A 20-slide-long Powerpoint presentation that you can download for free. Aimed at teachers in schools where Mexicolore has made a team presentation, the sequence can be used independently or, ideally, as follow-up to one of Mexicolore's in-school workshops.
2. The ‘petate’ In the codex picture, a couple are getting married on the petate; the old folk round about them are giving them plenty of advice for the future! Petates are still used today in Mexico… More info: aztecs.org: aztefacts: a people's bed
3. Tenochtitlan A city of up to 250,000 people – 5 times the size of London in those days! Can you see the 3 main causeways linking the city to the mainland? And the volcanoes of Iztaccíhuatl (left) and Popocatépetl (right)?
4. The Year ‘One-Flint’ In the codex picture, the Aztecs are leaving their mythical homeland of Aztlán; can you spot the year sign? Their tribal god Huitzilopochtli is in the mountain glyph on the right. More info: aztecs.org: aztefacts: who were the Mexica?
5. Mexico vs UK Mexico is 8 times the size of the United Kingdom and 15 times the size of England on its own…
6. More info: aztecs.org: aztec life: 'Tiger Top' The Aztecs used all 5 of the basic ways to make clothes…
11. Aztec load carriers: using the ‘tumpline’ they regularly carried over 20 kilos each and travelled over 20 kilometres to the next post – as part of a relay system
13. Making chocolate the traditional way; the whisk is called a ‘molinillo’ in Mexico More info:- aztecs.org: aztec life: Blood of the gods
14. Freshly made, organic chewing gum: the real thing! More info:- aztecs.org: aztec artefacts: tzictli Sticky chicle – strictly ‘tzictli’!
15. An Aztec ‘death bundle’. This was clearly a rich person, buried with everything from jewellery to a jaguar skin… More info:- aztecs.org: aztec life: a bundle of death
16. The Aztecs had two calendars: one based on the sun, for farmers; the other, based on the moon, for priests. The same date in both calendars only came round once every 52 years – a ‘bundle of years’, a bit like our ‘century’
17. The Aztecs believed in giving before receiving: by offering human flesh to their gods they hoped to receive food from the earth in return; by offering human blood, they hoped to receive rain and fresh water to drink; by offering human hearts they hoped to receive heat, light and energy from the sun, so life would be able to carry on…
18. The Aztecs called their poetry ‘flower-songs’. The more beautiful the song or poem, the more beautiful the flower (above the large speech scroll)…
19. We don’t know for sure which Aztec god is in the centre of the ‘Sunstone’: it could be the sun god Tonatiuh, or it could be the earth lord, Tlaltecuhtli
20. The glyph for ‘movement’ at the heart of the Sunstone