Historical Developments

In the Americas, as in Afro-Eurasia, state systems demonstrated continuity, innovation, and diversity, and expanded in scope and reach.

State systems in the Americas:

• Maya city-states

• Mexica / Aztecs

• Inca

• Chaco

• Mesa Verde

• Cahokia

In the Americas, as in Afro-Eurasia, state systems expanded in scope and reach;  networks of city-states flourished in the Maya region and, at the end of this period, imperial systems were created by the Mexica (Mexicas) and Inca.

Cahokia (North America’s First Society)

• largest city ever built north of Mexico before Columbus

• 120 earthen mounds. - massive, square-bottomed, flat-topped pyramids -- great pedestals atop which civic leaders lived.

• Plaza was city's center - largest earthwork in the Americas, the 100-foot Monks Mound.

• Farmers grew crops to feed the city-dwellers, government officials and religious leaders, skilled trades workers, artisans & astronomers.

• City was center of a trading network linked to other societies over much of North America.

  • Cahokia was, in short, one of the most advanced civilizations in ancient America.

• Nature dictated that the settlement rise near the confluence of the Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi rivers. This fertile strip was carved and flooded summer after summer by glacial melt off

• Corn based society, Cahokians cultivated goosefoot, amaranth, canary grass and other starchy seeds.

  • People farmed without the wheel or draft animals, corn production soared and surpluses may have been stored in communal granaries on the mounds.

• Matrilineal Society:

  • "The fact that these high-status burials included women changes the meaning of the beaded burial feature," Emerson said. "Now, we realize we don't have a system in which males are these dominant figures and females are playing bit parts. And so, what we have at Cahokia is very much a nobility. It's not a male nobility. It's males and females, and their relationships are very important."

  • "For me, having dug temples at Cahokia and analyzed a lot of that material, the symbolism is all about life renewal, fertility, agriculture," he said. "Most of the stone figurines found there are female. The symbols showing up on the pots have to do with water and the underworld. And so now, Mound 72 fits into a more consistent story with what we know about the rest of the symbolism and religion at Cahokia."

  • Decline: Buffalo and food sources moving, disease, lack of sanitation, lack of food sources

    • “They had been living there for 600 years and no big flood like that had ever come,” he said. “Their farming and political institutions were probably not very well prepared for that.”

The Mayans

• We know they were not called Mayas

  • When Spaniards arrived, the major city was MAYAPAN (thus the name the Mayas)

• The only great civilization to be located in the “jungle”

• Primarily the Yucatan peninsula and northern central America

• Early astronomers: Calculated Lunar and Solar Eclipses

  • Used that information to have “Festivals”

  • Understanding of the Solar Position in the sky

• Had a system based on 20

  • Recognized the zero (unlike the Romans for instance)

• During the pre-Columbian era, human sacrifice in Maya culture was the ritual offering of nourishment to the gods.

• Blood was viewed as a potent source of nourishment for the Maya deities, and the sacrifice of a living creature was a powerful blood offering.

• By extension, the sacrifice of a human life was the ultimate offering of blood to the gods, and the most important Maya rituals culminated in human sacrifice.

• Generally only high status prisoners of war were sacrificed, with lower status captives being used for labour

• Good architects though were not able to complete the arch

• Great warriors

• Active Merchants (Used Cocoa as currency)

• A trade system existed through which salt, obsidian, jade, cacao, animal pelts, tropical bird feathers, luxury ceramics and other goods flowed.

  • Goods from the highlands were traded with those of the lowlands. Obsidian was made into tools and weapons.

  • People either bartered goods directly or exchanged them for cacao beans

Games

The Maya had a ball game called Pok-A-Tok.  It was  played on an odd shaped field. The object of the game was to move a hard rubber ball without the use of hands or feet through a hoop.  There is debate whether it was the losing team or the winning team that was sacrificed.

Decline

Debate over why several sites are shown to have been abandoned?

• They left site due to Natural Disasters

• They left site due to overcrowding

• They abandon Commercial and Religious sites but did not move

Natural

1. Ecology

2. Soil Exhaustion

3. Water Loss and Erosion

4. Savanna Grass Competition (Continual burning of soil led to end original forest and converted into man-made grass land. Problem, Mayas did not have toil equipment).

The Mexica Empire

• Made up of the Mexica people (semi-nomadic people from Northern Mexico)

• 1325 – established themselves on a small island on Lake Texcoco

• Over next 100 years, they grew in strength, organization, and military to form their capital at Tenochtitlan

• In 1428 the Mexicas joined with two other nations to form the Triple Alliance which used military conquest to unite more of Mesoamerica than ever before

• Loosely structured and unstable

• Witnessed frequent rebellion by its subject peoples

• Conquered peoples and cities had to deliver tribute to Mexica rulers (things like textiles, clothing, military supplies, jewelry, food, animal products, rubber balls, paper, and building materials)

• Tenochtitlan featured numerous public works/state building projects: canals, dikes, causeways, and bridges

• Surrounding the city were “floating gardens” – artificial islands created from swamplands that supported highly productive agriculture

