The Toltec culture was a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture that ruled a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico, during the Epiclassic and the early Post-Classic period of Mesoamerican chronology, reaching prominence from 950 to 1150 CE. The later Aztec culture considered the Toltec to be their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tōllān[ˈtoːlːãːn̥] as the epitome of civilization. In the Nahuatl language the word Tōltēkatl[toːɬˈteːkat͡ɬ] (singular) or Tōltēkah[toːɬˈteːkaḁ] (plural) came to take on the meaning "artisan". The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the history of the Toltec Empire, giving lists of rulers and their exploits.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (altepetl), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco. Although, the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era, as well as the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821). The definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion ever since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early 19th century.
In Mesoamerican folk religion, a nagual or nahual is a human being who has the power to shapeshift into their tonal animal counterpart. Nagualism is tied to the belief one can access power and spiritual insight by connecting with the tonal animal within.
“Aztlán” is the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples. Astekah is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan". Aztlan is mentioned in several ethnohistorical sources dating from the colonial period, and while they each cite varying lists of the different tribal groups who participated in the migration from Aztlan to central Mexico, the Mexica who went on to found Mexico-Tenochtitlan are mentioned in all of the accounts.
The Nahua are an Indigenous group of Mesoamerican people inhabiting the western and central areas of present-day El Salvador. They speak the Nawat language, which belongs to the Nahuan language branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. There are very few speakers of the language left, which is a reason for the current efforts being made to revitalize it.
Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador and Nicaragua. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
The Mixe are an Indigenous people of Mexico who live in the eastern highlands of the state of Oaxaca. They speak the Mixe languages, which are classified in the Mixe–Zoque family, and are more culturally conservative than other Indigenous groups of the region, maintaining their language to this day. SIL international estimated that 90,000 Mixe spoke Mixe language in 1993.
Toltecayotl is a Nahuatl word derived from "tōltēcātl" which as used by the Nahuas to refer to the members of the Toltec civilization that preceded them in the basin of Mexico, as well as a generalized meaning of "artisan".
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to most of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. In the pre-Columbian era, many societies flourished in Mesoamerica for more than 3,000 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas begun at Hispaniola island in 1493. In world history, Mesoamerica was the site of two historical transformations: (i) primary urban generation, and (ii) the formation of New World cultures from the mixtures of the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples with the European, African, and Asian peoples who were introduced by the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
The Jakaltek people are a Mayan people who lives alongside the border of the State of Chiapas in southern Mexico and the Department of Huehuetenango in northwestern Guatemala. Since pre-Columbian times they have lived alongside the modern Mexico-Guatemala border near the foothills of the Cuchumatán Mountains, mainly centered on the municipality of Jacaltenango.
Wayob is the plural form of way, a Maya word with a basic meaning of 'sleep(ing)', but which in Yucatec Maya is a term specifically denoting the Mesoamerican nagual, that is, a person who can transform into an animal while asleep in order to do harm, or else the resulting animal transformation itself. Already in Classic Maya belief, way animals, identifiable by a special hieroglyph, had an important role to play.
Quetzalcoatl is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs, he was related to wind, Venus, Sun, merchants, arts, crafts, knowledge, and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. Two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc and Xolotl.
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.
Louise M. Burkhart is an American academic ethnohistorian and anthropologist, noted as a scholar of early colonial Mesoamerican literature. In particular, her published research has a focus on aspects of the religious beliefs and practices of Nahuatl-speakers in central Mexico. Her work examines the historical documentation from the time of the Spanish Conquest and the subsequent era of colonial Mexico, and studies the continuities and transformations of indigenous Nahua communities and culture. Burkhart has written extensively on colonial Nahuatl drama, folklore, poetry and catechistic texts, translating a number of these documents from the original Nahuatl with commentaries and historical interpretations and notes. She has also published research on the aesthetics and iconography of pre-Columbian and Indochristian art, Nahuatl linguistics, and the rise of the Virgin of Guadalupe cult within Mexican Roman Catholicism.
Aztec medicine concerns the body of knowledge, belief and ritual surrounding human health and sickness, as observed among the Nahuatl-speaking people in the Aztec realm of central Mexico. The Aztecs knew of and used an extensive inventory consisting of hundreds of different medicinal herbs and plants. A variety of indigenous Nahua and Novohispanic written works survived from the conquest and later colonial periods that describe aspects of the Aztec system and practice of medicine and its remedies, incantations, practical administration, and cultural underpinnings. Elements of traditional medicinal practices and beliefs are still found among modern-day Nahua communities, often intermixed with European or other later influences.
Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
The Indigenous people of Oaxaca are descendants of the inhabitants of what is now the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, who were present before the Spanish invasion. Several cultures flourished in the ancient region of Oaxaca from as far back as 2000 BC, of whom the Zapotecs and Mixtecs were perhaps the most advanced, with complex social organization and sophisticated arts.
The state of Oaxaca, Mexico has a total population of about 3.5 million, with women outnumbering men by 150,000 and about 60% of the population under the age of 30. It is ranked tenth in population in the country. Fifty three percent of the population lives in rural areas. Most of the state’s population growth took place between 1980 and 1990. Life expectancy is 71.7 for men and 77.4 for women, just under the national average. Births far outpace deaths. In 2007, there were 122,579 births and 19,439 deaths. Approximately 85% profess the Catholic faith.
Indigenous American philosophy is the philosophy of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. An Indigenous philosopher is an Indigenous American person who practices philosophy and has a vast knowledge of history, culture, language, and traditions of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Many different traditions of philosophy exist in the Americas, and have from Precolumbian times.
The Nicarao people were a Nahuat-speaking Mesoamerican people who migrated from North America and central and southern Mexico over the course of several centuries from approximately 700 CE onwards. Around 1200 CE, the Nicarao split from the Pipil people and moved into what is now Nicaragua. The migration of the Nicarao has been linked to the collapse of the important central-Mexican cities of Teotihuacan and Tula, as well as the Classic Maya collapse. The Nicarao settled in several pockets throughout western Nicaragua, particularly around the western shores of Lake Nicaragua. The Nicarao shared many blended cultural traits with both indigenous North American and Mexican belief systems as well as their Toltec parent tribe, including an identical Toltec calendar, similar organizational treaties, the use of screenfold books, the worship of the Great Spirit and closely related sky deities, Nagual mysticism, and the practice of animal and Tonal spirituality.
