Most people are aware that the Mesoamericans, such as the Aztec, Maya, etc built big pyramids, were good at mathematics and calendars... that's pretty much it.
What if I also told you that their cities rivaled what you saw in Ancient Greece and even contemporary 16th century europe, with populations in the tens to even hundreds of thousands, with
sewage systems, plumbing, pressurized fountains, and toilets, and
even some build on lakes out of artificial islands, with grids of canals and gardens throughout? Or how their
sanitation and medical practices were some of the most advanced in the world, with buildings and streets washed daily, people bathing multiple times a week; strict grooming and hygine standards, state ran hosptials, and empirically based medicaltreatements and taxonomic categorizational systems for herbs, flowers, and other plant life? That they had
formal, bureaucratic governments with courts and legal systems?
It one of only 3 places in the world where writing was independently invented: Not just with simple pictographic scripts, either:
the infamous Maya hieroglyphs are actually a full, true written language, with
many other Mesoamerican scripts having varying degrees of phonetic elements as well.. They had books, too, made of paper made from tree bark
The Maya, in addition to keeping books, would meticulously catalog the political history and lives of their rulers into stone stela: To this day we have detailed family trees, and records of who did what on what day, records of wars, political marriages, and the like thank to those. For the Aztec, in addition to professional philosophers, called
tlamatini, who would often teach at schools for the children of nobility (though even commoners attended schools, too in what was possible the world's first state-ran education system), for example, we have remaining works of poetry, as
this excerpt from
1491, New Revelations of the Americas From Before Columbus, shows
I
cannot recommend reading that entire excerpt enough, but I will post a short excerpt to entice people to:
"Truly do we live on Earth?" asked a poem... attributed to Nezahualcóyotl (1402–72), a founding figure in Mesoamerican thought and the tlatoani of Texcoco... His lyric, among the most famous in the Nahuatl canon, answers its own question:
Not forever on earth; only a little while here. Be it jade, it shatters. Be it gold, it breaks. Be it a quetzal feather, it tears apart Not forever on earth; only a little while here
....thinkers in many cultures have drawn solace from the prospect of life after death.... "Do flowers go to the region of the dead?" Nezahualcóyotl asked. "In the Beyond, are we still dead or do we live?" Many if not most tlamatinime saw existence as Nabokov feared: "a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
....one exit from this philosophical blind alley was seen by the fifteenth-century poet Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin, who described it metaphorically... by invoking the coyolli bird, known for its bell-like song:
He goes his way singing, offering flowers. And his words rain down Like jade and quetzal plumes. Is this what pleases the Giver of Life? Is that the only truth on earth?
...the Nahuatl context..."Flowers and song" was a.... double epithet for poetry... "jade and quetzal feathers" was a synecdoche for great value, in the way that Europeans might refer to "gold and silver." The song of the bird, spontaneously produced, stands for aesthetic inspiration. Ayocuan was suggesting, León-Portilla said, that there is a time when humankind can touch the enduring truths that underlie our fleeting lives. That time is at the moment of artistic creation
Other good writups on Aztec ethical philosophy is
here and
here, and I talk about their metaphysical philsophy
here
Nezahualcóyotl, mentioned above, is also famous for being an engineer, he designed Tenochtitlan (the Aztec captial)'s aqueduct (a few miles long and with
two pipes and a switching mechanism, so one pipe could transfer water while the other was cleaned out); the dike that controlled water flow across the lake both cities and many others were built on or around, separating it into a brackish and fresh water sides; as well as the watering systems of the gardens and baths used by Texcoco's royalty at Texcotzinco, where water was transported
from a mountain range 5 miles away, the aquaduct at some point raising 150ft off the ground, onto a hill, where the water flowed into a series of channels and pools to control it's flow, before crossing over another aquaduct over a huge gorge, around a second hill forming a circuit around it's peak, filled the baths and a series of shrines and aeshetic displays with fountains, frescos, relifs, etc, and dropped water off via artificial waterfalls around key points of the gardens below, which had different sections designed to emulate different Mexican biomes and their specific native flora.
