The Aztecs
Throughout time women have had to fill a role, defined by her culture, in order to be considered desirable. Wherever or whenever she might have been from she struggled with the pressure to fill her niche in society. These pressures vary greatly from one culture to another, but some cultures are particularly demanding. Women in pre-Colombian Aztec society were held to a very strict code of behavior. From the day they were born to the day they died their domesticity was held up as being the most important aspect of their lives. This was probably necessary because of the warfare oriented nature of the men in their culture. This made having a woman at home to keep the civilian life going incredibly important. Without her there the home would be in shambles at his return.
The National Standards for Geography that apply to “Aztec Women” are: 6. Knows and understands that culture and experiences influence people’s perceptions of places and experiences. The Aztec women had a very hearth-centered life and therefore a very distinct worldview. 10. Knows and understands the complexity of the Earth’s cultural mosaic. The Aztec were a people of many people’s They adopted many cultures into their own and the Spanish adopted some of the Aztec characteristics. 12. Knows and understands the processes, patterns, and functions of human development. Women are central to the lifestyle of the family. They control and keep the family together in the Aztec culture.
The Aztecs built their great society long after another great society had already grown to a peak and fallen. The Olmecs, antiquity to the Aztecs, had a high level of society beginning around 1200 BC. They were the most highly advanced culture at the time in America. The...
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...hile the Spaniards waited several miles away Tenochtitlan became a horrific death trap. The city of Tenochtitlan fell on August 13, 1521. Aztec life continues on a small scale in the valley of Mexico even now. The people remember the past but it is not only history to the modern Aztec women. Theirs is a living history in which they see life as a continuing cycle of destruction and creation. They continue with their everyday lives speaking their native language of Nahuatl and holding on to the traditions of a long fallen empire.
The loss is expressed in a Nahua poem written in 1523:
Nothing remains
but flowers and sad songs
In Tlatelolco and Mexico
Where once there were
Warriors and wise men
Works Cited:
www.albany.edu/~mesmith/tlahuica.html
http://www.corona.bell.k12.ca.us/student/adrian/2.html
www.geocities.com/athens/5003/aztec.html
The quilts play an important role in depicting symbolism of heritage because they signify Dee’s family origins. For instance, Dees’ significant family members all have pieces of their fabric sown on to the quilts as a remembrance of who they were and their importance in the family. Nevertheless, Dee is overlooking important facets of her family history because she does not see the quilts her ancestors made as valuable, hand-made, pieces of fabric that should be passed down and taken care of to keep their history alive. As Mama stated, “In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty years and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the civil war.” (1129). Despite her family’s history, Dee continues to misinterpret the...
...r because it seems impossible to reconstruct an event from this objective point of view. Maybe the point of telling stories is not trying to recreate the reality of a past event, but it is the message that matters because that might be in the end the only thing that does not necessarily depend on single details of the story, but on the overall picture of an event. That is why to O’Brien another important component of a war story is the fact that a war story will never pin down the definite truth and that is why a true war story “never seems to end” (O’Brien, 425). O’Brien moves the reader from the short and simple statement “This is the truth” to the conclusion that, “In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nohting much is ever very true” (O’Brien, 428). These two statements frame the entire irony of the story, from its beginning to its end. Almost like the popular saying “A wise man admits that he knows nothing.”
The Olmecs who resided along the Gulf of Mexico about 4000years ago were the earliest group of people to become advanced. They were termed the “mother culture of Mesoamerica.” Their advancements included them being artists, carving large head statues of Basin, engineers, graphic writing and trade. They were the first known major American Indian societies in Mesoamerica.
The Aztec Empire was the most powerful Mesoamerican kingdom of all time. They dominated the valley of Mexico in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Aztecs were an advanced and successful civilization that built beautiful, sophisticated cities, temples, and pyramids. They also created a culture full of creativity with mythological and religious traditions. Aztecs lead a structured and evocative life that let their society to become a very superior civilization. The Aztec’s communication skills were very well developed for their time; through religious beliefs, government involvement, and family life they lived a full and productive life. Until in 1519 when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico, and defeated the Aztecs.
