Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs - The Universal Story

The Glorious American Empires
Incans, Mayans, And Aztecs

_{An ancient Peruvian octopus frontlet from A.D. 300 – 600,} _{made of gold and chrysocolla shells from the Ministerio de Cultura del Perú.}

We wish for a lot of things here at The Universal Story. World peace is probably number one. But right after, is for people to stop mixing up the Mayan, Aztec and Incan civilizations. They were separated by hundreds of years, one almost a millennium and were on different continents. From pretty early on in the history of other ancient civilizations, they all traded and exchanged ideas and culture – ancient China and India knew about Egypt, and all their evolution was deeply linked. However, civilization in the Americas developed completely independently. It was a completely separate and completely different attempt by people to work out how to live together. Let’s dive in, to the great American civilizations.

Ancient American Civilisations: An Introduction

The Ancient American civilizations, broadly, can be divided into two groups – civilizations from central America (near Mexico – the Aztecs and Mayans) and the civilizations from South America (from Peru – the Incans, Nazca, Norte Chico). Both groups had very distinct cultures and came from different original civilizations (see our origins of civilization chart here).

Settled civilization came much later to North America. Throughout ancient times, North America was inhabited by nomadic peoples such as the Clovis and Missipian cultures. They were amazing, we love them, they even built one of the world’s largest cities for a period (see Cahokia), but they did not have large empires. The history of ancient America is in the South.

Of the American civilizations, the Mayans were the originals. They lived in Central America for over a thousand years from 500 ACE to 1500 ACE. The Aztecs developed out of the Mayans, near the end of their civilization, but lived a bit further North but overlapped from 1300 to 1500 ACE.

The Incans were thousands of kilometers South, in South America and similarly were around from 1300 ACE to 1500 ACE. They were quite culturally distinct – they had a completely different set of gods and used a very different language.

All of the American civilizations were invaded and decimated by the Spanish around 1550 ACE. This is one of the evilest periods of human history. Spanish invaders plundered their wealth and artifacts and introduced diseases which resulted in most of these glorious cultures being destroyed within a few decades. Many of their treasures are still housed in European museums because of this. It is a travesty.

The Mayans: The oldest, the original

This is probably the most famous image of ancient American civilization – Chichen Itza– one of the largest temples of the Mayan civilization. It was the center of one of the largest Maya cities, with smaller less dense surrounding it for five kilometers. It was built early, 600 to 900 ACE. The entire structure is built without any mortar, it is entirely constructed out of near perfectly cut stone. It was also originally painted in Mica – a multi-colored shiny mineral that would have made it gleam (Image: C Abken, Unsplash).

The Mayan people lived in cities surrounding the central temples. The elites lived in the center, near the temples in well-constructed stone dwellings. The common people lived further out into the surrounding jungle, in less permanent buildings (Image: Illustration of Mayan civilization by T Hall).

The Mayans were the oldest, largest, and the ones we know least about. They were less centralized than other ancient civilizations like Egypt or Indus. They didn’t call themselves “Maya” and did not have any particularly strong sense of political unity. Instead, they were probably more like twelve large city-states sharing a language, cal 7endar, and culture. The most recognizable imagery is probably the large flat temple-pyramids that formed the center of their various cities. These were painted in Mica, a shiny crystal, so they would have been visually incredibly impressive.

The few things we know:
– the various city-states were constantly at war, with complex webs of alliances and rivalries between the kings;
– their societies were sharply divided between elites (artisans, priests, merchants, and soldiers) and commoners (farmers, servants, laborers, and slaves), with the distinctions getting more complicated as the cities matured;
– the king reigned from the temple, with the elites living in the surrounding palaces, and the commoners further out in more basic dwellings in the surrounding jungle;
– the dwellings were built in the rainforest itself – all the modern images where surrounding trees have been cleared were a result of the later Western invasion; and
– a lot of what is considered “Mexican” culture and food originated from them – chocolate, cornmeal, avocados; and
– death and human sacrifice were an important part of their culture – they had individual ceremonies where hundreds of people, including children who were specially chosen from across their cities, were drugged and then killed to honor their gods.

They also invented the first ball sport – they used a human skull that they soaked in rubber for a game similar to handball. They built massive stone courts for the game to be played, it was very important to them.

