ABSTRACT

Highland Mesoamerica arose in the Valley of Oaxaca and in the Valley of Mexico. Monte Alban in Oaxaca traded with the great city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. This enormous metropolis developed from a series of villages after 200 BC and flourished for nine centuries, finally imploding in about AD 750. Teotihuacán was a major trading center, so important that neighbors of Olmec and other merchants lived there. It was also a major religious center. The Toltecs emerged in the vacuum after the city’s collapse, with a major center of the Feathered Serpent god Quetzalcoatl at Tula. After the fall of Tula in about 1200, the Aztecs rose from obscurity to create a vast empire in the lowlands and highlands, centered on the city of Tenochtitlán, now under Mexico City. The Aztec Empire was based on conquest and tribute payment. Always volatile and plagued by rebellion, the Aztec Empire fell in the face of Hernán Cortes and his conquistadors in 1521.