Pre-Hispanic Mexico, as a codex
The codices were this era’s own picture-books: folded strips of bark paper, painted scene by scene. Here it is the same way — 7 chapters from the Olmec colossal heads to the fall of Tenochtitlan, with everything the exam actually asks about painted along them.
Everything here is on the folio because the question bank asks about it. Open “Asked on the exam” on any figure to see the real questions, in the wording candidates reported.
Everything on the codex
Maize, and the mother culture
Pre-Hispanic Mexico is everything before the Spanish took Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1521 — thousands of years, not one era. It begins with maize and with the Olmecs of the Gulf coast, called the mother culture because later civilizations inherited their pyramids, their ballgame and their calendar. In the Middle Preclassic, roughly 1200 to 400 BC, the first señoríos appear: societies ruled by a lord, with organized religion and monumental building.
Maize
The staple crop of the Mesoamerican diet, domesticated in Mexico from a wild grass called teosinte and grown in the milpa alongside beans, squash and chili. It was eaten as tortillas, tamales and atole, and it carried religious meaning: the Maya Popol Vuh says humans were formed from maize dough. Wheat, rice and barley arrived only with the Europeans.
Ryan Somma · CC BY-SA 2.0 The Tepexpan Man
A prehistoric skeleton found in 1947 on the shores of the ancient Lake Texcoco, and one of the oldest human remains found in Mexico. The archaeologist Helmut de Terra dug it up at Tepexpan, State of Mexico, and at the time it was taken for the oldest in Mesoamerica; later studies revised its age and even suggest it may be a woman. It is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology.
Marshall Astor (Life on the Edge) · CC BY-SA 2.0 The colossal heads
Enormous basalt sculptures carved by the Olmecs on the Gulf coast, some nearly three metres tall and weighing several tons; seventeen have been found, and they are believed to portray Olmec rulers. San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, in Veracruz, was the Olmecs’ first great centre and is famous for them — despite the name, it has nothing to do with the far later Mexica capital.
La Venta, Tabasco
The Olmecs’ most important sacred ceremonial centre, in the state of Tabasco near the Veracruz line. Its Great Pyramid, a mound of earth and clay raised around 900 to 400 BC, is considered the first pyramid of Mesoamerica. Many of its monuments were moved to the open-air Parque-Museo La Venta in Villahermosa; don’t confuse it with San Lorenzo, the other great Olmec site, which is in Veracruz.
The Olmec stone tables
The Olmecs carved massive stone tables, known as “altars”, for their ceremonial worship; the best-known are at La Venta. Many show a figure emerging from a niche, and scholars believe some served as thrones for rulers.
Mag2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Olmec jaguar
The jaguar dominated Olmec art and religion, above all in the “were-jaguar” figures that blend human and feline features. Later cultures such as the Maya revered the jaguar too, but it is the Olmecs who are identified with it as their principal symbol.
The Zapotecs on the mountain
The Zapotecs built one of Mesoamerica’s oldest civilizations in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, and one of the region’s earliest writing systems with it. Their capital, Monte Albán, stood on a leveled mountaintop for over a thousand years. The Zapotec people and language are still very much alive in Oaxaca today.
nsaum75 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Monte Albán
The ancient Zapotec capital, in the state of Oaxaca: a city on a leveled hilltop above the central valleys, founded around 500 BC and a major power for over a thousand years. It is famous for its great plaza and its ball court, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the historic centre of Oaxaca City. Don’t confuse it with Mitla, the later Zapotec religious centre in the same state.
Gengiskanhg · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Building of the Dancers
The building at Monte Albán named for the stone slabs carved with contorted human figures set into it. Early scholars thought they were dancing, which is where the name comes from; most archaeologists now read them as slain or sacrificed captives, probably commemorating victories. The slabs also carry some of the earliest known writing and calendar glyphs in Mesoamerica.
Teotihuacán
The largest and most powerful city of Mesoamerica in the Classic period — between 100,000 and 200,000 people at its height, with markets and whole neighbourhoods of artisans and merchants, and influence that reached the Maya lands. The Classic, roughly 200 to 900 AD, is when Mesoamerican culture reached its greatest development. The Mexica did not build this city: they found it already in ruins centuries later and gave it the name it still has.
Burkhard Mücke · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon
They stand at Teotihuacán, northeast of Mexico City, and are among the most visited monuments in the country. The name Teotihuacán is Nahuatl and was given centuries later by the Mexica, who found the city already in ruins; it is usually translated as “city of the gods” or “place where the gods were made”. Its original builders remain unknown.
