Tizatlan, in pre-Columbian Mexico, was one of the four independent altepemeh (polities, sing. altepetl) that constituted the confederation of Tlaxcallan. Today Tizatlan is a part of the modern city of Tlaxcala, and the Pre-Columbian city is visible as a small archaeological site in the San Esteban Tizatlán district of the city. The site is in the state of Tlaxcala in central Mexico.
The name is Nahuatl and contains the elements tizatl (chalk) and tlan (place). [1]
Tizatlan was the third of the four altepemeh to be founded, but at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico it was, along with Ocotelolco, the most powerful of the four allied communities. Where Ocotelolco held the economical power, having the main market in the region, Tizatlan had the military power and commanded the Tlaxcallan armies.
When the Spanish arrived in Mexico Tizatlan was ruled by the aging Xicotencatl I "the Elder" aided by his son the military leader Xicotencatl II "the Younger". Through a series of political events Ocotelolco finally achieved dominance over Tizatlan at the end of the conquest.
Tlaxcala, officially Tlaxcala de Xicohténcatl, is the capital city of the Mexican state of Tlaxcala and seat of the municipality of the same name. The city did not exist during the pre-Hispanic period but was laid out by the Spanish as a center of evangelization and governance after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The city was designated as a diocese but eventually lost that status to Puebla as its population declined. The city still has many of its old colonial structures, including the former Franciscan monastery, and newer civic structures like the Xicohtencatl Theatre.
Tlaxcala, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tlaxcala, is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 60 municipalities and the capital city is Tlaxcala de Xicohténcatl.
Miguel León-Portilla was a Mexican anthropologist and historian, specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was a well-recognized scholar internationally. In 2013, the Library of Congress of the United States bestowed on him the Living Legend Award.
The Tlaxcalans, or Tlaxcaltecs, are a Nahua people who live in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala.
Aztec society was a highly complex and stratified society that developed among the Aztecs of central Mexico in the centuries prior to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and which was built on the cultural foundations of the larger region of Mesoamerica. Politically, the society was organized into independent city-states, called altepetls, composed of smaller divisions (calpulli), which were again usually composed of one or more extended kinship groups. Socially, the society depended on a rather strict division between nobles and free commoners, both of which were themselves divided into elaborate hierarchies of social status, responsibilities, and power. Economically the society was dependent on agriculture, and also to a large extent on warfare. Other economically important factors were commerce, long-distance and local, and a high degree of trade specialization.
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–1521), or the Conquest of Tenochtitlan was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the events by Spanish conquistadors, their indigenous allies, and the defeated Aztecs. It was not solely a small contingent of Spaniards defeating the Aztec Empire but a coalition of Spanish invaders with tributaries to the Aztecs, and most especially the Aztecs' indigenous enemies and rivals. They combined forces to defeat the Mexica of Tenochtitlan over a two-year period. For the Spanish, Mexico was part of a project of Spanish colonization of the New World after 25 years of permanent Spanish settlement and further exploration in the Caribbean.
The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region, which date from around the mid-1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are known to have been literate societies, who produced a number of Mesoamerican writing systems of varying degrees of complexity and completeness. Mesoamerican writing systems arose independently from other writing systems in the world, and their development represents one of the very few such origins in the history of writing.
Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico.
Fray Ángel María Garibay Kintana was a Mexican Roman Catholic priest, philologist, linguist, historian, and scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, specifically of the Nahua peoples of the central Mexican highlands. He is particularly noted for his studies and translations of conquest-era primary source documents written in Classical Nahuatl, the lingua franca of Postclassic central Mexico and the then-dominant Aztec empire. Alongside his former student Miguel León-Portilla, Garibay ranks as one of the pre-eminent Mexican authorities on the Nahuatl language and its literary heritage, and as one who has made a significant contribution towards the promotion and preservation of the indigenous cultures and languages of Mexico.
Xaltocan was a pre-Columbian city-state and island in the Valley of Mexico, located in the center of Lake Xaltocan, part of an interconnected shallow lake system which included Lake Texcoco; this place is now inside the village of San Miguel Jaltocan in Nextlalpan, State of Mexico. The site was originally settled by the Otomi people but following a war in the late fourteenth century where the Otomi were defeated by an alliance of Tepanecs and Mexica the Otomi were driven off the island and relocated to Otumba, Metztitlan and Tlaxcala. The island of Xaltocan was then resettled by Nahuatl speakers. The name can mean either of two things in the Nahuatl language: either 'sandy ground of spiders' or 'where it is planted on the sand'.
Xicotencatl I or Xicotencatl the Elder was a long-lived tlatoani (king) of Tizatlan, a Nahua altepetl within the pre-Columbian confederacy of Tlaxcala, in what is now Mexico.
Maxixcatl was the tlatoani (ruler) of the Nahua altepetl (city-state) of Ocotelolco at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.
Xicotencatl II Axayacatl, also known as Xicotencatl the Younger, was a prince and warleader, probably with the title of Tlacochcalcatl, of the pre-Columbian state of Tlaxcala at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.
Ocotelolco, in pre-Columbian Mexico, was one of the four independent altepetl (polities) that constituted the confederation of Tlaxcallan. The site is in the present day state of Tlaxcala in central Mexico.
Quiahuiztlan was one of the four altepetl (polities) that made up the confederation of Tlaxcala. It is located in the modern city of Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala State, Mexico.
Tlatelolco was a pre-Columbian altepetl, or city-state, in the Valley of Mexico. Its inhabitants, known as the Tlatelolca, were part of the Mexica, a Nahuatl-speaking people who arrived in what is now central Mexico in the 13th century. The Mexica settled on an island in Lake Texcoco and founded the altepetl of Mexico-Tenochtitlan on the southern portion of the island. In 1337, a group of dissident Mexica broke away from the Tenochca leadership in Tenochtitlan and founded Mexico-Tlatelolco on the northern portion of the island. Tenochtitlan was closely tied with its sister city, which was largely dependent on the market of Tlatelolco, the most important site of commerce in the area.
San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala was a Tlaxcalan municipality in what is now the Mexican state of Coahuila. San Esteban was the northernmost of the six Tlaxcalan colonies established in 1591 at the behest of the Viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco; its founders came from Tizatlan. In 1834, San Esteban was merged into the adjoining city of Saltillo.
The pre-Columbian history of the territory now making up the country of Mexico is known through the work of archaeologists and epigraphers, and through the accounts of Spanish conquistadores, settlers and clergymen as well as the indigenous chroniclers of the immediate post-conquest period.
Mesa de Cacahuatenco is a Mesoamerican pre-Columbian archeological site, located in the municipality of Ixhuatlán de Madero in northern Veracruz, Mexico, south of the Vinasca River.
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