State of Mexico

The State of Mexico, officially just Mexico, is one of the 32 federal entities of the United Mexican States. Colloquially, it is known as Edomex ([e.ðoˈmeks], from Edo. & México) to distinguish it from the name of the country. It is the most populous and second most densely populated state in Mexico.

Located in central Mexico, the state is divided into 125 municipalities. The state capital city is Toluca de Lerdo ("Toluca"), while its largest city is Ecatepec de Morelos ("Ecatepec"). The State of Mexico surrounds Mexico City on three sides. It borders the states of Querétaro and Hidalgo to the north, Morelos and Guerrero to the south, Michoacán to the west, and Tlaxcala and Puebla to the east.

The territory now comprising the State of Mexico once formed the core of the pre-Hispanic Aztec Empire. During the Spanish colonial period, the region was incorporated into New Spain. After gaining independence in the 19th century, Mexico City was chosen as the new nation's capital; its territory was separated from the state. Years later, parts of the state were broken off to form the states of Hidalgo, Guerrero, and Morelos. These territorial separations have left the state with the size and shape it has today, with the Toluca Valley to the west of Mexico City and a panhandle that extends around the north and east of this entity.

The demonym used to refer to people and things from the state is mexiquense, distinct from mexicano ('Mexican'), which describes the people or things from the whole country.

Mēxihco was originally the Nahuatl name for the Valley of Mexico where the cities of the Mexica (the proper name for the Aztec Triple Alliance) were located. As such, the district that became Mexico City was properly known as Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the years shortly before and after the Spanish conquest. After the Spanish Conquest, the term México came to be used for Tenochtitlan/Mexico City and all the pre-conquest lands it controlled, including several other aforementioned states originally incorporated in the boundaries of the state of Mexico.

There are two possible origins for the name "Mexico." The first is that it derives from metztli (moon) and xictla (navel) to mean "from the navel of the moon". This comes from the old Aztec idea that the craters on the moon form a rabbit figure with one crater imitating a navel. The other possible origin is that it is derived from "Mextictli", an alternate name for the god Huitzilopochtli.

Anáhuac was the proper term for all territories dominated by the Aztec Empire, from Cem Anáhuac, "the entire earth" or "surrounded by waters" e.g. the waters of Lake Texcoco which were considered to be the center of the Aztec world, and as such was proposed as an early name for the entire nation of Mexico prior to independence, to distinguish it from the (preexisting) administrative division of New Spain that became the State of Mexico.

The earliest evidence of human habitation in the current territory of the state is a quartz scraper and obsidian blade found in the Tlapacoya area, which was an island in the former Lake Chalco. They are dated to the Pleistocene era which dates human habitation back to 20,000 years. The first people were hunter-gatherers. Stone age implements have been found all over the territory from mammoth bones to stone tools to human remains. Most have been found in the areas of Los Reyes Acozac, Tizayuca, Tepexpan, San Francisco Mazapa, El Risco and Tequixquiac. Between 20,000 and 5000 BCE, the people here eventually went from hunting and gathering to sedentary villages with farming and domesticated animals. The main crop was corn, and stone tools for the grinding of this grain became common. Later crops include beans, chili peppers, and squash grown near established villages. Evidence of ceramics appears around 2500 BCE with the earliest artifacts of these appearing in Tlapacoya, Atoto, Malinalco, Acatzingo and Tlatilco.