Another figure is
Tlahuicole a warrior from the republic of Tlaxcala, who, due to being such a badass, was the sole person ever offered his freedom by the Aztecs instead of being sacrificed, but he refused, before Montezuma II eventually convinced him to lead one of his armies against the Purepecha empire to the west, which he accepted, hoping to die in battle, except he kicked their asses, returned back tto Montezuma,
insisted be sacrificed again,which involved him being drugged, tied to a stone, and forced to fight elite warriors,with him armed only with a mock weapon, and he STILL managed to take out 8 of them
Or the Mixtec Warlord 8-deer, as
this post by
/u/snickeringshadow explains, which I will post an excerpt of:
He was born in 1063 AD to the son of the high priest of a town called Tilantogo. He made a name for himself fighting as a general for the lord of a town called Jaltepec. At 20, he managed to convince one of the oracles to allow him to invade the lands of the Chatino people on the Pacific coast and found a new town there, Tututepec (which later grew into a massive city-state that successfully resisted the Aztec Empire). While he was away, the lord of his home town of Tilantongo died with no heirs, and Eight-Deer inherited the throne
When he got back to Tilantongo, he made an alliance with a group called the Toltecs, who bestowed on him a noble title. Now that he had an outside source of legitimacy, he felt that he didn't need to play by the oracles' rules anymore and went on a warpath. He conquers a huge swath of the Mixtec region. He even invades his wife's home town and kills every single member of his wife's family except an infant named 4-Wind. In a classic ironic twist, the little boy he let live grows up to an adult and ends up assassinating his uncle Eight-Deer. After his death, his empire in the highlands crumbles and the Mixtecs go back to the same warring dynastic feuds they'd been fighting for centuries.
So, why don't we teach about Mesoameriican literature and key historical figures like we do the greeks?
Of the thousands of written works over nearly 2000 years, less then 20 are left. The Spanish burned them all.
In terms of paintings, jewelry, sculpture, and crafted art, it was all almost destroyed or melted down, too.
As
/u/snickeringshadow put in a
higher level post to what I linked before
From the eight surviving Mixtec codices, we can reconstruct the history of this one valley in Oaxaca going back 800 years...had the other books survived, we would have something approaching a complete history....going back to the Early Postclassic, and in some regions probably earlier. Put simply, the Spanish book burning is why we talk about Mesoamerica in archaeology classes and not history classes
or as
/u/Ahhuatl puts in
this what if post, if their works survived:
...their successors would look to the Aztecs just like modern Westerners... to.... Greece. For Europe.... the abilities of the Native American mind could not be denied or rationalized away. It would have meant the injection of new arts, philosophy, mathematics, methods of agriculture, values, history, drama and more. What we lost in the Conquest is unimaginable. Inconceivable. Akin to knowing nothing about Caesar or Confucius or Rameses beyond what color bowl they ate out of
If you look at modern games, movies, anime, comics, and see the massive influence and cultural mixing between the West and the East, with the amount of products and media influenced by japan etc
that's what we lost out on: An entire third pillar of human history and culture, gone
We even have a taste of what this could have been: In the early colonial era, we have the Spanish commission native featherworkers to produce amazing paintings, made not of paint,
but of thousands of feathers, so finely weaved together that
you can't even tell they aren't normal paintings without a magnifying lense (or a
gigapixel photograph)
That being said, While virtually all but a few examples of pre-contact writing books survive, thankfully much of the Maya's stone inscriptions do, so there's a ton of detailed information on the political histories of certain Maya cities: The births and deaths of rulers, wars, alliances, political marriages, etc, albiet in a sort of barbones, dry "On X date Y happened" format, usually
Also, there are outright hundreds of manuscripts and documents in both Spanish and Nahuatl (the Aztec language) by Spanish Friars and Aztec nobles detailing their society and history in depth from the early colonial period: For example, Duran's
History of the Indies of New Spain has hundreds of pages of detailed Aztec history (albeit obviously romanticized and propagandized to a degree, like most ancient historical records) down to specific statements by specific political official's; while Sahagun's similarly titled
A General History of the Things of New Spain is 2000 pages of detailed information on history, society, religion, cultural norms, etc; down to the specific processes used to make metal jewelry, figures of speech and metaphors, medical treatments, etc. There's outright enough information that there have been entire books written solely about specific Aztec politicians, such as *Tlacaelel Remembered: Mastermind of the Aztec Empire * and
The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics
The quote I gave last comment by
/u/Ahhuatl also outlines how we have a notable 8 surviving Mixtec books, which document the political history of many Mixtec cities in the same way Maya inscriptions did. Other civilizations such as the Zapotec, Purepecha, Totonac, Otomi, etc do not fare as well, and we have mostly archaeological data to go off of, with only a few colional era sources detailing their history and culture if at all, but archaeology alone can tell you more then you might think
So there's more then enough info that we really should and could be teaching people about it all in schools more then we do.
