Transcript Olmec Mayans Aztecs Incas

Olmec
Mayans
Aztecs
Incas
Olmecs and Mayans
Olmecs
• Earliest known ceremonial centers of the
ancient Americas appeared near modern
day Veracruz around 1200 B.C.
• “Olmec” means “Rubber People”
• Agricultural Drainage
• Cities
• A social hierarchy
Decline of the Olmec
• Olmecs systematically destroyed their
ceremonial centers
– Statues were broken and buried, monuments
defaced, and capitals burned
• No one knows why
• By about 400 B.C., Olmec society had
fallen on hard times and other societies
soon eclipsed it
Mayans
• Began to develop
around 300 A.D. in
what is now southern
Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize, Honduras, and
El Salvador
• Known as “The
People of the Jaguar”
Olmec Influence on the Mayans
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Maize
Ceremonial centers with temple pyramids
Calendar based on the Olmec one
Ball games
Rituals involving human sacrifice
Agriculture
Maize
Cacao
Agriculture
– Soil in Mesoamerican
lowlands was thin and
quickly lost fertility
– Mayans built terraces
– Raised maize, cotton,
and cacao
– Cacao was a precious
commodity consumed
mostly by nobles and
even used as money
Cacao tree
Cities
Social Hierarchy
A Mayan Warrior
A Mayan Priest
Religion and Education
Human Sacrifice and Bloodletting Ritual
Religion: Bloodletting Rituals
• Mayans believed the
shedding of human
blood would prompt
the gods to send rain
to water the maize
• Bloodletting involved
both war captives and
Mayan royals
Mayan queen holds a bowl filled with
strips of paper used to collect blood.
Religion: Bloodletting
• A popular bloodletting
ritual was for a Mayan
to pierce his own
tongue and thread a
thin rope through the
hole, thus letting the
blood run down the
rope
Religion: The Ball Game
• Mayans inherited a ball game from the Olmecs
that was an important part of Mayan political and
religious festivals
• High-ranking captives were forced to play the
game for their very lives
– The losers became sacrificial victims and faced
torture and execution immediately following the match
• Object of the game was to propel an 8 inch ball
of solid baked rubber through a ring or onto a
marker without using your hands
Mayan Ball Court
New Technologies
Mayan Calendar
Observatory at El Caracol
New Technologies
• Excelled in astronomy and
mathematics
– Could plot planetary cycles and
predict eclipses of the sun and
moon
– Invented the concept of zero
and used a symbol to
represent zero mathematically,
which facilitated the
manipulation of large numbers
– By combining astronomy and
mathematics, calculated the
length of the solar year at
365.242 days– about 17
seconds shorter than the figure
reached by modern
astronomers
Mayan
numerical
system
Art and Writing
Mayan writing
Mayan Decline
• By about 800, most Mayan populations had
begun to desert their cities
– Full scale decline followed everywhere but in the
northern Yucatan
• Possible causes include foreign invasion,
internal dissension and civil war, failure of the
water control system leading to agricultural
disaster, ecological problems caused by
destruction of the forests, epidemic diseases,
and natural disasters
What does this have to do with the Aztecs?
The Aztec Empire
The Aztec Empire is part of Mexico today.
According to Aztec legend, the gods told the nomadic people who had entered
the Valley of Mexico to search for an eagle peached on the top of a cactus.
The eagle would be holding a snake in its beak. When they saw the sign on a
swampy island in Lake Texcoco they established the city of Tenochtitlan
Mexico’s Flag
Tenochititlan
• Tenochititlan was linked to the mainland with causeways. It had
an aqueduct to ensure a fresh water supply and sewers carried
waste materials away.
Tenochititlan
Tenochititlan
• "The city has many squares where
markets are held and trading is carried
on.There is one square where there are
daily more than 60,000 souls, buying and
selling, and where are found all the kinds
of merchandise produced in these
countries, including food products, jewels
of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper,
zinc, bones, shells, and feathers
Food and work
The Aztec used a lot of herb and prayer in their medicine. The
Aztec also developed a writing system with pictographs that gave
a image of the story.
Aztecs ate corn and beans.
Tortillas grilled and dipped in
tomatoes. They also ate pancakes
stuffed with tadpoles.
Montezuma
Montezuma was the Emperor of the Aztecs in the Sixteenth Century.
He was a conquering king who often went to war with his neighbors.
He kept the gods on his side by making human sacrifices to the gods.
Human Sacrifices
• Tens of thousands of
prisoners were sacrificed at
a time. Each had to be
individually killed. The usual
method of sacrifice was to
open the victims chest, pull
out his heart while he was
still alive and then knock
the victim down the temple
stairs. The temple stairs
were covered in blood.
The Aztec Temple
Why Sacrifice?
Huitzlopochtli, the
sun and war god
battled the forces of
darkness each night
and was re-born
each morning.
There was no
guarantee the sun
would win, so
human sacrifices
were made to help
him.
Incas
Inca
Inca
• By the 13th Century, the Inca had established
domination over the regional states in Andean
South America
• In 1438, Pachacuti launched a series of military
campaigns that greatly expanded Inca authority
• By the late 15th Century, the Inca empire
covered more than 2,500 miles, embracing
almost all of modern Peru, most of Ecuador,
much of Bolivia, and parts of Chile and
Argentina
Agriculture
Llamas
Terraced farm land
Agriculture
• Intensive agricultural techniques
– Inca empire spanned many types of
environments and required terraces to make
farmland out of the mountainous terrain
– Chief crop was the potato
– Herded llamas and alpacas for meat, wool,
hides, and dung (used as fuel)
Social Hierarchy
• Chief ruler was a god-king who
theoretically owned everything and was an
absolute and infallible ruler
• Dead rulers retained their prestige even
after death
– Remains were mummified and state
deliberations often took place in their
presence in order to benefit from their counsel
– Were seen as intermediaries with the gods
Social Hierarchy
• Aristocrats lived privileged lives including
fine foods, embroidered clothes, and
large ears spools
– Spanish called them “big ears”
Inca ear spools
Cities
Cities: Cuzco
• Inca capital at Cuzco served as the
administrative, religious, and ceremonial
center of the empire
• May have supported 300,000 residents at
the height of the Inca empire in the late
15th Century
• Tremendous system of roads emanated
from Cuzco
New Technologies
Major Roads of
the Inca Empire
Economic Exchange
Inca gold
Economic Exchange
• Gold, the Inca’s most
valuable commodity,
proved to be their
undoing when Spanish
conquistadors destroyed
much of the empire in the
early 1500s in search of
gold
• The Spanish melted
down almost all the gold
so few works of art
remain
Arrival of Francisco Pizarro in
South America
Religion and Education
Inti Raymi, the feast of the sun
Art and Writing
quipu
Art and Writing
• The Inca had no writing
• Instead they kept records
using a quipu
– A array of small cords of
various colors and lengths,
all suspended from a thick
cord
– By tying knots in the small
cords, Inca could record
statistical information
586 on a quipu