Mayan artifacts use less gold and metalwork than the other American civilizations. The art was a bit more “tribal”, made from natural materials. The main materials are highly colored feathers from birds, shells, and jade. This Aztec feather headdress on the left has five separate species of bird feather, each a different color. In total there are about 500 feathers, which are all carefully woven in and out of a structure, embellished with gold at the base (you can see that in the middle image a zoom in on the base of the same headdress). On the right is a deathmask of a Mayan King, Pakal the Great, made entirely of jade. Pakal was probably the most important Mayan ruler, he ruled over Palenque one of the largest Mayan city-states for 68 years, the longest-ruling monarch in the world for at least a millennium (Images: Headdress from Weltmuseum Wien and National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City).

The Mayan script was a form of complex hieroglyphics – similar to the Egyptian ones. We understand most of it, certainly more than we do of the other South American civilizations. Each character was a combination of two grids of six dots, with lines connecting them. The characters were written on bark codexes, most of which have been lost to time – we only have four surviving. The Mayans also had a complex calendar system, which all the different cities shared (Images: Kwamikagami, Wikimedia).

The Aztecs: The Mayan’s younger sibling

This is the Pyramid of the Sun, the temple at the center of Teotihuacan, one of the largest Aztec cities. We don’t know much about it. It was initially painted with bright murals on lime plaster, but none of them have survived. There was a large temple on its peak, but that was completely destroyed by the Spanish. Even its name the “Pyramid of the Sun” was given to it by the Spanish – we don’t know what it is called. However, like a lot of Aztec buildings, it is aligned with the sunrise and sunset on particular dates in the Aztec calendar (Image: Getty Images).

The cities of the Aztecs were much larger, sprawling metropolises, compared to the smaller jungle cities of the Maya. This is Teotihuacan, the largest Aztec city. It has a big causeway in the center known as the “Avenue of the Dead” that led to the Pyramid of the Sun (left). Many of the buildings in the city had multiple levels, functioning like modern apartments. The city also had a large tool and trade industry making all sorts of artifacts that were traded all across the empire (apparently about 10% of people worked making obsidian tools). The city actually predated the Aztec empire by many years but was subsequently adopted as a center of power (Image: Mural by Diego Rivera).

The Aztecs built upon Mayan Civilisation, but further North. They were significantly more centrally controlled than the Mayans, forming from the alliance of three large cities (Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan). The government was ruled by strict ranks of nobles above the ordinary people who managed resources. However, it was ethnically very diverse encompassing many native peoples from the surrounding areas.

Their language was very different to the Mayans. Aztecs all spoke the Nahuatl language, instead of the many hundred Mayan language. The Nahuatl language is quite different as individual characters had individual sounds associated with them, which was used to form words, unlike the earlier Mayan hieroglyphs. The Mayans were polytheistic, worshipping a large number of gods. The Aztecs had a more consistent set of gods that were worshipped with different cults such as Tlaloc, Quetzacoatl and Tezcatipoca. The gods had associated priests who managed the sacred sites and weilded significant power in Aztec society, imagine the Catholic church in Medievil Europe.

This is a page from the “Borgia Codex” – an animal skin book created by the Aztec in the 16th century. It is one of the very few surviving Aztec Codexes, most were destroyed. This page (page 73 of about 80 pages) depicts Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcoatl – two Aztec gods. The art is incredible, it is clearly just so different from the way people draw figures in the West (Image: Wikimedia).

*This is a work of art created from a human skull. It probably represents the god Tezcatlipoca, one of the most important gods in the Aztec Pantheon (Image: N Corbet, Flicker).*

The Incans: The younger southern goldsmiths

Machu Picchu – the central area of Cusco, the capital of the Incan Empire. The central temple was likely a holiday home of one of the Incan rulers, surrounded by other smaller buildings of commoners. However, all the buildings were crafted to an incredible standard, particularly as they are halfway up a mountain, so all the stone was probably carried up there by hand (Image: Sunsinger, Shutterstock).

The Incan Empire was the largest empire in America. It covered almost the entirety of the Western South America – Peru, Chie, Bolivia, Ecuador. The capital was Cusco, where Machu Picchu was built. A lot of the ruins have been lost, as the modern city of Cusco was built over the top. However, at the time, the population of the Incan empire was probably about 10 million, roughly 25% of the global population of 40 million.

