Post-Classic Mexican Cultures

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The Rise and Fall* of Post-Classic Native Mexicans In the eyes of a person unacquainted with the history and culture of Mexico, it is easy to make a stereotype of the Mexican people as simply uneducated farmers and laborers who migrate to the United States in search of a better life. These foolish people have never been educated themselves of the history of Mexico and the majesty and prowess of the ancient civilizations that would change the face of Mexico and the world through time. When studying the Native Mexicans of the Post-Classic period it is obvious to even the uneducated that the presence of these cultures is no longer felt as strongly as in the past, or in other words, these civilizations fell. But just the Roman Empire, these…show more content…
Most of these cultures pertained to the great Post-Classic civilizations of the Toltecs and the Aztecs, with a few remaining to the Mayan civilizations that survived past the Classic era of Mexican history and made it into the Post-Classic. I will expound predominantly upon the Toltec and Aztec civilizations. The Toltec people were absorbed by the conquerors and in the south they became assimilated with the Maya, subordinates to the people they once conquered. After the fall of the Toltecs, central Mexico fell into a period of chaos and warfare without any single ruling group for the next 200 years, when the Aztecs gained control. The Aztecs originated from a legendary land know as Aztlan, a Nahuatl word likely meaning "place of the heron". It is generally thought that Aztlan was somewhere to the north of the Valley of Mexico; some experts have placed it as far north as Northwestern Mexico and the US Southwest, while others suggest is a mythical place, since Aztlan can also be translated as "the place of the origin". Whatever caused them to leave Aztlan, they came to the Valley of Mexico in the mid-13th century. Their stories of these travels are recorded in a number of Aztec codices. (Berdan,

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