Founding of Tenochtitlan by the Mexica
- Date
- 1325 CE
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Central Mexico (Valley of Mexico)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
In 1325 the Mexica, a Nahuatl-speaking people who had migrated into the Valley of Mexico as subordinate latecomers, founded their city of Tenochtitlan on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco.
Tradition holds that their patron god Huitzilopochtli had told them to settle where they saw an eagle perched on a prickly-pear cactus, an emblem still at the centre of the modern Mexican flag. From this defensible island the Mexica expanded outward by building artificial chinampa garden-islands and raised causeways, eventually transforming a marshy site into a planned metropolis of canals, temples and markets. By 1519 Tenochtitlan held perhaps 200,000 to 400,000 people, the largest urban concentration in Mesoamerican history and one of the largest cities in the world. Its founding marks the origin point of the Aztec polity that, within a century, would dominate central Mexico through the Triple Alliance. The city fell to Hernan Cortes and his indigenous allies in 1521 and was rebuilt as Mexico City, which still occupies the site, making the 1325 foundation the direct ancestor of the modern Mexican capital.
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Empires active in 1325 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Mongol Empire1206 CE – 1368 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Yuan Dynasty1271 CE – 1368 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Formation of the Aztec Triple Alliance1428 CE
- Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty and conquers Song China1271 CE (conquest completed 1279)
- Temüjin proclaimed Genghis Khan, uniting the Mongols1206 CE
- Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peacec. 1450 (scholarly estimate; oral tradition as early as 1142)
- Foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire1336 CE
- Founding of the Ming dynasty in China1368 CE
Further reading
The wider story
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Best-selling reappraisal of the sophisticated societies of the pre-Columbian Americas.
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