This post and it's responses, particularly by
/u/400-rabbits, goes into this more.
Schools and educators could do way, way more to be teaching people about the history and culture of these civilizations: The fact that we do only teach people here in the US about the Aztec, Maya, and Olmec (The Inca are from an entirely seperate region, with their own dozens of civilizations) and not much about them other then "Big Heads, Pyramids, Calenders, and Human sacrifice" and the Spanish Conquest is a travesty. And lessons on the Conquest itself is taught poorly: People are taught it ended in 1521 with the fall of the Aztec capital or that a bunch of other city-states allied with the Spanish due to Aztec oppression, but in reality there were hundreds of other non Aztec-affiliated city-states and empires in the region, and a few former Aztec ones, that did not cede to Spanish authority: It took
decades of hard fighting, with most of it being done by native armies and soldiers for most of the region to be pacified, even as it was being crippled by diseases, and most of the city-states that allied with Cortes
did so out of geopolitical opportunism rather
then any sort of hatred for the Aztec; and in general, people are taught that the Spanish Conquest was some unavoidable thing,
when it was very possible for it to have not succeeded
So, For more information:
I have a list of around 100 askhistorian posts about Mesoamerican history
here, which can be a great starting point
I also have a personal booklist, but as it's unorganized, and some are just stuff I thought seemed cool rather then recommendations from knowledgeable people but that's
here. Worth noting that there's also some stuff on the Andes in both pastebins, not just Mesoamerica; and that the booklist is primarily focused on modern works about Mesoamerican history: Primary and secondary sources, such as actual native texts, accounts from conquistadors/friars, are excluded, such as:
- Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl's works
- Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex
- Diego Duran's History of the Indies of New Spain
- Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc's Crónica Mexicayotl
- Diego Muñoz Camargo's History of Tlaxcala
- Chimalpahin/Chimalpain Cuauhtlehuanitzin/Quauhtlehuanitzin's works, such as the Codex Chimalpahin
- Juan Bautista Pomar's Relación de Texcoco, Relación de Juan Bautista Pomar, and Romances de los señores de Nueva España
- The Cantares Mexicanos
- Cortes's letters
- Bernal Diaz del Castillo's The True History of the Conquest of New Spain
- An Anonymous Conquistador's Narrative of Some Things of New Spain
I exclude these from the booklist since 1. many of these don't have english translations, and 2. you really need some sort of accompanying work from modern authors that point out their issues, since while they are invaluable there are bias issues; and for many I don't know what a good set of annotations are/what's the best translations, and for the ones I do, I haven't sat down and made a list yet, will update this comment when I do.
Also,
r/Askhistorians has a booklist here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/americas/latinamerica#wiki_pre-columbian
FAMSI is also a fantastic resource, though it might be a bit hard to parse for newcomers. Mexicolore is easily digestable and has a lot of good, neat info, but there's some errors mixed in there since whle it has a lot of articles written by experts, the site's owners themselves aren't historians, so as with FAMSI it might be better to read the askhistorians links first so you can have a foundation to know what seems suspect or not.
In terms of art rather then information, such as artistic recreations:
- Angus Mcbride
- H. Tom Hall
- Louis S. Glanzman
- Scott and Stuart Gentling
- Tomas J. Filsinger
- Kamazotz/Zotzcomic on twitter/deviantart/facebook
- OHS688 on Twitter (Note: incluides furry content at times)
- Rafael Mena on Artstation/Deviantart
- Nosuku-K on Deivantart and pixiv (Note: are chibi styled, but are generally accurate despite that)
- Paul Guinan's Aztec Empire comic
I have a lot of art from all of these sources saved, and many, such as the Gentlings, can be hard to find, but I'm happy to share what I got if somebody PM's me. There's a bunch more artists, too, but i'm hitting the character limit.
