Aztec Culture Test Questions – Flashcards

The major classes were the families, capulli, and the executives. The capulli were groups of families that shared land. The families made up much of the work force, and the majority of the armies, that kept the city running. The executives were priests and other more important people of the society.

Young men who served as warriors could rise in rank by capturing someone alive.

They were groups of families who owned land, they would form a council with a leader from each calpulli. This was a city council, and it held a large amount of power in the Aztec government.

They used force to scare villages into submission. the Aztecs did not control their empire strictly, they forced villages to pay them tribute and they otherwise operated independently.

They had more power earlier in the empire than towards the end, the men were polygamists, however adultery was a crime, and women could run businesses from their homes.

In the Aztec alphabet each symbol represents a sound. The original language was written in glyphs. There were three ways of writing which were ideograms, phonogram, and pictograms. Pictograms are pictures that mean exactly what it is. Phonograms are pictures that mean sounds. Ideograms are pictures that have a meaning behind it. The empire expanded and so did the language.

The Aztecs would use weapons like the Tepoztopilli; a lance with an obsidian shard on top. For ranged weaponry, the Aztecs used a Tlahuitolli or in other words, a bow.

The Eagles were the highest Aztec leaders. The leaders wore eagle costumes as and honor to the sun god Huitzilopochtli.The jaguars and eagles are worn by the military.

Aztec soldiers would take prisoners to give away to their gods by sacrifice, or to assign them jobs.

The Aztec religion is based off of and revolves around dates and had a varied set of over 1000 gods that all controlled different parts of nature. The two most important gods were the sun god and the god of water.

Huitzilopochtli was the warrior of the sun. He needed blood so people got sacrificed for him. He could fight the darkness. If he was not fed blood, the people feared the sun would not come back up in the morning

Human sacrifice played a major role in religion because the Aztecs believed that the gods needed blood to survive and be strong enough to fight off evil. So they sacrificed masses of people at a time to feed their gods. As for warfare, the Aztecs used warfare to get victims for their mass sacrifices.

Human sacrifice was very important for the Aztecs. People god sacrificed a lot. When war captives were sacrificed, people would cut out their hearts, and use the limbs for meat. They had to eat people due to lack of protein. The limbs were then eaten by the elites, meaning kings, nobles, and priests. Elites did not drink pulgers, a drink that commoners drank. Commoners had corn every meal, and had two to three meals a day.

After being sacrificed, they would tear the hearts out and eat the limbs of the people because they did not have enough protein in their diet.