart of the Aztec World
The Templo Mayor was a great twin-shrined pyramid at the sacred centre of Tenochtitlan, dedicated jointly to Huitzilopochtli, god of sun and war, and Tlaloc, god of rain. Rebuilt ever larger by successive rulers, it was the symbolic centre of the Aztec cosmos.
Reputable source - reigned 1486–1502 CEThe Aztec Empire
Ahuitzotl and the Aztec Golden Age
Ahuitzotl reigned from 1486 to 1502, pushing the empire to its greatest extent through relentless conquest. His huge building projects and victories were celebrated with mass sacrifices — his reign is often called the Aztec golden age.
Reputable source - 1487 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Dedication of the Templo Mayor
In 1487 Ahuitzotl re-dedicated and enlarged the Templo Mayor, the great temple at the heart of Tenochtitlan. The celebration is infamous for a mass sacrifice of captives said to have lasted four days.
Reputable source - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
Aztec Art and Craft
Aztec artisans produced powerful stone sculpture, intricate gold and turquoise mosaic work, and dazzling featherwork — capes and headdresses of iridescent tropical plumes prized above almost any other treasure.
Reputable source - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
Aztec Society: Nobles, Commoners, and Slaves
Aztec society was sharply stratified between nobles (pipiltin) and commoners (macehualtin), with an enslaved class below. Children were schooled by the state — commoners at the telpochcalli, nobles at the elite calmecac — an unusually organized system of universal education.
Reputable source - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
The Aztec Calendar
The Aztecs kept two interlocking calendars: a 260-day sacred cycle (tonalpohualli) and a 365-day solar year (xiuhpohualli). Together they meshed into a 52-year 'Calendar Round,' whose completion was marked by the great New Fire Ceremony to renew the world.
Reputable source - c. 1500 CEThe Aztec Empire
Tenochtitlan: The City on the Lake
By 1500 Tenochtitlan was an island metropolis of perhaps 200,000 people, linked to the shore by great causeways and supplied with fresh water by an aqueduct. Its canals, plazas and whitewashed temples astonished the Spanish who later saw it.
Reputable source - late 15th–early 16th century CEThe Aztec Empire
The Sun Stone
The Aztecs carved the Sun Stone (or Calendar Stone), a monumental basalt disc 3.6 metres across and weighing some 25 tons. Its dense imagery depicts the five consecutive 'suns,' or world-ages, of Aztec cosmology around a central face.
Reputable source - Aztec periodThe Aztec Empire
The Great Market and the Pochteca
Aztec commerce centred on huge markets, the greatest at Tlatelolco, where every kind of good was traded. Long-distance trade was run by the pochteca, a hereditary merchant class who dealt in luxuries like feathers, gold, turquoise, jade and cacao and also served the state as spies.
Reputable source · 2 sources - reign began 1502 CEThe Aztec Empire
Moctezuma II, the Last Great Tlatoani
Motecuhzoma II (Montezuma) became ruler in 1502, inheriting an empire at its zenith. A proud and pious sovereign who further exalted the monarchy, he would be the last Aztec emperor to rule a free Tenochtitlan.
Reputable source - 1519 CEThe Aztec Empire
Cortés Lands at Veracruz
In 1519 the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed on the Gulf coast, founded a settlement at Veracruz, and — to prevent retreat — famously scuttled his own ships. With a few hundred men he began marching inland toward the Aztec capital.
Reputable source - from 1519 CEThe Aztec Empire
La Malinche, the Interpreter
Early in the campaign Cortés acquired Malintzin — La Malinche — an enslaved Nahua woman who spoke both Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and Maya. As his interpreter and adviser she became indispensable to the conquest, and remains one of the most divisive figures in Mexican history.
Reputable source - 1519 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Tlaxcalan Alliance
Marching inland, the Spanish first fought and then allied with Tlaxcala, an independent state that had long resisted Aztec domination. Tens of thousands of Tlaxcalan warriors joined Cortés against their hated enemy in Tenochtitlan.