Aztec women embarked on several defining moments of labor, gender, class, symbolism, and political power in the Aztec Mexico history and culture. The roles of the Aztec women were unjustly marginalized. Their contributions to the work activities, economy, government and the influence of growth and development were grossly deceptive in the Ethnohistoric documents. Moreover, the variations of Aztec women cooking and weaving revolutionized gender. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Two of the biggest and greatest civilization in the Americas were the Aztecs and Incas. These two civilization were both said to be conquered by the Spanish, but it wasn’t just the Spanish who conquered them. These two civilizations both fell from a combination of a weak government, lack of technology, new disease introduced by the invaders, and not being prepared for the invaders. For many centuries the Aztec civilization revolved around a ideological, social, and political system in which expansion was the cornerstone. Expansion was the cornerstone of their whole civilization, because their religion requested that a large number of human sacrifices where to be made to the gods.
The Aztecs were from Aztlan, located in both north and northwest Mexico. These civilizations were possible because the people in the areas became sedentary and agricultural. They were able to do this because of the vast natural resources and climates of where they lived. Their cultures were for the most part male dominated, possessions usually past through the male line from one male member to another male. Women would normally move to the male’s village when they got married.
Mexicans, as constructed by Menchaca, are a predominantly mestizo population whose mixed ancestry she traces to early Latin American civilizations. In 200 BC the largest city in the Americas, Teotihuacán, was founded. Teotihuacán would one day be the site of Mexico City, and by 650 AD there were between 120,000 and 250,000 inhabitants. (2) Groups that inhabited the region fro...
According to their own history, the Aztecs, who called themselves the Tenochca or Mexica, started as a small nomadic tribe originating from a place called Aztlan. Aztlan existed somewhere in the southern part of California or the north west of Mexico. At this time they were Nahuatl speaking. During the twelfth century they started a period of wandering and in the thirteenth century they came across Mexico's central valley. There they decided to settle.
How does the difference between the way Dee (Wangero) and Maggie would use the quilts represent their two different ways of defining and treating their family’s heritage? Does the narrative give approval to Dee’s way or Maggie ’s?
Women in Mexico and the United States of America have played an important role structuring their society and elevating their status. Between 1846 and 1930, the stereotype and position of women within these countries differed vastly from one another. While various traditional roles of women remained the same, the manner in which they were viewed differed. In many ways, women in Mexico held a higher position than those in the United States during this time.
Growing up everyone has certain roles to perform; gradually your roles can change once you are freely able to express yourself without any restrictions. Unfortunately just like thousands of other women in the world at the time, the women of Mexico were limited and had role in which they followed. A challenge Mexican women had during their early times was that, “no unmarried women under thirty could legally leave her parental home” (Soto, 10). This limited women to their own individuality as they were force to stay home and take care of their parents since there was no husband to tender for. Every women wanted to get married so that they can grow older a...
The Olmecs are the earliest known Mesoamerican civilization. Around 1200 B.C. the Olmecs originated as a primitive people living and farming on the shores of Mexico (Stanton 91). Soon, however, they began to build cities such as San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Monte Alban. These “cities” were religious centers where people gathered to worship, and were not populated (Stanton 91). The first of these centers, San Lorenzo, was built c. 1150 B.C., on a flat topped, man-made mountain. It was mysteriously abandoned 200 years later (Stanton 92-93). La Venta, built between 1000 and 600 B.C., sat on an island in a swamp (Stanton 93). Later, around 500 B.C., Monte Alban, which was used as a religious center even after the Olmecs faded, was built on an immense mountain (Stanton 93). The cities were made up of temples and plazas, and decorated by monumental stone heads, which weighed up to 50 tons (Stanton 93)! These heads probably represented their early kings and had distinct helmets (Kingfisher 32). It is incredible how the Olmec people transported the stone from the distant mountains to La Venta, near the shore, without the aid of work animals or carts. It appears that the Olmecs did this grueling work for their gods willingly, as there is no evidence of forced labor (Stanton 93). The Olmecs probably worshipped the jaguar, as it appears so often in their artwork. There are also many e...
Both short stories have strong value of tradition and heritage. The lottery is a longstanding ritual where the villagers draw a name each year on June 27th and the unfortunate soul who has drawn the slip of paper marked with a black smudge is stoned to their death. The sacrifice is meant to keep the village crops healthy and hearty. In the story “Everyday Use” the tradition of passing down homemade quilts and family memories are of high importance.
Being a forty-three year old author writing about war decades after his experiences, it is of little concern to O’Brien whether he tells tales solely in line with the facts. He does not want the reader to care whether the stories he weaves actually happened, for he is only writing to “try to save lives with [his] stories” (232). His stories may be made up and his stories just might be complete lies, but the truth is irrelevant. More importantly, his stories save lives. They save his own, they save yours, and they save society’s.