Álvaro de la Paz Franco · CC0 The Avenue of the Dead
The great north–south axis that ran through Teotihuacán, linking the Pyramid of the Moon, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Ciudadela with its Temple of Quetzalcóatl. The Mexica named it: visiting the ruins centuries after the city fell, they took the mounds along it for tombs.
Armando Ávila Carreto · CC BY-SA 4.0 The maguey
At Teotihuacán the maguey gave pulque, textile fibres and cordage — one of the most useful plants in ancient central Mexico. Its sweet sap, aguamiel, was fermented into pulque, a mildly alcoholic ritual drink; its leaves yielded ixtle fibre for cloth and rope; even its spines served as needles. Pulque is not tequila or mezcal: those are distilled, and distillation arrived with the Europeans.
Thin Orange pottery
One of the finest craft products of ancient Mexico: a very thin-walled orange pottery that Teotihuacán distributed through its trade networks. It was made in the Puebla region, but archaeologists find it all over Mesoamerica, where it works as a fingerprint of Teotihuacán’s influence.
Mundo Maya · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tikal, Guatemala
One of the most powerful cities of the Maya world, and the one where Teotihuacán’s reach shows: ceramics, talud-tablero architecture and stelae there record contact with the central Mexican city around the 4th century. Tikal is in the Petén jungle of Guatemala, not in Mexico, so it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of that country — an easy trap, because Mexico has its own Maya sites on the list.
The Maya
The Maya developed in what is now Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, and in Guatemala and Belize. They are remembered above all as great mathematicians and astronomers: they used the concept of zero, tracked the sun, the moon and Venus, and kept remarkably accurate calendars. Their cities were city-states — Palenque, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá — not one empire.
Daniel Schwen · CC BY-SA 4.0 Chichén Itzá
A great Maya city in the state of Yucatán, near Valladolid, at its height between the 9th and 12th centuries. Its principal pyramid is known as El Castillo, also called the Temple of Kukulkán after the feathered serpent god — the Maya counterpart of Quetzalcóatl. Its four stairways of 91 steps plus the upper platform make 365, and at the equinoxes the light casts the shadow of a serpent descending the northern stair.
Bluemardigrass · CC BY-SA 3.0 Palenque
An ancient Maya city surrounded by tropical jungle in northern Chiapas, and one of the most important archaeological sites of the civilization. Its Temple of the Inscriptions held the tomb of the ruler Pakal the Great, found in 1952, and the site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
PashiX · CC BY-SA 4.0 Calakmul
One of the most powerful cities of the ancient Maya world and a rival of Tikal, deep in the jungle of southern Campeche near the Guatemalan border. The ruins sit inside the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
J. Antonio Cruz Coutiño · CC BY-SA 4.0 Toniná
A warlike Maya city near Ocosingo, Chiapas, whose Acropolis climbs a hillside in seven terraced platforms to about 74 metres — one of the tallest pyramidal structures in Mesoamerica, taller even than the Pyramid of the Sun. Toniná was a fierce rival of nearby Palenque and once captured one of its rulers, and it carries one of the last Long Count dates ever carved, from AD 909.
Neuromancer2K4 and Bryan Derksen · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Maya zero
The Maya are credited with discovering the concept of zero. They wrote it as a shell-shaped glyph and used it in their base-20 number system and in the Long Count calendar — centuries before the zero of Indian and Arabic mathematics reached Europe.
The Long Count
The Maya calendrical system for recording dates over long periods, counting the days elapsed since a mythical starting point in 3114 BC. Rulers carved it on stelae to date births, wars and accessions precisely. It ran alongside two shorter cycles, the 260-day ritual tzolk’in and the 365-day solar haab; the famous date in December 2012 simply closed one of its great cycles.
Sputnik · CC BY-SA 2.5 The Mesoamerican ballgame
A ritual and sporting game played by many Mesoamerican cultures, called ullamaliztli in Nahuatl, with a heavy solid rubber ball struck mainly with the hips on I-shaped stone courts. Nearly every major archaeological site has a court; the largest known is at Chichén Itzá. It was tied to myths about the sun and the underworld, and some games ended in human sacrifice. A descendant, ulama, is still played in Sinaloa.
