r groups that were eventually conquered, there are still nearly two million Maya descendants living in the same region, speaking related languages, and constituting "the largest single block of American Indians north of Peru."5
The Aztec civilization followed several others that had risen on the great plateau of central Mexico. The brilliant Teotihuacan culture flourished there from 600 B.C. to A.D. 700. It was followed by the Toltecs, who arrived around A.D. 900 and reached their height a century later. The Toltecs absorbed the Teotihuacan culture but were more concerned with warfare. The Toltec state was based on tribute exacted by force from the surrounding tribes. This was to be a model for the Aztecs. The Aztecs (who called themselves Mexica) left their home in Aztlan and wandered for 150 years until, in A.D. 1325, they arrived at Tenochtitlan where they established their city (later Mexico City). The Aztecs allied themselves with two other tribes in the region but rapidly became the dominant power. The Aztec empire, as it is sometimes called, was a territory in which the Aztecs, operating from their city-state of Tenochtitlan, had subjugated various tribes and extracted tribute from them. Though the system served them well, the aggregation of subject peoples "did not constitute a nation in either the economic, cultural, or political sense."6
It is no easier to call the Mayan civilization a state. The Maya system of social organization and government relied on the unusual combination of matrilineal and patrilineal groupings. Each Maya had two names -- one from the mother and one from the father. The matrilineal line was used in the regulation of marriage, determining who could marry whom. The patrilineal lines dictated inheritance of property and the lineages constituted "self-protection societies, all members of which had the obligation to help each other."7
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