The human being was still in the Upper Paleolithic period 16000 years ago, that is, in the Stone Age, or more precisely in the Mesolithic or Neolithic period, and has yet to discover metals. Upon arriving to new places, there were always some humans who settled there and others who continued their journey, in search of better living conditions. So gradually they moved southward because ice prevailed in the north.
The Asians who settled in the northern part of the American continent never created a civilization; they always lived in prehistory and have never known a culture, because life was a struggle for survival. They hunted, fished, struggled to stay warm and little else, they could not cultivate the land, especially not cereals.
As we said in another text, where there was no cereal, there was no civilization, because it is cereals that provide surpluses that can be easily stored for a long time, leading human beings to emancipate themselves from nature. Without agriculture there is no culture, and the king of crops is the cereal, because it is the most complete of all foods, gives more lasting energy, and can be stored from one year to the next.
The only ancient civilizations that emerged on the American continent are those in Central America, where the mild climate, similar to that of the Fertile Crescent, allowed for the practice of agriculture, especially corn, which is the basis of the Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilizations that were born there.
Civilizations Before the Mayans
If we consider that history begins with the appearance of writing, the Mayan civilization is the first in the American continent. However, if we consider other elements beyond writing that denote culture, such as agricultural development, the construction of stone monuments, then we have to ask ourselves whether it is appropriate to place writing as the divider between Prehistory and History.
The Caral Civilization
Also known as Caral-Supe or Norte Chico, it is considered to be the oldest civilization in the Americas. It flourished between the years 3000 – 2500 B.C. in the north-central region of the coast of Peru. It dates from the pre-ceramic Neolithic period.
The total absence of pottery and the presence of large structures, such as temples and pyramids, first denotes that it was a very religious society with a high degree of technology and social organization to solve the problems of construction and the high costs of materials and energy. This is what we can deduce, since they did not develop any writing, so we are not even told why they built such complex monuments.
The Olmec Civilization
The Olmec civilization flourished on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico between 1200-400 B.C. It built the first stone pyramids on the North American continent, as well as the famous "baby-faced" heads monuments. The Olmecs were ruled by kings, built huge pyramids, domesticated beans, and developed the oldest writing in the Americas. The Olmec people also domesticated the cocoa tree and gave chocolate to the world.
Archaeologists and linguists have recently deciphered the ancient writing of the Olmecs which they have designated as Epi-Olmec. This writing is closely related to the ancient Mayan writing that was also recently deciphered that may well have originated from the hieroglyphics of the Olmecs. Here is a short text in this language:
Once upon a time there was a warrior named Lord of the Harvest Mountain. He lived in a hot and humid land by the bend of a river that flowed into another river which flowed into the sea. He fought many battles and endured many blood rituals, because this warrior was the ruler of the people by the bend of the river.
MAYAN CIVILIZATION (2500 B.C. – 1500 A.D.)
The main centers where this civilization flourished are Guatemala, southern Mexico with some traces in El Salvador, Belize, and Honduras.
Religion
Everything that exists, whether stone, vegetable, animal, or human, has a common origin, which is spiritual, transcendent or essential (Uk'u'x). This invisible common origin is our true Forming Mother, pure Intelligence and Nature, and our true Creator Father, pure Consciousness and Will. That is why the Mayans say that "everything has a father and a mother”. In this lies the sacredness of the essence of the totality of things and creatures in the universe.
We observe still some remnants of animism, because for the Mayans everything has life: the valleys and the mountains, the lakes, and the seas, what is in the sky and what is on earth. Recognizing the sacredness of life in us makes the sacredness in others simple and vivid. With this common origin and in this life that completes us, this principle of the Mayan worldview is based on: everything is sacred, loq' in Mayan k'iche language has the meaning of "sacred", an expression that holds a close relationship with love, because the root of "loq'oq'ej" is literally to love.
When one discovers the common origin of existence and life, the link between all things and beings becomes clear, which translates into the experience of "feeling the sacred" as pure love and devotion, respect and gratitude.
They were polytheistic, considering that the gods inhabited a place called Tamoanchan. The events of the natural world were governed by spiritual forces and the power of the ancestors. In addition, places in nature were thought to be sacred sites. Caves, for example, were seen as doorways to the supernatural world and were places where a series of rituals took place. The Mayans believed that the fate of mankind was ruled by the gods, so religion was present in all the cultural activities of the people.
