Good morning Mrs Klatt and fellow SOSE students.

My name is Mike and I will be presenting my SOSE model on the ancient Aztecs, who existed between the 12th and 16th centuries. They were located in Mesoamerica, present day Mexico and western parts of Southern America. The Aztecs were well known for their dedication to religion, their conquest of many parts of Mesoamerica and their eventual defeat to the Spanish Conquistadors. An important part of their culture was human sacrifices to their Sun God, upon their famous Aztec pyramids. They are estimated to have sacrificed up to 200 captives per day, suggesting the Mesoamerican population was reasonably large. Today, I have decided to make a model of an ancient Aztec village, with the farms floating upon the waters of a lake, an Aztec pyramid and the emperors palace. Since the size of the buildings appearing here are so large and are very downscaled, I could not show the people in true form, and so there are dots for people. There dots along the beaches marking the Spanish Conquistadors. The Spanish first arrived arrived upon the shores of Southern America in 1519, while the first Aztec pyramids date to approximately 1200. The human sacrifices shows their dedication to religion and their gods, while the large number of captives show their large war power and specialty in conquest. The Spanish shows the fall of this great civilisation. I chose to create this model because it is my favourite ancient civilisation and I believed it would be a challenge to create this section of the village. (Talk more about model) The architecture of the ancient Aztecs was simple, but still attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world. Since the Aztec civilisation was based in a region of highland areas, some villages were based on the peaks of mountains and hills, but I have chosen to make a model of the ancient Aztec city tenochtilan, where the farms were made by anchoring giant log rafts in the water, and piling soil on top. The farms were connected to the land with wooden bridges. This helped them to harvest healthy crops like potato, tomato and maize or corn. They also had some huts on the farms. Some key buildings were the law courts, the temple, the emperors palace, the pyramids, the ball courts, farms, huts, the calcemac (school) and the chiciatli (army school). I believe there were not enough medical facilities or markets, but the huge amount of huts catered for the large population. The punishment system in aztec times was similar to ours. The was a judge and a jury. The punishments were: Adultery: Death Commoner wearing cotton: Death Drunkedness: 1st time: Head shaved and house destroyed 2nd time: Death Handling stolen property: Sold into slavery Moving a field boundary: Death Kidnapping: Sold into slavery Selling substandard goods: Loss of property Major theft: Death Minor theft: Sold into slavery Treason: Death, Loss of property, Destruction of land, Children sold into slavery

I believe these punishments were harsh but it means crime was rarely committed. There were only two main Aztec games, Tlachtli and Patolli. Tlachtli was arubber ball game that was played between two teams. The ball to be shot into a vertical hoop with the players knees, so the game was a mixture of soccer and basketball. Patolli was a gambling game that was played with pebbles and dry beans. I believe it was bad that they did not have many sports, but it was good that they had a mind game like Patolli. I have chosen the ancient Aztecs because they were one of the last ancient civilisations to be conquered and destroyed by European settlers, and their punishment system was similar to ours. In conclusion, I have learnt that the Aztecs had many gods, and were skilled in the task of conquering other Mesoamerican civilisations. I discovered that their punishment system was very similar to ours, and that they only had two sports. I learnt that they had harsh punishments and about the Spanish Conquistadors. Thank you for listening.