Reputable source · 2 sources - November 1519 CEThe Aztec Empire
Cortés Enters Tenochtitlan; Moctezuma Seized
In November 1519 Moctezuma II received Cortés and his men peacefully into Tenochtitlan, lodging them in a palace. Within days the Spanish seized the emperor and held him hostage, ruling the city through him.
Reputable source · 2 sources - May 1520 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Massacre in the Great Temple
While Cortés was away on the coast, his deputy Pedro de Alvarado attacked celebrants at a religious festival in the sacred precinct, slaughtering unarmed members of the Aztec nobility. The atrocity turned the city against the Spanish.
Reputable source · 2 sources - June 30, 1520 CEThe Aztec Empire
Moctezuma's Death and La Noche Triste
As the city rose in revolt, Moctezuma II died — according to Spanish accounts, stoned by his own people. On the night of 30 June 1520, the 'Noche Triste' ('Sad Night'), Cortés and his men fled Tenochtitlan across the causeways, losing perhaps half their force and most of their plundered gold.
Reputable source · 2 sources - 1520 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Smallpox Epidemic
In 1520 smallpox — brought unknowingly from the Old World — swept through Tenochtitlan, a population with no immunity. It killed vast numbers, including the emperor Cuitlahuac who had led the revolt, and fatally weakened the city's defence.
Reputable source - May–August 1521 CEThe Aztec Empire
Cuauhtémoc and the Siege of Tenochtitlan
The young Cuauhtemoc became the last Aztec emperor and led a fierce defence. In 1521 Cortés returned with thousands of indigenous allies and launched purpose-built brigantines onto the lake, beginning a brutal siege of Tenochtitlan that lasted some 93 days.
Reputable source · 2 sources - August 13, 1521 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Fall of Tenochtitlan
Starving, ravaged by disease and overwhelmed, Tenochtitlan finally fell on 13 August 1521. The emperor Cuauhtemoc was captured trying to flee across the lake, ending the Aztec Empire.
Reputable source - 1521–1524 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Founding of Mexico City and New Spain
The Spanish razed Tenochtitlan and built their own capital, Mexico City, directly on its ruins, using the stones of Aztec temples for churches and palaces. Cortés became the first ruler of the new colony of New Spain.
Reputable source · 2 sources - 1524–1697 CEThe Maya Civilization
The Spanish Conquest of the Maya
Spanish conquistadors invaded the Maya lands beginning in 1524. Because the Maya were fragmented into many small states, their conquest was piecemeal and fiercely resisted — the last independent Maya kingdom, Nojpetén, did not fall until 1697.
Reputable source - compiled 1545–1577 CEThe Aztec Empire
The Florentine Codex: How We Know
Much of what we know of the Aztecs comes from the Florentine Codex, compiled by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahua elders and scribes. Its twelve books, written in Nahuatl and Spanish and richly illustrated, form an encyclopedia of Aztec religion, society and history.
Reputable source - 1839–1841 CEThe Maya Civilization
Rediscovering the Maya
In 1839–41 the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens and the artist Frederick Catherwood hacked through the jungle to document ruined Maya cities. Catherwood's stunning drawings stunned the world and launched the modern study of the Maya.
Reputable source - the late 1970s CEThe Aztec Empire
Rediscovering the Templo Mayor
For centuries the Templo Mayor lay buried under Mexico City. In the late 1970s, work in the heart of the capital uncovered the immense carved stone of the goddess Coyolxauhqui, prompting a major excavation that laid bare the Aztecs' greatest temple and thousands of buried offerings.
Reputable source - the present dayThe Maya Civilization
The Maya Today
The Maya never disappeared. Millions of Maya people still live across Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras, speaking Mayan languages and keeping ancient traditions alive — even as archaeologists finally learned to read their ancestors' glyphs.
Reputable source