The Incan civilization was the most technologically advanced. They built hundreds of structures up in the mountains, created enormous road networks across South America. They had an intricate system of watchhouses and runners across the network, which could be used to carry messages across the entire Empire within a few weeks. They had suspension bridges from woven grass between mountains and created fantastic gold and textile artworks.

They did all this without:
– any writing system, instead they recorded information on khipus, long strings of knotted cords;
– the wheel; and
– any pack animals – the llamas probably helped out a bit, but they are much more stubborn than Western oxen.

Their spoken language (Quecha) and history was completely different from the Aztecs and Mayans. They emerged from different progenitor civilizations, the Norte Chico and the Naza peoples, who also seemed not to have writing systems (see our posts on the Norte Chico here).

The thing that really set the Incans apart, and makes them still famous today, is their gold and weaving. This is what attracted the Spanish to them – the images of the Spanish colonizing South America and stealing gold, are images of the Incans. They worked fine and delicate gold into almost all of their art – it was a part of their clothing, attached to their temples and jewelry and they even made animal and god figures – probably a part of rituals.

The Incan goldsmiths were by far the best in the world. When some of their work was stolen and taken back to Europe, Durer, one of Europe’s finest goldsmiths stated “All the days of my life I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things, for I saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marvelled at the subtle Ingenia of men in foreign lands.”. On the far left is the hilt of a dagger, worked with lapus lazuli. In the middle is a painting done by Spaniards of some of the traditional gold worn by powerful Incans as part of their daily dress. The final image is of Incan weaving- the bright traditional textiles that are still worn in the area today

_{(Images: Dagger hilt by Daniel Giannoni from Museo Oro del Perú and from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and weaving from the Lonely Planet).}

*More incredible Incan gold (Image: Historieshistory).*

This is one of the most incredible finds in Incan archeology. It is an almost perfectly preserved mummy of a young Maiden, who was sacrificed atop an Incan temple. The practices of child sacrifice across all the American civilizations is one of the most disturbing aspects of all of history. There is evidence that there were regular sacrifices of hundreds of lives atop many of the large American temples, often of children. There was apparently lots of ritual surrounding the sacrifices, it seems most victims were drugged, and locked in purpose-built chambers beneath the temples, and left to starve.

So what? Who cares about these dead empires?

Imagine what the futuristic cities of the great South American civilizations could have looked like if the Spanish had not invaded? Giant metropolises in the jungle. We have lost so much (this image is actually an experimental green housing project in Qiyi City from the EPA).

*Bonus Incan gold Llama. Look at its little face. We love humans sometimes (Image: British Museum).*

We care about the ancient American empires. They are amazing, and beautiful and incredible. But confronting their differences can make you reconsider a lot of things.

Imagine what we have been deprived. Imagine a world where the Spanish never invaded and these great American civilizations continued to flourish, learning more about the Universe and the human condition. Building even larger temples, and more monuments, in their jungle cities, and more and more gorgeous gold art that was not ripped away from them. Imagine entering into the 21st century, not just with the US and China as the superpowers, but also great South American empires, with high-tech cities throughout the Amazon rainforest.

Think of how much wiser our culture could have become if we had the benefit of trading and learning from them? Think how different our view on the world could have been? We suspect a jungle Empire would not allow the deforestation and abuse of the natural world, which has become a part of all modern empires that currently threatens their Amazonian homelands.

But even more than that – think of the darker parts of their civilization. How would that have adapted into the 21st century? Almost all of the American civilizations regularly engaged in ritual human sacrifice, often on the top of their pyramids, with hundreds being killed in a session. Imagine if that practice had continued into the modern-day, how it would have evolved? It probably would have continued for hundreds of years, being done less and less until it was (hopefully finally outlawed). As that political struggle took place, there would probably have been moments of progress, but also moments of backsliding – resistance movements saying it was “a part of our culture” and should still be continued, but maybe just on special occasions? Or only for people who volunteered?

What are our equivalents of Incan child sacrifice? Outdated practices we have failed to grow beyond, because of cultural pride? We have some suggestions here at The Universal Story (see here). Regardless, more knowledge of the true history of the Americas is essential for entering into the 21st century, with our eyes wide open.

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The Glorious American Empires Incans, Mayans, And Aztecs