The Aztec people created a highly distinctive mythology which celebrates and explores their development from a nomadic people into one of the greatest cultures of the Americas. According to their recorded histories, the Aztecs came from a mythical island called Aztlan, the ‘place of the white herons’. Their supreme god Huitzilopochtli, ‘humming bird of the south’, led them in search of a homeland which they finally found on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco in the Basin of Mexico. There, in 1325, they founded the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan which means ‘place of the prickly pear growing on a stone’ (present day Mexico City), fulfilling the prophecy that the Aztecs would settle on an island where they found an ‘eagle sitting on a prickly pear cactus’. This image can be seen on the modern Mexican flag.

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