Ixchel
The Maya goddess of the moon, and also of midwifery, medicine and weaving. Maya women made pilgrimages to her shrines on Cozumel and Isla Mujeres, off the coast of today’s Quintana Roo. She is not Coyolxauhqui, the Mexica moon goddess of central Mexico.
Ek Chuah
The Maya god of merchants and cacao, usually painted black and shown carrying a trader’s pack. Merchants prayed to him for safe journeys and cacao growers honoured him with ceremonies — one god for trade and cacao together, because the beans were both currency and a drink for the elite.
The Chontales of Tabasco
A Maya people native to Tabasco, who call themselves Yokot’anob, live mainly in the centre of the state and speak Yokot’an, a Mayan language. They are not the Chontales of Oaxaca: that is a different people whose language is unrelated, and the Spanish applied the Nahuatl word “chontalli”, foreigner, to both.
After Teotihuacán: El Tajín, Tula, and the frontiers
When Teotihuacán fell, other cities took its place: El Tajín on the Gulf, Xochicalco on its hilltop in Morelos, Cacaxtla with its painted battle in Tlaxcala, and Tula, capital of the Toltecs, whose name in Nahuatl simply means an inhabitant of Tula. Far to the north, Alta Vista and San Antonio Nogalar mark where Mesoamerica ended.
Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata · CC BY-SA 4.0 El Tajín
A pre-Hispanic city in northern Veracruz, near Papantla, that flourished roughly between 600 and 1200 AD after the fall of Teotihuacán and is linked to the Totonac culture. Its Pyramid of the Niches is named for the 365 niches cut into its stepped sides, one for each day of the year. UNESCO inscribed El Tajín as a World Heritage Site in 1992.
Xochicalco
A fortified hilltop city in the state of Morelos, near Cuernavaca, that flourished after the fall of Teotihuacán, roughly between 650 and 900. Its most famous monument is the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, covered in finely carved reliefs; the site also keeps ball courts and an underground astronomical observatory, and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. It is not Xochimilco.
Hajor · CC BY-SA 3.0 Cacaxtla
An archaeological site in the small central state of Tlaxcala, famous for murals preserved in vivid colour, among them the great Battle Mural. It was the capital of the Olmeca-Xicalanca people and flourished after Teotihuacán declined, roughly between 650 and 900. The murals show strong Maya artistic influence, which is striking so far from the Maya region.
AlejandroLinaresGarcia · CC BY-SA 3.0 Tula, the Toltec capital
The Toltecs were from Tula, also called Tollan, in the present-day state of Hidalgo, and flourished roughly between 900 and 1150. The name comes from the Nahuatl for a place of reeds — the tule or junco that grows by lakes and rivers — and “Toltec” means, strictly, an inhabitant of Tula. The site is famous for its Atlantes, giant stone warrior columns. Later peoples such as the Mexica admired the Toltecs as master artisans and claimed descent from them.
Alta Vista (Chalchihuites), Zacatecas
A pre-Hispanic ceremonial centre in western Zacatecas, very close to the Tropic of Cancer, and the main site of the Chalchihuites culture. Its buildings are aligned with astronomical events, which is why it is often described as an ancient observatory. With La Quemada, also in Zacatecas but a different site, it marks the northern frontier of Mesoamerica.
San Antonio Nogalar, Tamaulipas
An archaeological site in the Sierra de Tamaulipas, in the northeast. Its stone structures and plazas belonged to a settlement taken as a marker of Mesoamerica’s northeastern frontier, and it is one of the few pre-Hispanic sites excavated in the state; the French archaeologist Guy Stresser-Péan studied it in depth in the 1960s.
The Mexica and México-Tenochtitlan
The Mexica reached the greatest development of the Postclassic, which runs roughly from 950 AD to the conquest of 1521. They were known as warriors, and for agriculture, trade and religious worship: war expanded the empire, secured tribute and provided captives for sacrifice to gods such as Huitzilopochtli. A third of everything the exam asks about pre-Hispanic Mexico is about them.
Aztlán
The mythical place the Aztecs came from, described in their own legends as an island; the name is often translated as “place of herons”, and it is where the word Aztec comes from. Guided by Huitzilopochtli they migrated south for generations until they saw the promised sign. Aztlán is the legendary place they left; Tenochtitlan is the real city they founded.
