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Mesoamerica is a cultural area stretching from Mexico to the north of Costa Rica. This region has witnessed outstanding cultural and economic achievements: the beginnings of agriculture, the development of complex societies, trade, writing systems and calendars. The Zapotecs and Mayas in the south and the Aztecs in the central plateau of Mexico figure among the most remarkable pre-Columbian cultures.
When Hernán Cortés and his army reached Tenochtitlan, in early November 1519, the capital of the Aztec Empire, gleaming like a jewel on an island in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, had a population of nearly three hundred thousand. The political and religious heart of the city was organised around a large ritual wall dominated by an impressive pyramid dedicated to the god of rain and fertility (Tlaloc) and to the ancestral god of war and the sun (Huitzilopochtli). From this centre, the Aztecs and their partners in the Triple Alliance (Texcoco, Tlacopan) controlled a large part of Mesoamerica.
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