How did Mesoamerican civilizations adopt and adapt the cultures of earlier civilizations?
Why did some Aztec rebel against Moctezuma II?
What attitude do you think the conquistadors had toward the Aztec? Explain.
Explanation: The Geography of the Americas
The Americas constitute one of the worldâs four geographical zones. Each of these belts is a large area of the world that developed almost entirely separately from the others during the eras of hunting and gathering and of early agriculture. The four world zones are the Afro-Eurasian zone, the Americas, the Australasian zone, and the Pacific.
A calendar of the solar year of 365 days governed the agricultural cycle and a calendar of the ritual year of 260 days dictated daily affairs; these two calendars coincided every 52 years. A third calendar, called the Long Count calendar, extended back to the date August 13, 3114 BCE (on the Gregorian calendar), to record the large-scale passage of time. The Maya calculated a solar year as 365.242 days, about 17 seconds shorter than the figures of modern astronomers. They also introduced the concept of zero; the first evidence of zero as a number dates from 357 BCE, but it may go back further, to Olmec times. In Afro-Eurasia, Hindu scholars first represented zero in the 800s CE.
the Popol Vuh, that the gods created people out of their own genius and sacrifice, nothing else. The Maya believed that the gods set the Sun burning by sacrificing themselves to start it. Since they believed that the Sunâs energy would continue only with the life-giving energy found in human blood to replenish it, they practiced ritual bloodletting achieved by using cactus or bone spines to pierce their earlobes, hands, or penises. They also carried out some ritual sacrifice of human victims. The Maya may have inherited their calendar and sacrificial rituals from the Olmecs.
Certainly the Maya inherited from the Olmecs a ball game played with a rubber ball about eight inches (20 centimeters) in diameter. The object was to put the ball through a high ring without using hands (no-handed basketball!). Sometimes the game was played for simple sport, but sometimes high-ranking captives were forced to play for their lives. The losers were sacrificed to the gods, and their heads were displayed on racks alongside some ball courts.
Between 800 and 925 CE Mayan society experienced a rapid transition. The world of cities ended as populations moved back into the countryside. Historians debate the possible causes of the change â civil revolts, invasions, erosion, earthquakes, disease, drought. Likely some d on the shore of a large lake in the Valley of Mexico, where they settled in 1325. They were given the name Aztecs by the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in the early 19th century.
The Mexica/Aztecs built up their food production by creating floating islands of soil, called chinampas, held together by willow trees. Their men hired themselves out as paid soldiers to other towns until they became strong enough to conquer others on their own. In 1428 they allied themselves with two other neighboring cities to form the so-called Triple Alliance and set out to conquer other cities to provide tribute that could support the Allianceâs expanding population. The conquests would also provide sacrificial victims for their religious rituals, carried down from the Olmecs, Mayans, and TeotihuacĂĄnians.
The Aztecs bestowed great honor to their warriors, building their society around a military elite. A council of the most successful warriors chose the ruler. Warriors could wear fine cotton cloth and feathers instead of clothing made from the fibers of an agave-like plant; they were believed to go straight to the paradise of the Sun God if they died in battle. (This also applied to women who died in childbirth with their first child.) Priests also ranked among the elite. Most people were commoners who cultivated land and a large number of slaves worked mostly as domestic servants.
The god of war, Huitzilopochli (we-tsee-loh-POCK-tlee), came to be the prevailing god in Tenochtitlan, and his priests placed more emphasis on human sacrifice than did earlier traditions. Priests laid the victims â mostly captives of war â over a curved stone high on a pyramid and cut open the chest with an obsid- ian blade to fling the still-beating heart into a ceremonial basin, while the desired blood flowed down the pyramid.
At the same time that the elites supported warfare, they also devoted themselves to poetry, which they considered the highest art. One of the rulers of another city in the Triple Alliance, Nezahualcoyotl (âHungry Coyoteâ), composed this poem in the early 1400s, revealing the Aztec sense of the fleeting world.
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