Thomas Kole · CC BY 4.0 México-Tenochtitlán
The most important city of the Mexica Empire and its capital, founded in 1325 on an island in Lake Texcoco, with great causeways, canals and the Templo Mayor at its centre. It fell to Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies in 1521, and Mexico City was built on its ruins. Keep the two dates apart: 1325 is the founding, 1521 the fall.
GAED · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Templo Mayor
The temple built at the centre of Tenochtitlán: a great double pyramid in the sacred precinct, with twin shrines for Huitzilopochtli, god of war and the sun, and Tláloc, god of rain. The Spaniards destroyed it after 1521 and built the colonial city on top. Its ruins were rediscovered in 1978, when workers found the great monolith of the goddess Coyolxauhqui; the site and its museum now sit beside the Zócalo.
The Palace of Axayácatl
Known as the Casas Viejas. Axayácatl was the sixth Mexica tlatoani and the father of Moctezuma II; his palace in Tenochtitlan stood where the Nacional Monte de Piedad faces the Zócalo today, and it was there that Moctezuma lodged Cortés and his men in 1519. The name told it apart from Moctezuma II’s newer palace, the Casas Nuevas, over which Cortés later built the residence that is now the National Palace.
Huitzilopochtli
The principal god of the Mexica, god of war and of the sun and patron of the people; his name means “hummingbird of the left”, that is, of the south. Legend says he guided their migration until they saw an eagle perched on a cactus — the sign to found Tenochtitlan. One of the two shrines atop the Templo Mayor was his; the other belonged to Tláloc.
Tláloc
The Mexica deity associated with rain, and one of the most important gods in all Mesoamerica, since harvests depended on the water he was believed to send. He is easy to recognize in Mexica art by the goggle-like rings around his eyes and his fangs. A colossal stone monument associated with him stands at the entrance of the National Museum of Anthropology.
Quetzalcóatl
The feathered serpent: quetzal, a bird of brilliant plumage, plus cóatl, serpent. He was one of the principal deities of Mesoamerica, associated with wind, wisdom and life, and worshipped from Teotihuacán to the Toltecs and the Mexica. The Maya worshipped an equivalent feathered-serpent god as Kukulcán, to whom the main pyramid at Chichén Itzá is dedicated.
Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata · CC BY-SA 4.0 Coatlicue
The Mexica goddess associated with fertility and the earth — “she of the serpent skirt” — and the mother of Huitzilopochtli. She embodies the earth as both womb and grave. Her colossal statue, unearthed in Mexico City’s main plaza in 1790, is a highlight of the National Museum of Anthropology. She is not her daughter Coyolxauhqui, the moon goddess.
El Comandante · CC BY-SA 3.0 Tonatiuh
The Mexica deity associated with the sun. The face traditionally identified at the centre of the Piedra del Sol — the stone usually called the Aztec calendar — is generally said to be his. The Mexica believed the sun had to be fed with offerings and sacrifices to keep making its daily journey. He is not Huitzilopochtli, who also had solar associations but is remembered as the god of war.
Loukus999 · CC0 Chalchiuhtlicue
The Mexica goddess of lakes and water currents — “she of the jade skirt” — who ruled the waters of the earth: lakes, rivers, springs and seas. She was considered the wife of Tláloc and was usually shown as a woman. Tláloc sends the rain from the sky; Chalchiuhtlicue governs the water that runs on the ground.
Xólotl and the axolotl
The axolotl has been depicted beside the god Xólotl, twin of Quetzalcóatl, since Aztec times: in the myth, Xólotl turned himself into an axolotl to escape being sacrificed. The animal is a salamander native to the lakes of Xochimilco that keeps its larval features all its life and can regenerate limbs. It is critically endangered in the wild, and it appears on the 50-peso banknote.
The tlatoani
The ruler of a Mexica city-state. The word is Nahuatl for “he who speaks”, which is what the ruler was: the voice and highest authority of his people. Each altépetl had its own tlatoani, and the ruler of Tenochtitlan held the title of huey tlatoani, great speaker. Moctezuma Xocoyotzin and Cuauhtémoc are the two the exam asks about.
The altépetl
The city-state — literally “water-mountain”, from the Nahuatl atl, water, and tepetl, mountain, a pair that evoked what a community needed to live. It was the basic political unit of the Nahua world: each altépetl had its own ruler, its own patron god and its own territory. Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan were each one.
Codex Mendoza · Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford · CC BY 3.0 The Triple Alliance
In 1428 the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan joined forces to defeat Azcapotzalco, until then the dominant power in the Valley of Mexico. The alliance became the core of what is commonly called the Aztec Empire, with tribute from conquered regions flowing to the three capitals; in time Tenochtitlan became the dominant partner, and stayed so until 1521.
