ABSTRACT

T he roots of Aztec civilization went back at least 1,500 years and sprangfrom 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 A.D. 1519 (see Figure 12.1 on page 302).