Also, for specific reddit users, check out any and all posts made by
/u/400-rabbits,
/u/Mictlantecuhtl,
/u/Ucumu, who are all experts. I'm not an expert, but I also frequently make comments about Mesoamerican history. I've linked to a lot of the good ones i';ve made over the course of this, and I don't have time to figure out which ones I didn't link to here yet (I know
this post talking about how "Aztec" can mean different things,
this 25,000 character writeup talking about Aztec warfare,
this writup on the diversity of Mesoamerican weapons, or
this comment about why they seemingly didn't use wheels for transportation or metal arms/armor; or
this comment on the city of teotihuacan;
this comment on Mesoamerican urban design norms, or
this regarding buildings/their paint) but I might go back and edit this comment/this whole series with more stuff/that sort of thing.
Lastly, Kings & Generals and Invicta on youtube have some great videos on the Aztec and Maya, easily the best on youtube; and there's the underrated and underviewed
Aztlan Historian who focuses on Mesoamerican history.
And finally, for you
/u/voyagoer , I'll end this with this summary of Mesoamerican history, Use
this image to give some geographic context to the cities mentioned, and know that the Preclassic Period covers roughly 1400BC to 100AD, the Classic 200AD to 800AD, and Postclassic 900AD to 1521AD, arguably 1697, when the last Maya city-state falls to the Spanish
The Preclassic Period
In 1400 BC, around the Gulf Coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Olmec site of San Lorezno becomes the region's first urban center in 1400 BC, and becomes abandoned by 900 BC, where the more properly urban and socially complex city of La Venta rises to prominence, which is also when our sole example of Olmec writing dates back to. In the following centuries, urban, state societies continue to pop up, notable ones being the early Maya cities such as El Mirador and Kaminaljuyu; the Zapotec city of Monte Alban in Oaxaca, and the rise of the Epi-Olmec culture out of the ashes of the Olmec; and all 3 develop writing; with many other independent towns and some cities popping up all over. In Western Mexico, during the same period as the Olmec the Capacha are a culture that developed independently from them, with far reaching examples of pottery and likely trade, but we don't know much about them or Western Mexican cultures in general
The Early Classic Period
By around 0-200AD, urban cities with state governments and writing (for the elite, anyways) had become the norm in Mesoamerica, marking the transition to the Classical Period. The Maya are at their height here, with many dozens of large, notable city-states & kingdoms, and thousands of smaller towns all over the Yucatan. Down in Oaxcaca, The Zapotec too have formed many city-states, with Monte Alban in particular rising as the most politically powerful. In Central Mexico, in the Valley of Mexico (in what's now Mexico City, I go into more detail about the area's history
here ) a volcanic eruption displaces much of the population, including the city of Cuicuilco, the most powerful city in the area. These displaced people immigrate into
the city of Teotihuacan, which grows into a huge influential political and religious center, and with a population of up to 150,000, and eclipsing Rome in physical area, while also having a sewage system and housing even their commoners in lavish palace complexes; and is one of the largest cities in the world at the time (El Mirador was as well). Teotihuacan's influence reaches far across the region, establishing many far reaching architectural, artistic, and religious trends, such as the Talud-tablero archtectural style for pyramids, perhaps even conquering and installing rulers in Maya cities 1000 kilometers away. In western mexico, around the end of the preclassic and start of the classic, the Teuchitlan tradition, the first of Western Mexico's complex societies, emerges (maybe, again, Western Mexico's cultures are very understudied), though less so then the rest of the region
The Late Classic Period
In the latter half of the classic period, you see the rise of El Tajin as a notable influential center among the cities around the Gulf Coast in what's now Central State of Veracruz (the cities/culture there now referred to as the "Classic Veracruz") and Cholula as a notable city in Central Mexico; Monte Alban begins to fall in esteem, with the Zapotec city of Mitla becoming the most prominent city in Oaxaca instead. Teotihuacan begins to decline as well, and in the Yucatan, the cities of Tikal and Calakmul become essentially two super-power city-states among the Maya, centralizing Maya geopolitics around them. Eventually
Tikal and it's allies are able to put down Calakmul, shortly thereafter, you have the classical Maya collapse,
where due to a combination of political instability following this massive war, climate issues, and other factors, nearly all of the large powerful Maya urban centers in the southern Yucatan decline between 700 and 800 AD, with many other key centers around Mesoamerica also doing so. Throughout the Late Classic and Early-Postclassic, West Mexico develops many different city-states with increasing influence from the rest of Mesoamerica
The Early Post-Classic Period
Moving into the Early-postclassic, yet many other cities still thrive and survive, such as El Tajin and Cholula, as do Maya city-states in the Northern Yucatan, such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal. You begin to see the Mixtec in the Oaxaca and Guerrero regions begin to overtake the Zapotec in prominence, in particular a warlord by the name of 8-Deer-Jaguar-Claw
conquered and unified nearly the entire southern Oaxaca/Guerrero region into an empire. 8-deer had the blessings and support of the Toltec in Central Mexico (namely the Lord of Cholula), which were apparently, like Teotihuacan before them, a massively influential and far reaching power in the region, maybe operating out of the city of Tula, though most of our accounts of Toltec history and key rulers (such as Ce Acatl Topiltzin) are from Aztec accounts and are heavily mythologized. As a result, it's hard to separate history from myth (or from Aztec and latter Spanish attempts to twist Toltec accounts to justify their rule). Around 1100 AD, the Toltecs fall, and 8-deer is overthrown and killed in an ironic twist of fate where the one member of his enemies family who he left alive rallied a bunch of subject cities against him; though Tututepec, a city he founded, would grow into a major state of it's own.
