The proven presence of the first human beings in the Valley of Mexico dates from 8000 years BC. They were primitive, strong and agile hunters, wearing loincloths made of animal fur. Their weapons were lances, darts, knives, flints, punches, bone scrappers, sticks and batons. The Central and Southern regions of the current Mexican territory had already been densely populated for many years, due to the agriculture, initiated several milenium before Christ, of some of Mesoamerica own species: corn, punpkin and beans.

The first complex societies belonged to the Olmeca culture. About 100 years BC they built ceremonial centers on the plain coasts if Veracruz and Tabasco.

The Mayan people raised in the Yucatan Peninsula and lands of what today is Guatemala, a number of independent cities that occasionally formed confederations. But, more than a political power, this culture stood out because of its extraordinary artistic and scientific development that reached its plenitude between the fourth and tenth centuries.

The central Mexican Altiplano met several civilizations. One of the most outstanding, due to its unifying nature, was Teotihuacan, commercial, politic and religious metropolis which cultural influence extended farther from the Altiplano, reaching Central America and the Northern Mexico. Teotihuacan was destroyed in 700 AD, probably by the Toltecan people who came from the North, invaded the Altiplano and established their capital city in Tula.

Eighth and ninth centuries were a confusion period. The great classic civilizations of Mesoamerica collapsed, victims of foreign intruders or their own social conflicts. The post-classic cultures got a more warlike character, they built great walls and defensive fortifications and they worshiped war gods that demanded bloody sacrifices. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the Nahuatl people came from the north and defeated the Toltecas, expanding their power over the Altiplano and assimilating the culture of the defeated towns.

One of those Nahuatl tribes, the Aztecs, settled in the Tenochtitlan Valley, central area of Mexico in 1325, and started an inevitable demographic, economical and military expansion. A little bit before reaching its 200 years of age, Tenochtitlan became the center of a huge town confederation that extended through all the central region of Mesoamerica, from the coasts of the Gulf to the shores of the pacific and whose influence reached even the Central America Mayan regions.

The nahuatl name of the Aztecs that founded the great Tenochtitlan, "Mexica" gave origin to the name of the city and then the whole nation.