ABSTRACT
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. Throughout the long history of Mesoamerican civilization, lowlands and highlands were linked inextricably to one another. Many of the foundations of highland Mesoamerican civilization were laid in two areas: the Valley of Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico. The Aztecs became the masters of the Valley of Mexico and set out to rewrite society and history itself. The Aztecs were militaristic, but every deed, every moment of living, was filled with symbolic meaning and governed by ritual. They inherited the cyclical view of time, established by the movements of the heavenly bodies, which had lain at the core of Mesoamerican civilization for millennia. The focal point of Aztec religious life was the Great Temple of the gods Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc in the heart of Tenochtitln.
