Mexico stretches from the deserts of the north to the rainforests of the Maya south, between two oceans and around the high Valley of Mexico. Here people domesticated maize, beans and squash, and the Olmecs, Zapotecs, Teotihuacanos, Maya, Toltecs and Mexica built some of the great civilizations of the ancient world.

The Spanish conquest of 1519–1521 destroyed the Aztec Empire and made Mexico the heart of New Spain, the richest province of the Spanish empire, where Indigenous, European and African peoples formed a new society around silver, the Church and the city built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan.

Independence in 1821 was followed by a century of turmoil: coups, the loss of half the country to the United States, the liberal Reform, a French-imposed emperor, the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and the Revolution of 1910. The ruling party that emerged governed for seventy years, until democracy, free trade and the drug war reshaped Mexico around the turn of the century.

Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.