State of Mexico

The State of Mexico, officially just Mexico, is one of the 32 federal entities that make up the United Mexican States. It shares its name with both the country and its capital, Mexico City, so it is often called Edomex for short. This state is the most populous in Mexico and ranks second in population density. It sits in central Mexico and wraps around Mexico City on three sides. To the north, it borders Querétaro and Hidalgo; to the south, Morelos and Guerrero; to the west, Michoacán; and to the east, Tlaxcala and Puebla. The state is divided into 125 municipalities. Its capital is Toluca de Lerdo, commonly called Toluca, while its largest city is Ecatepec de Morelos, or simply Ecatepec.

The land that is now the State of Mexico was once the heart of the pre-Hispanic Aztec Empire. During the Spanish colonial era, it became part of New Spain. After Mexico gained independence in the 19th century, Mexico City was chosen as the national capital, and its territory was separated from the state. Later, parts of the state were carved off to create the states of Hidalgo, Guerrero, and Morelos. These divisions gave the state its current shape: the Toluca Valley west of Mexico City and a panhandle that curves around the north and east of the capital. People and things from the state are called *mexiquense*, which is different from *mexicano*, the term for the whole country.

The name México originally came from the Nahuatl word Mēxihco, the name for the Valley of Mexico where the Mexica—the proper name for the Aztec Triple Alliance—lived. The district that became Mexico City was called Mexico-Tenochtitlan shortly before and after the Spanish conquest. After the conquest, the term México was used for Tenochtitlan and all the lands it controlled, including several other states that were originally part of the State of Mexico. There are two possible origins for the name. One is that it comes from *metztli* (moon) and *xictla* (navel), meaning "from the navel of the moon," based on the Aztec idea that the moon’s craters form a rabbit with one crater like a navel. The other is that it derives from *Mextictli*, an alternate name for the god Huitzilopochtli. The term Anáhuac referred to all territories under the Aztec Empire, from *Cem Anáhuac*, meaning "the entire earth" or "surrounded by waters," referring to Lake Texcoco, considered the center of the Aztec world. Before independence, Anáhuac was proposed as a name for the whole nation to distinguish it from the administrative division of New Spain that became the State of Mexico.

The earliest signs of human life in the state are a quartz scraper and obsidian blade found in the Tlapacoya area, which was once an island in Lake Chalco. These date to the Pleistocene era, about 20,000 years ago. The first people were hunter-gatherers. Stone age tools, mammoth bones, and human remains have been found across the territory, especially in Los Reyes Acozac, Tizayuca, Tepexpan, San Francisco Mazapa, El Risco, and Tequixquiac. Between 20,000 and 5000 BCE, people shifted from hunting and gathering to settled villages with farming and domesticated animals. Corn was the main crop, and stone tools for grinding it became common. Later crops included beans, chili peppers, and squash, grown near established villages. Ceramics appear around 2500 BCE, with early examples from Tlapacoya, Atoto, Malinalco, Acatzingo, and Tlatilco.

The Tepexpan Man is an important find for anthropologists, helping to understand the Valley of Mexico 5,000 years ago and the region’s occupation timeline. Some scholars date it to 11,000 years, others to 8,000, and some to 5,000 years old. Originally thought to be male, recent research suggests it was female, though this is still debated. A sacrum bone found in Tequixquiac is considered prehistoric art. The people there were nomadic, hunting large animals like mammoths and gathering fruits. One of the most notable discoveries of primitive art in the Americas is the Tequixquiac Bone, carved from a camelid bone around 22,000 BCE, with no known purpose but reflecting the artist’s ideology. The first native settlers of Tequixquiac were the Aztecs and Otomi, who stayed because of abundant rivers and springs, mainly farming and raising animals.

The earliest major civilization in the state was Teotihuacan, where the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon were built between 100 BCE and 100 CE. Between 800 and 900 CE, the Matlatzincas established their dominion with Teotenango as their capital, a walled city with plazas, terraces, temples, altars, living quarters, and a ball court. In the 15th century, the Aztecs conquered the Toluca and Chalco valleys to the west and east of the Valley of Mexico. Part of the Toluca Valley was also held by the Purépechas. Other pre-Hispanic dominions included the Chichimecas in Tenayuca and the Acolhuas in Huex.