Human sacrifices were important to keep the gods satisfied and thus ensure the functioning and harmony of the universe. The sacrificed were almost always prisoners of war, but there were also those who offered themselves voluntarily. The most common form of sacrificial ritual was decapitation and removal of the heart while it was still beating.
Society, Culture and Politics
The Maya had a hierarchical society, that is, divided into very well-defined social groups, each with distinct functions. The largest group in society was the peasants, those responsible for agriculture and the city’s supply. They grew corn, cereal considered sacred, cotton, cocoa, and agave. The mode of production was collective, the land was not private property, and theoretically, the state owned all the land. As we saw in other ancient societies.
The elite were responsible for the administration of the city-states and for religious functions. The ultimate authority and the top of the Maya social pyramid was the king of each city, called the ajaw. Here too, the authority and power were exercised in the name of a god.
The Mayans saw the world as functioning cyclically, that is, in cycles of phases that would repeat themselves indefinitely. Within this view, they had a dual calendar system in which one consisted of 365 days (called Haab) and the other of 260 days (called Tzolkin).
They developed their own writing system, almost indecipherable to this day, based on the representation of objects and ideas. It is known to have had a high degree of abstraction. They never developed an alphabet, and settled for pictorial representation of reality, as happened with the ancient hieroglyphics of Egypt and China.
Like the Sumerians, the Mayans never formed a proper empire; they were independent city-states, with a common culture, but the power was not centralized on one emperor, as was the case in Egypt and China. This made them easily conquered by the Aztecs from the north, who came to form an empire because they understood that the prevailing power should be centralized.
Decline of the Maya
When the Europeans arrived in Central America, they found the Mayan cities uninhabited in the middle of over-grown forests, proof that the Mayans had abandoned them some time ago. Some people think that it was wars between city-states that decimated the population, others that it was diseases, and still others an ecological disaster.
According to this last theory, what kept this culture and society going was the massive construction of temples and pyramids that required a lot of lime. When lime began to run out because there was no more firewood to turn limestone into lime, the hierarchy of Mayan society began to crumble, so the people abandoned urban life and in order to subsist, returned to their fields.
INCA CIVILIZATION (1200 A.D. – 1532 A.D.)
Most likely they were heirs to the Caral civilization, because they shared the same territory: Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, southern Colombia, all of Chile and Northern Argentina.
Political Organization
The highest authority was the king or Inca, considered the son of the Sun, who ruled by divine right. The highest positions in the administration of the Empire were occupied by the relatives of the Inca. They formed a nobility that took care of the complex organization of the state. A powerful army, led by generals from the royal family, was responsible for the expansion, conquest, and control of the conquered territories.
Under the rule of the nobility was the rest of the population – farmers and craftsmen. The peasants were organized into communities of related people called ayllus, headed by a curaca. The curaca distributed the work and produce, and responded to the authorities for his ayllu.
Each social group had its specific obligations. The hierarchies established the activities to be performed by each group, and even the clothing they could wear, as well as the produce they could consume. Some materials, such as gold, silver, and certain textiles, were reserved for the Inca and could only be used by him and some of his immediate family members. This reminds us of the Middle Ages in Europe.
The Inca economy was based on agricultural production. The land belonged to the state, which divided it up: one third of the production was dedicated for the Inca, another third for the priests, and the last third for the ayllus or communities.
The Incas formed a truly cohesive and centralized empire; they had a network of roads that allowed rapid communication between all regions. Messengers, called chasquis, carried communications between different points. These roads had posts, called tambos, where travelers could find room and board. This reminds us of the Satraps of the Persian Empire.
Although they did not have alphabetic writing, they had several methods of recording and communicating visual information. Among them was the quipus, a series of strings of different colors with knots, which allowed them to keep accounts and memories of some narratives.
Religion
Like the Mayans, the Incas understood that the nature around them was sacred. They considered many elements of nature, people, objects, etc. to be sacred, which were called huaca. They respected the beliefs of the peoples they conquered, but imposed the worship of the Sun, their principal deity. They also worshipped the Pachamama (Mother Earth), Viracocha, the creator of the world, and Illapa, the god of the thunder and storm.
The Inca empire was conquered by the Spanish under Francisco Pizarro in 1532, when Emperor Atahualpa was taken prisoner. Although some pockets of resistance remained until 1572, they never posed a threat to the new colonial order.
AZTEC CIVILIZATION (1345 A.D. – 1521 A.D.)