Calmécac and telpochcalli
The two Mexica schools, and the exam’s favourite pair to confuse. The calmécac was for the sons of nobles: attached to a temple, run by priests, teaching religion, astronomy, the calendar, rhetoric, history and law. The telpochcalli, the “house of youth”, was the neighbourhood school for commoners, training them above all for war. Schooling reached boys of every class.
Kristinoller · CC BY-SA 3.0 The chinampas
Agricultural plots built in lake areas: raised fields made by piling mud and vegetation between stakes on a shallow lake bed and anchoring the plot with willows. The system was productive enough to give several harvests a year and feed the huge population of Tenochtitlan, and chinampas are still farmed in Xochimilco, a World Heritage Site.
Luisovalles · CC BY 3.0 Cacao, as money
Cacao beans were used as money in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica: goods in the markets, the tianguis, could be priced and paid in beans. Cacao was also brewed into a prized drink largely reserved for nobles and warriors among peoples such as the Mexica and the Maya. Minted coins arrived only with the Spanish.
The tzompantli
A ritual structure where human skulls were displayed: a wooden rack, often on a carved stone platform, holding the skulls of sacrificed people on horizontal poles near a temple. It proclaimed the power of the gods and of the city that raised it. Major examples have been found at Chichén Itzá and, in 2015, beside the Templo Mayor in downtown Mexico City. It is not a temazcal, which was a steam bath.
Nahuatl, still in the language
In Mexican Spanish a papalote is a kite, but the word comes from the Nahuatl papalotl, butterfly — a nod to the way kites flutter in the wind. Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica, gave Spanish many everyday words, including chocolate, aguacate and tomate.
The eagle on the cactus
The eagle and the serpent on the national coat of arms evoke a pre-Hispanic legend: Huitzilopochtli told the Mexica to settle where they found an eagle perched on a nopal devouring a serpent. They found it on an islet in Lake Texcoco and founded Tenochtitlan there, traditionally in 1325. The bird is the golden eagle, Mexico’s national animal, and the arms sit at the centre of the flag.
Thelmadatter · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Purépecha
The Indigenous people native to Michoacán, called Tarascans by the Spaniards. Their pre-Hispanic empire, centred at Tzintzuntzan on Lake Pátzcuaro, was one of the few that successfully resisted Aztec conquest, and their language is an isolate, unrelated to any other in Mexico. Purépecha traditions remain central to Michoacán’s identity, from the pirekua to the Night of the Dead on Janitzio.
1521, and what remains
Cortés landed in 1519; after a long siege México-Tenochtitlan fell on August 13, 1521, with the capture of the last tlatoani, Cuauhtémoc, and Mexico City was built on its ruins. But the era did not end there. Most pre-Hispanic codices were destroyed, so the survivors and the colonial-era ones are priceless; 68 Indigenous languages are still spoken; and the cities are still standing, protected as archaeological zones.
Codex Mendoza · Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford · CC BY 3.0 Moctezuma Xocoyotzin
The Mexica ruler who received Hernán Cortés in 1519. Moctezuma II had governed the empire since 1502; on November 8, 1519 he received the Spaniards peacefully on the Iztapalapa causeway and showered them with gifts. He was later taken prisoner and died in 1520, during the unrest that preceded the Noche Triste. He is not Moctezuma I, nor Cuauhtémoc.
Doña Marina, “La Malinche”
Cortés’s interpreter: a Nahua woman, also called Malintzin, given to him in 1519 after a battle in Tabasco. She spoke Nahuatl and Maya, so with the priest Jerónimo de Aguilar, who spoke Maya, she made communication with the Mexica world possible; she soon learned Spanish too, and became Cortés’s key adviser and the mother of his son Martín. Her legacy is still argued over: “malinchismo” means preferring the foreign to the Mexican.
Hernán Cortés
He led the Spanish conquest of the Mexica Empire. Cortés landed on the coast of Veracruz in 1519 and, allied with Indigenous enemies of the Mexica such as the Tlaxcaltecs, took México-Tenochtitlan on August 13, 1521. Mexico City, capital of New Spain, was founded on the ruins of the Mexica capital.