The Late Post-Classic Period
In the 1200's, The Maya city of Mayapan comes closest to forming a unified Maya state, forming a political alliance of many of the city-states in the northern Yucatan. Due to droughts in northern mexico, you begin to see some groups of Chichimeca (nomadic tribes of Northern Mexico), the Nahuas, move further south into Central and Southern Mexico, and transition into urban societies. Notably many settling around the Valley of Mexico and the surrounding areas, led by the legendary King Xototl, displacing local Otomi cities/towns. In particular, the city of Azcapotzalco, which claims heredity from Xolotl, eventually dominates the valley. During the same time as all this in western Mexico, a Nahua group moved down into the Lake Pátzcuaro region, and takes over and becomes the ruling class of Purepecha city of of Pátzcuaro, which conquers many other cities in the area
In the 1420's, due to a succession crisis in Azcapotzalco, one of it's two heirs assassinates the other, as well as the then king of Tenochtitlan, which was one of Azcapotzalco's vassal, tributary cities; as he also had had genealogical links to the Azcapotzalco royal line and also represented a succession threat. War breaks out, and Tenochtitlan, along with the city-states of Texcoco, and Tlacopan join forces and overthrow them, forming the Aztec triple alliance ((
This is a fantastic video on this succession conflict in particular, with hardly any errors (he used a statue of Coatlicue when talking about Huitzilptiochli; repeats the "80,000 sacrifices in 4 days" myth, but that's it ) ). Over the next 100 years, they rapidly expand and conquer almost all of Central and Southern Mexico, including Otomi cities/towns in Central Mexico, Totonac and Huastec ones along the Gulf Coast (who now inhabit that area), Mixtec, Zapotec, and Tlapanec ones in Oaxaca and Guerrero, and many others.
Back to Western Mexico, in the 1450's, Pátzcuaro is overthrown by the fellow Purepecha city of Tzintzuntzan, who rapidly expands to form the Purepecha/Tarascan empire, who would be the Aztec empire's only real competition and repel numerous invasions from them, preventing their expansion and conquest over the city-states and kingdoms further West such as Colmia and Jalisco; With the Aztec and Purepecha unable to make each other budge, the Aztec, as the Spanish arrive, are in the process of expanding to the east, and starting to make inroads at Maya towns, as well as trying to besiege and blockade Tlaxcala, a unified republic of 4 Nahua city-states (
complete with senate) in an adjacent valley from the Valley of Mexico (alongside Cholula, Huextozinco, and some other cities/towns) who had been able to escape conquest due to their defensible position (other notable unconquered enclaves being the Mixtec kingdom of Tututepec, the Tlapenec kingdom of Yopitzinco, and the Otomi kingdom of Metztitlan.
This is the state of things when the Spanish arrive
Again, tho this is a
really short summary. If you want to know more about specific wars, rulers, people's daily lives, etc; please check out the links i've been posting and the resources I provide
It is
also worth noting that down in South America, there's an
entirely separate cradle of civilizations in the Andes, to which the Inca belong to. I am far less informed on Andean civilizations, but they have their own long history: In addition to the Inca, you had the Moche and Chavin civilizations early on from 500BC-500AD, then the Wari and Tiwanku kingdoms over the next few centuries, the Sican civilization, and the Kingdom of Chimor during the early 2nd millenium AD which was the largest state in the region before the kingdom of Cusco conquered it and expanded as the Inca Empire, etc.
www.resetera.com
www.reddit.com
