Sacrifices on Terra-X.
Then explore the treasure ships of the Bass Strait on Treasure Hunters.
And plants are used for both healing and hunting on Banishing Worlds.
Coming up next on the Discovery Channel.
Sifts through the ruins of the past and the theories of the present.
Enter Forbidden Zones.
Investigate history's enduring puzzles.
Next on Terra-X.
The people of Mexico are the descendants of two nations of conquerors.
They trace themselves to the Spaniards and to the Aztecs,
who ruled over one of the last great empires of pre-Columbian America.
Modern Mexicans are very conscious of this dual heritage.
In the center of the Mexican flag you can see the Aztec symbol.
An eagle perched on a pear cactus, holding a serpent in its beak.
The Aztecs identified with the eagle because it was the ultimate bird of prey.
And they saw themselves as the ultimate warriors.
For the Aztecs, waging war was a sacred duty.
It was the way they obtained victims for their central religious ritual,
human sacrifice.
The sun god in particular needed to be fed the hearts and blood of human beings,
so the Aztecs would sacrifice their prisoners of war to him.
The Aztecs believed no army of mortal men could defeat them,
and that their capital, Tenochtitlan, was impregnable.
But on August 13, 1521, the Aztecs were defeated,
and Tenochtitlan, destroyed as completely as it could have been by any earthquake
inflicted by an angry god.
The agents of the Aztecs' destruction came from 6,000 miles across the ocean.
They were a tiny force, a mere 600 soldiers and 16 horses.
But under the brilliant leadership of Hernando Cortes,
they were enough to conquer an empire.
Before he was done, Cortes would secure for the Spanish crown
a huge territory stretching from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean.
When he came ashore in the spring of 1519, Cortes, of course, had no idea
that before him was a land where highly developed civilizations
had flourished for many centuries.
As long ago as 3,000 years before Cortes,
the Olmecs had carved their colossal stone heads.
Around 300 A.D., the Maya erected their cities in the jungle
and developed a system of writing and a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.
The Maya civilization collapsed for reasons that to this day are not clear.
But other civilizations emerged, such as the Toltecs,
with their magnificent capital Tula.
The Toltecs, too, collapsed around 1,000 A.D.
Then the Aztecs rose to replace them as the dominant power,
and by 1350 they had created an empire.
Cortes, though, had no idea the Aztecs existed.
All he had heard was the rumor that somewhere on the mainland
there was a magnificent land of gold.
From the moment he landed, Cortes was being watched from the trees
by Aztec lookouts.
They immediately reported the arrival of the strange white men
to their leader Montezuma.
But Montezuma did not know what to do.
There had been many disturbing omens, even an eclipse,
when the moon devoured the sun.
The Aztec priests could actually predict solar eclipses,
but there remained events that aroused fear and foreboding.
There was always a trace of doubt as to whether the sun would ever rise again.
But the eclipse was not the only bad omen.
A strange column of light appeared in the night sky,
probably what we would call a falling star.
Montezuma himself had seen it from the roof of his palace.
Given these strange signs, Montezuma decided to proceed cautiously.
He sent ambassadors who greeted the visitors with gifts.
They brought shields made of multicolored feathers and decorated with gold
and a headdress such as he himself wore.
Montezuma also communicated an urgent request.
He asked the foreigners to take the gifts and leave his land.
But Montezuma had made the crucial mistake of revealing that he did indeed have gold.
Cortes was not about to go home now.
To show his resolve, he staged a demonstration on the beach.
He had his men mount their horses and race past the Aztec ambassadors.
They had never seen such powerful animals or such shining armor.
For good measure, Cortes shot off his cannons.
Later, when the ambassadors reported what they had seen,
Montezuma fell into a virtual panic.
And then came more bad news.
Cortes had made a crucial discovery.
Aztecs, like all imperial powers, had enemies.
They were hated by the peoples they had conquered.
The Teutonic people, for example, had long resented the large tribute payments
their Aztec conquerors demanded of them.
The Teutonics had to give up most of their corn and vanilla crop
and make bark paper for the Aztec bureaucracy.
This was difficult work.
First, they cooked the bark of a fig tree to break down the fibers.
The pulp was then hammered into flat sheets with a stone.
The Teutonics were tired of giving up the fruits of their labor.
So when Cortes met with the Teutonic chief,
the man quickly agreed to commit his warriors to the fight against Montezuma.
Terra X will return in a moment.
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