A fierce, intelligent, and enterprising people from northern Mexico, where they were hunters and gatherers, emigrated south, settling around Lake Texcoco, where today’s Mexico City is located. They soon drained the lake and founded their first city, Tenochtitlán, establishing alliances with neighboring towns. Little by little, they took over everything and everyone around them, due to their proficiency in the arts of war.
Political Organization
Their form of government was monarchical and elective, that is, it was not hereditary: the emperor did not pass down the power to his son; his successor was elected through a Supreme Council, called Tlatocan, whose representatives belonged to the Aztec nobility, and it was generally a member of this council who ascended to the throne.
Once elected, the emperor (Tlatoani) was considered divine and therefore possessed unlimited powers over Aztec society. Under his command, there was an entire bureaucratic network, consisting of priests, tax collectors (tecutli), and trade inspectors.
The Aztecs formed a totalitarian empire that consisted of city-states with local rulers elected by the same high council responsible for electing the emperor. Their responsibility was to maintain control of these small cities to successfully ensure the absolute dominance of the empire.
Religion
"Love is paid with love" is said in Aztec as "blood is paid with blood". The Aztec gods required a lot of blood from animal and human sacrifices to be appeased. Blood was the primordial food of the gods who, if not fed regularly, would make life very difficult for the Aztecs.
Most of the gods that formed the Aztec pantheon were related to the solar cycle and, in turn, to all the agricultural activities that depended on it. Among the most important gods, we must first highlight Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Tlaloc, the goddess of rain. Countless of children were sacrificed to the latter every year on mountain tops. The more these children cried, the more rain would fall that year. Other gods were Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, and Coatlicue, the mother goddess.
Culture, Customs, and Habits
Education was compulsory, Aztec children went to schools to study, and military education was part of the curriculum. The Aztec people were a warlike people, much like the Spartans of Greece: children were trained for war from an early age.
The Aztec society was patriarchal, and therefore, women stayed at home and took care of household matters, while men dedicated themselves to agricultural work, trade, social relations and war. The Aztecs were closely connected to the spiritual and religious world, so their customs included practices of many rituals and prayers.
Each house had a reserved place, considered a small sanctuary, where family members would recollect themselves in prayer. Among other practices of spiritual asceticism, the practice of fasting was very important in the life of the Aztecs. It was practiced by the vast majority of the population, including by the emperor himself.
Conquest of the Empire by Hernan Cortez
Montezuma was the eleventh and last emperor before the Spaniard Hernan Cortez arrived and conquered the Aztec Empire which was at its height. It did not happen overnight, because the Aztecs were feisty, well organized, and possessed, of course, numerical advantage. Then as it is today, the superiority of arms is more important than numerical superiority, and as the result, Cortez had a relatively easy victory.
This conquest happened despite the many advances of these Mayan, Inca, and Aztec societies, especially the Mayans who had a very advanced knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and architecture, and who developed a writing that only began to be deciphered at the end of the 19th century.
The wealthy priests devised a vigesimal numbering system that employed zero, and their notions of astronomy enabled them to devise a 365-day calendar and observe the sky from stepped pyramids.
Despite these advances, these three peoples had not yet reached the Iron Age, while the Spanish, in addition to iron weapons, had cannons, muskets and horses giving them a great advantage and speed. The conquest was sadly easy.
Colonization and Colonization
There is an inscription at the foot of a monument in the center of Mexico City that reads like this: In the conquest there were neither winners or losers, it was only the painful birth of the mestizo nation that is today Mexico. In fact, more than 80% of Mexico's population is mixed race, that is, the result of the union or interbreeding between Spaniards, Aztecs, Mayans, and other indigenous peoples.
The same did not happen in the colonization of North America, made also by people who were also Europeans, but of a different nature. Here there were few mestizos because the indigenous people were not only defeated but also decimated in a campaign of authentic ethnic cleansing that lasts to this day. The few that escaped live today paternalistically in reservations, where there is no shortage of drugs and alcohol to continue the annihilation this time a suicidal annihilation with the complicity of the government.
Conclusion: We learn two things from the vision of the world of the Mayan, Inca, and Aztec peoples: first, that all of nature is integrated, ordered, and interrelated; second, that all the elements that exist in nature, that is, everything in the universe is animate and has life; each is a complement and completes the others.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
Well enlightened about the history of the Americas, thank you
ReplyDelete