The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries. "Aztec" (Nahuatl pronunciation: [astekaʔ]) is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan", a mythological place for the Nahuatl-speaking culture of the time, and later adopted as the word to define the Mexica people. Often the term "Aztec" refers exclusively to the Mexica people of Tenochtitlan (now the location of Mexico City), situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who referred to themselves as Mexica Tenochca or Colhua-Mexica.
Sometimes the term also includes the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan's two principal allied city-states, the Acolhuas of Texcoco and the Tepanecs of Tlacopan, who together with the Mexica formed the Aztec Triple Alliance which controlled what is often known as "the Aztec Empire". In other contexts, Aztec may refer to all the various city states and their peoples, who shared large parts of their ethnic history and cultural traits with the Mexica, Acolhua and Tepanecs, and who often also used the Nahuatl language as a lingua franca. In this meaning it is possible to talk about an Aztec civilization including all the particular cultural patterns common for most of the peoples inhabiting Central Mexico in the late postclassic period.
We traveled through this land a thousand years ago
We were the first to see the purple skies
I wondered round the desert in a mask of gold
I left a thousand things for you to find
I left my home where your houses stand
I left my gold where your highways ran
I lived my life on what you call your land
I left my soul in the Aztec sand
The days grow long the nights are getting warmer
The rains are few beneath the blazing sun
Traveling fathers finding little water
The time has come when we must play this world
I left my home where your houses stand
I left my gold where your highways ran
I lived my life on what you call your land
I left my soul in the Aztec sand
Round and round
Our lifetime goes
Where does it end
Someone must know
I've got a family now but you wouldn't know them
They're beaten down so hard they can hardly stand
We used to live so brave so free like an eagle
Now they make us live like a crippled man
I left my home where your houses stand
I left my gold where your highways ran
I lived my life on what you call your land
I left my soul in the Aztec sand
We traveled through this land a thousand years ago
We were the first to see the purple skies
I wondered round the desert in a mask of gold
I left a thousand things for you to find
I left my home where your houses stand
I left my gold where your highways ran
I lived my life on what you call your land
I left my soul in the aztec sand
The days grow long the nights are getting warmer
The rains are few beneath the blazing sun
Traveling fathers finding little water
The time has come when we must play this world
I left my home where your houses stand
I left my gold where your highways ran
I lived my life on what you call your land
I left my soul in the aztec sand
Round and round
Our lifetime goes
Where does it end
Someone must know
I've got a family now but you wouldn't know them
They're beaten down so hard they can hardly stand
We used to live so brave so free like an eagle
Now they make us live like a crippled man
I left my home where your houses stand
I left my gold where your highways ran
I lived my life on what you call your land