La Noche Triste
On the night of June 30, 1520 the Spaniards and their allies fled Tenochtitlan after Moctezuma’s death, losing heavily on the causeways as the Mexica attacked. Tradition says Cortés wept under an ahuehuete in Popotla, remembered as the Tree of the Sad Night; the ahuehuete was declared Mexico’s national tree in 1921. Mexico City has in recent years also called the episode the Noche Victoriosa, seen from the Mexica side.
Luis Alvaz · CC BY-SA 4.0 Cuauhtémoc
The last tlatoani of the Mexica, who led the defence of Tenochtitlan through the siege of 1521. His name is Nahuatl — cuauhtli, eagle, and temo, to descend — and means “the eagle that descends”. Captured when the city fell, he had his feet burned so he would reveal the secret of Moctezuma, the hiding place of the gold the Spanish believed had been concealed, and he was executed on Cortés’s orders in 1525. A monument on Paseo de la Reforma honours him.
The codices
A Mesoamerican codex is a pictorial manuscript recording historical, religious or tribute information: long strips of amate bark paper or deerskin, folded like an accordion and painted by specialized scribes, the tlacuilos. Most pre-Hispanic codices were destroyed after the conquest. Colonial-era work carried some of it forward: at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco, founded in 1536 and the first higher-education institution in the Americas intended for Indigenous people, Bernardino de Sahagún worked with Indigenous scholars on the Florentine Codex.
68 Indigenous languages
Mexico is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world: INALI recognizes 68 Indigenous languages, in 11 families and more than 360 variants, and more than 7 million Mexicans speak one. Nahuatl and Maya have the most speakers. By law, Spanish and the Indigenous languages alike are national languages.
The Tarahumara
The Indigenous culture that still lives in northern Mexico. The Tarahumara, who call themselves Rarámuri, “those with light feet”, live today in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua, the mountain region of the Copper Canyon, and are famous worldwide as long-distance runners, often in huarache sandals. Most of Mexico’s other well-known Indigenous cultures live in the centre and south, which is why the question stresses the north.
The Tepehuán
The Indigenous people native to Durango, and one of the main peoples of northern Mexico. The southern Tepehuán, who call themselves O’dam, live mainly in the sierras of Durango; a northern branch, the Ódami, lives in Chihuahua. Their languages belong to the Uto-Aztecan family, the same as Nahuatl, and their name is commonly linked to the Nahuatl tepetl, mountain.
The archaeological zones
Teotihuacan, Chichén Itzá, Monte Albán, Palenque and El Tajín are among the Mexican archaeological zones inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, along with Uxmal, Xochicalco, Calakmul and Paquimé — but not every famous ruin is on the list: Tulum, Cholula and Tula are not. The INAH, founded in 1939, protects this heritage and keeps 189 zones open to the public, of more than 200 that exist.
kornemuz · CC BY-SA 3.0 The National Museum of Anthropology
Where most of this page ends up: the Coatlicue, the Tepexpan Man, the monument associated with Tláloc at the door. In its entrance hall hangs Duality, the mural Rufino Tamayo painted in 1964, showing the feathered serpent Quetzalcóatl fighting Tezcatlipoca in the form of a jaguar — day against night.
Picture credits
Codex folios, site photographs and museum pieces from Wikimedia Commons. Files in the public domain need no credit; these ones do.
- Ryan Somma · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Marshall Astor (Life on the Edge) · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Mag2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- nsaum75 · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Gengiskanhg · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Burkhard Mücke · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Álvaro de la Paz Franco · CC0
- Armando Ávila Carreto · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Mundo Maya · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Daniel Schwen · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Bluemardigrass · CC BY-SA 3.0
- PashiX · CC BY-SA 4.0
- J. Antonio Cruz Coutiño · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Neuromancer2K4 and Bryan Derksen · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Sputnik · CC BY-SA 2.5
- Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Hajor · CC BY-SA 3.0
- AlejandroLinaresGarcia · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Thomas Kole · CC BY 4.0
- GAED · CC BY-SA 3.0
- El Comandante · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Loukus999 · CC0
- Codex Mendoza · Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford · CC BY 3.0
- Kristinoller · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Luisovalles · CC BY 3.0
- Thelmadatter · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Luis Alvaz · CC BY-SA 4.0
- kornemuz · CC BY-SA 3.0
Every question above is verbatim from the question bank behind the practice test and flash cards.
Want spaced repetition?
Our study platform schedules your reviews so the facts stick.