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- A náhuatl-speaking people of Central America who in the fourteenth century established a brilliant but tyrannical civilization in central and southern Mexico. The capital was Tenochtitlán, built on reclaimed marshland which became Mexico City. Renowned for their jewelry, the Aztecs were also skilled architects and used a writing system based on pictographs and hieroglyphs. The Aztec calendar followed a 52-year astronomical cycle. They worshipped the plumed serpent Quetzalcóatl and the war-god Huitzilopochtli, whom their priests appeased by human sacrifice. The Aztec empire collapsed in 1521 after defeat by the Spanish under Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado.
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- A pre-Columbian city, the ruins of Teotihuacán lie northeast of Mexico City. The Nahuatl name means "city of the gods" or "where men became gods". Little is known about the city's founders or inhabitants, but it reached its peak between 300 and 600 AD. It includes the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, the temple of Quetzalcóatl, the Great Compound, and the central complex, the Ciudadela. The two main groups of buildings are linked by a road known as the Way of the Dead.
By 650 AD Teotihuacán was in decline; it was in ruins when the Aztecs found it in the fifteenth century.
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