Timelines
A few rather simplified timelines, so that a quick overview can be made:
- From the World History Encyclopaedia pages
- Britannica’s equally simplified version , with more text
- From the History Junkie site
Also see in the YouTube section: The History of the Aztec Year by Year.
The Pre-Aztec period
The Olmec Legacy: A 30 minute YouTube video that starts with an archaeological discovery in 1939.
Books
The links are to the Amazon page. It’s pretty pointless checking to see if Cumbria Libraries has a copy.
- Mexico From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, Michael Coe & Rex Koontz Thames & Hudson, 2019, 8th ed. Starts in pre-history and incorporates recent archaeology.
- The Aztecs: Lost Civilizations, Frances F Berdan, Reaktion Books, 2021. New, by one of the doyennes of Aztec studies. Up-to-date with modern archaeological and other research.
- The Aztecs, Michael Smith, Wiley-Blackwell; 3rd edition, 2011. Possibly the textbook on the subject, though now ten years old. Later books, such as above, incorporate the latest archaeology.
- Aztec and Maya: An Illustrated History, by
- The Aztecs, A Very Short Introduction, David Carrasco, OUP 2012. Short, but excellent coverage, though I wanted a slightly stronger chronology.
- Tenochtitlan: Capital of the Aztec Empire, José Luis de Rojas, University Press of Florida, 2014). Much more than just about the city.
- Aztecs: An Interpretation, Inga Clendinnen, CUP 1991 An interpretation focused on the religious rituals of the population, using the Florentine Codex as a starting point.
- Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, Camilla Townsend, OUP 2020. Simon Sebag Montefiore: “Shows the Mexica empire in a fresh, thrilling new light” in Aspects of History magazine. A somewhat revisionist version of Aztec history. You can hear Camilla Townsend on a History Hit podcast (ad at beginning).
- Aztec, Inca, and Maya: DK Eyewitness series, Elizabeth Baquedano, DK 2011 Simple, but great illustrations, as ever, and good maps.
- The Aztec World, ed. Elizabeth Brumfiel & Gary Feldman, Abrams, 2008 This a splendid large-format volume, very expensive new, but I got an excellent secondhand copy for £10. Good diagrams, graphics, illustrations and maps, and the contributors are a roll-call of modern experts. Could be a one-stop book.
Maps
Many of the books have good maps. Links to contemporary (Spanish) versions, and a good discussion of Aztec & Mayan cartography, from the fabulous multi-volume University of Chicago History of Cartography, now fully online and downloadable.
The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection has a Mexico page: some historical maps.
The famous map of Tenochtitlan, 1524, above, is available in high resolution from Wikimedia:
Wikimedia map of Tenochtitlan, 1524
There is discussion of the map in a number of journal articles:
- Mapping the Aztec Capital: The 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, Its Sources and Meanings, Barbara E. Mundy (author of the cartography chapter above)
- The New World Seen as the Old: The 1524 Map of Tenochtitlán, E Godbey (hard to access, but I have a copy)
The most recent (July/August 2021) National Geographic History magazine, has a lovely map of the Lands of the Aztec, as part of a 14 page piece on the Rise and Fall of the Aztec.
The www.worldhistory.org site has a colourful map (though the colours aren’t as well chosen as they might be) of the contributions of each tlatoani to the expansion of the Aztec empire.
Wikipedia
As ever, lots of very good coverage of all things Aztec on Wikipedia, and many of the articles have recent attention. There is no overview of the categories, as there is of some large topics, so this short listing can serve as an introduction. Most of these pages have lots of links to other, more detailed, pages.
- Mesoamerica
- Aztlán
- Mexica
- Aztecs: overview
- History of the Aztecs
- Aztec Society
- Aztec Empire
- Aztec Codices
- Aztec Warfare
- Aztec Calendar
- Aztec Clothing
The Rulers (tlatoani) of Tenochtitlan
- Acamapichtli 1376–1395
- Huitzilihuitl 1396 – 1417
- Chimalpopoca 1417 – 1427
- Itzcoatl 1427 – 1440
- Moctezuma I 1440 – 1469
- Axayacatl 1469 – 1481
- Tizoc 1481 – 1486
- Ahuitzotl 1486 – 1502
- Moctezuma II 1502 – 1520
- Cuitláhuac 1520
- Cuauhtémoc 1520 – 1521
In Our Time
The Aztecs: an In Our Time, from Feb 2003
The Aztec Calendar and Sun stone
The Nahuatl language and pronunciation
Wikipedia: Nahuatl
https://indigenousmexico.org/state-of-mexico/the-nahuatl-language-of-mexico-from-aztlan-to-the-present-day/
The Náhuatl Language of Mexico: From Aztlán to the Present Day
Tenochtitlan
- Wikipedia: Tenochtitlan Fairly comprehensive, but there is still not much evidence about the growth of the city: most information takes as its starting point the state of the city in 1521.
- Settlement Pattern and Chinampa Agriculture at Tenochtitlan Hard to come by but I have a copy.
- City Planning: Urban Planning in Ancient Central Mexico
The Chinampa system
- Wikipedia: Chinampa
- How to Feed a Megacity Like the Aztecs A nice piece in Atlas Obscura, suggesting this as a route to improved modern agriculture.
Aztec Urban Planning in general
- City Planning, a PDF copy of by Michael Smith’s article in the Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures , an amazing resource on all sorts of topics. Many of the articles in the book are available in some form online. I’ll add them as I find them.
- Also, Michael Smith’s academic page contains other articles and links that are relevant
YouTube
- The Rise And Fall Of The Aztec Empire A long video, over an hour, but quite a useful introduction. It’s very cartoonish, but the map graphics and commentary I thought were good. And quite a few useful pronunciations as a guide. Though there are quite a few versions of how to to pronounce “tl”: this video makes it a clear “tl”, others much more subtle.
- The History of the Aztec Empire: Every Year (1427-1521): Quick six minuter that just does the basics by year.
- Tenochtitlan -The Venice of Mesoamerica (Aztec History). 8 minutes. Part of a larger series that is on YouTube. There’s a very long Q&A on the Rise of the Aztecs: the listing under the video shows the questions and the minutes into the video they are dealt with.
- The Sun Stone (Calendar Stone) : a nicely done short video that describes the stone and its symbolism
Playlist: Here’s a YouTube playlist for “Aztecs”: I’ve just added a few videos and done no curating! I’m adding all the time, but if you find any more, please let me know.
The Fall of Civilizations podcasts
There are two videos (not audio) from this series that cover the Aztecs:
The Fall of Civilizations: Aztecs Part 1: covers the formation of the geography (all the way back to the meteor) and on to the early 1500s.
The Fall of Civilizations: Aztecs Part 2: the arrival of Cortes and the consequences
These two videos are long, over four hours in total, but the production quality is broadcast standard, great visuals, sourced from all sorts of providers, and the commentary is very good, if rather measured (I sped up the video by 15% and it helped). I’ve linked to the YouTube versions, but these two videos are part of a mammoth project, of which the Aztecs are Episode 9. The series is up to Episode 13, covering the Assyrians, and is as good as anything you’ll find on history on YouTube. The project is housed on Patreon, and I have signed up as a supporter. Stunning stuff. There’s also a separate website for the project.
There is an audio podcast available here, but you really do miss the visuals!