Talk:Aztecs

Talk archives

• Talk:Aztecs/2002-2004
• Talk:Aztecs/2005
• Talk:Aztecs/2006-1 (Jan-May)
• Talk:Aztecs/2006-2 (May-Dec)
• Talk:Aztecs/2007-1 (Jan-May)
• Talk:Aztecs/Slavery
• Talk:Aztecs/Cannibalism
• Talk:Aztecs/Sacrifice
• Talk:Aztecs/Terminology-1 (Aztec vs Mexica vs Nahua etc)
• Talk:Aztecs/Terminology-2 (more of the same)
• Talk:Aztecs/2007-2017

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GA Reassessment

Aztecs

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Issues remain unaddressed, no ongoing effort to fix them. TompaDompa (talk) 23:09, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

There are uncited statements, including entire paragraphs, in the article. Several sections, such as the "Definitions", "History", and "Religion" have too much detailed information which can be spun out into articles that already exist or removed, while other sections like "Art and cultural production" and "Legacy" can have information spun out into new articles or summarised more effectively. Z1720 (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Fix it?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

• @Maunus: Please see WP:GAR, which says "Wikipedia is not compulsory and editors should not insist that commentators, interested editors, or past GAN nominators make the suggested changes". I have neither the time nor the interest to resolve the concerns in this article. Z1720 (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Interesting, since that is exactly what you do when you show up at my talkpage to send me a message that you don't like the current state of this article and that I need to fix it if I want it to retain the Ga status I worked hard to achieve 10 years ago. The article has clearly deteriorated since then, as articles do. But if we want to actually have a good encyclopedia then somebody needs to maintain articles. This is what actually builds an encyclopedia. Cruising around and starting GA reviews does nothing at all to improve the encyclopedia. It amounts to pointing out problems and trying to coerce others into fixing them instead of doing it oneself. But apparently that is the only thing you have time and interest in doing... ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:24, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

@Maunus: If you would like to discuss the GAR process or my conduct, please post on WT:GAN or the appropriate noticeboard. This page is a review of the article's quality; no editor, including you, has to make improvements to the article as we are all volunteers and can choose where we want to make edits. If anyone is interested in making improvements, I am willing to add templates to the article or make more detailed comments if pinged. Z1720 (talk) 21:18, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article Title and/or the Article Itself

This article seems redundant considering more recent scholarship on Mesoamerican civilizations and the related articles available on Wikipedia. Camilla Townsend notes in her book, The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs (2019) on page xi that: "...technically speaking, there never were any 'Aztecs'. No people ever called themselves that... Its use is often confusing..." Townsend limits the word mostly to the title and introduction to better communicate to the reader. The information presented in this Wikipedia article might be better communicated by merging it with the articles on the Aztec Empire, Mexica, and Nahuas. The term "Aztec" should redirect to the article on the Mexica with the introduction including a clarification on the terminology. I believe the introduction of historian James Lockhart's Nahuas After The Conquest (1992) further supports this change, "These people I call Nahuas, a name they sometimes used themselves and the one that has become current today in Mexico, in preference to Aztecs. The latter term has several decisive disadvantages, it implies a kind of quasi-national unity that did not exist... and by standards of its time, its use for anyone other than the Mexica... would have been improper even if it had been the Mexica's primary designation, which it was not." The article for the Tepanec references the "Aztecs (or Mexica)" with hyperlinks to both articles; these proposed changes would better reflect the literature and provide a cleaner reading experience for users interested in the "Aztecs" and related topics. 2fish2 (talk) 05:19, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Article sorely needs much expanding on the subject of Spanish Colonial conquest.

For an article which strives to be long on the history of the Aztecs, it is lacking very much on what basically forever changed Aztec society and culture, which was overwhelming defeat by Hernan Cortez and the Spanish / European conquests. To leave that out, would be like leaving out from the article of Carthage and the Carthaginians, the complete and total conquest by the Roman Empire. Any lack of full context as to why a society and culture declines does not do proper justice to world history. Leaving this important part out, does not erase that it happened. ~2026-35430-28 (talk) 14:51, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

The article is mostly about Aztec society before its destruction, which seems the right focus. Some of the stuff you mention is covered in the "Colonial period, 1521–1821" section, with cross-references to articles where further information can be found. I agree it could be expanded a bit, but the main article focus rightly lies elsewhere. Gawaon (talk) 04:28, 18 June 2026 (UTC)