ABSTRACT
The origins of Aztec civilization went back at least 1,500 years and sprang from both indigenous and lowland roots. Throughout the long history of Mesoamerican civilization, lowlands and highlands were linked inextricably to one another. This chapter describes the highland Mesoamerican civilizations, which culminated in the complex, rapidly changing world of the Aztecs, disrupted catastrophically by the Spanish conquest of AD 1519 (see Figure 12.1 ).