• Vast marketplaces reflected the commercialization of the economy

• Slaves were often one of the many “goods” traded in this thriving city

• Slaves were used in the human sacrifice rituals

• According to Mexica mythology, the sun (critical to all life) was associated with the deity Huitzilopochtli

• The sun would lose energy throughout the day as it struggled against darkness

• In order to give the sun more “energy” – human blood was required

• Because the gods had shed their blood in the creation of humanity, it seemed natural that humans should shed their blood in repayment to the gods

• Human sacrifice and mythological beliefs fueled warfare

• Mexica rulers largely left their conquered people alone, so long as they paid the tribute

• *No elaborate administrative system arose to integrate the conquered territories or to assimilate their people to Mexica culture (unlike the Inca who tried to assimilate conquered peoples)*

Huitzilopochtli

• Deity of war, human sacrifice, the sun, and the patron god of Tenochtitlan

• National god of the Mexicas

• Giving human blood in sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli was said to postpone the end of the world

• Represented as a hummingbird or with feathers on head and left leg

Mexica Paper

• Modern historians are unsure when the Mexica learned to make paper, but it’s assumed it was ancient knowledge passed on from previous societies

• Paper was sacred because it was used for many purposes:

  • creating books concerning their religious beliefs

  • adorning statues of the deities and decorate temples

  • fashioning priestly regalia (clothing/ornaments)

  • accompany the dead on their journey to the afterlife

  • dress sacrificial victims before putting them to death

  • make offerings to the deities in their pantheon

  • divine the future

• The emperor began to demand that conquered peoples throughout the empire send paper to the capital cities as tribute payment

• A 16th-century tribute list, the Codex Mendoza, names 42 cities or towns where paper was made and records that 480,000 sheets were received every year from just two of them.

Mexica Women

• In the home, Mexica women cooked, cleaned, spun, and wove cloth, raised their children, and undertook ritual activity

• Outside the home they served as officials in palaces, priestesses in temples, traders in markets, teachers in schools, and members of craft  workers’ organizations

• Parallel cults for both men and women, with male priests presiding over the men and female priestesses over the women

• Lots of parallelism, but this did not mean equality

• Men still held top political and religious positions

Incas

• 1438–1533

• Built the largest imperial state in the Western hemisphere along the Andes Mountains

• Incorporated traditions of previous Andean peoples: Chavin, Moche, Nazca, and Chimu

• Inca Empire was much larger than the Mexica state – stretched 2,500 miles along the Andes and contained 10 million subjects

• Erected a more bureaucratic empire than the Mexicas, but with many accommodations for local circumstances

• At the top reigned the emperor – an absolute ruler regarded as divine – descendant of the creator god Virachocha and the son of the sun god Inti

• In theory**, the state owned all the land and resources** and each of the 80 provinces in the empire had an Inca governor

• Made efforts to culturally assimilate conquered peoples – including forcing them to learn the Inca language Quechua

• Even today, millions of people from Ecuador to Chile still speak Quechua (it is the second official language next to Spanish in Peru)

• Conquered peoples had to acknowledge the Inca gods, but were left to keep their own religions

• Did use some human sacrifice during special occasions, but nothing like the Mexicas

• Did not use tribute system, but a system known as mita which was periodically required of every household

Pachacuti

• 9th Inca ruler (r. 1438 - 1471 CE) who founded their empire with conquests in the Cuzco Valley and beyond.

  • His title Pachacuti, which he gave himself on his accession, means ‘Reverser of the World’ or ‘Earth-shaker’

• Credited with founding the site of Machu Picchu.

• Set his people on the road to prosperity and the creation of an empire which would eventually be the largest ever seen in the Americas.

• Introduced systems of tribute and taxation which were paid by conquered peoples either in the form of goods or labour.

  • These made the Incas unpopular but they were used to create an extensive road network linking towns and sacred sites.

• A system of storage houses (qollqa) were also built and dotted around the empire to ensure a plentiful food supply

• He instigated the system of a ruler nominating his principal wife from whom heirs to the throne would be drawn.

• Had historians record the important episodes of Inca history on painted tablets, which were then stored for posterity in a building at the capital where no one without authorization might enter.

• Fixed the calendar of market days and public holidays.

The Mita

• Mita meant that everyone had to eventually work for the state; think of it as a tax by the government

• This included:

  • Laboring on large state farms or “sun farms” which supported temples & religious institutions

  • Herded (llamas, alpacas)

  • Mined (silver, gold)

  • Served in military

  • Toiled on state-directed construction projects (building roads/temples)

  • Those with particular skills were put to work manufacturing textiles, metal goods, ceramics, and stonework

  • Most well-known of specialists were “chosen women”

• Mita was eventually utilized by the Spanish conquerors to force natives to mine silver

Incan Women

• Mexicas and Incas were similar in their treatment of women

• Both utilized “gender parallelism” in which “women and men operate in two separate but equivalent spheres, each gender enjoying autonomy in its own sphere”

• Parallel hierarchies of men and women governed the empire