Summary
Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America
Highlights
The First Empire
The Olmecs, flourishing from 1200-400 BCE, served as the foundational civilization for later Maya and Aztec cultures. Known for their mysterious colossal helmeted head sculptures and jade masks, they were long identified by their artistic style before being recognized as a distinct people.
The Empires of Central and South America
Three major empires defined the region: the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. While the Aztecs and Incas were conquered by the Spanish, the Mayan civilization mysteriously declined centuries earlier. Theories regarding the Mayan collapse include environmental exhaustion, food shortages, and increased warfare, though the exact cause remains unknown.
The Aztecs
The Aztec Empire was a triple alliance led by the Mexica, centered in the island capital of Tenochtitlan. They are renowned for their advanced agricultural techniques, including 'chinampas' (floating gardens) and extensive irrigation systems used to grow maize, beans, and squashes, as well as their monumental step-pyramid architecture.
The Incas
The Inca Empire was the largest in Pre-Columbian America, expanding across the Andes through the leadership of Pachacuti. They mastered high-altitude farming using terraced gardens and developed an immense, thousands-mile-long network of stepped roads to connect their vast, diverse population.
Conclusion
The arrival of Europeans in 1492 initiated a catastrophic clash of worlds, leading to the rapid decline of these great civilizations due to foreign diseases and military conquest.
The Shape of Things to Come
Reflecting on the legacy and eventual loss of the complex cultural, scientific, and architectural advancements achieved by these early American societies.
Recently Summarized Articles
Original text
The First Empire
The Olmecs were the earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica and they flourished in the region from roughly 1200-400 BCE. This culture was the forerunner of the Maya and Aztec cultures that would rise up a thousand years later. While archaeologists have found many cultural artifacts, the Olmecs remain a mystery. Even their name comes not from their culture, but from what the Aztecs called them centuries later.
Many of their monuments and structures, such as great earthen and stone pyramids, were taken over and incorporated into the cultures that followed them, so much so that the Olmecs were first defined as an art style rather than a separate people. While the Olmecs were known for detailed sculptures of various animals, birds, and fish, as well as masks carved from Jade, the most famous artifacts are the sculptures of colossal helmeted heads which range from four to eleven feet in height, weighing upward of 50 tons. Each is unique and believed to represent a great ruler.
Much of what we know and surmise of the Olmecs is derived from what we know of the Mesoamerican civilizations that followed them.
The Empires of Central and South America
Three true empires arose in Central and South America: the Mayans (300 BCE-900 CE) and the Aztecs (1300-1521 CE) in Central America, and the Incas (1100-1572 CE) in South America. All three of these civilizations were very successful. They built incredible buildings and made important scientific and architectural discoveries. The Aztecs and Incas were utterly destroyed by the Spanish invaders through diseases that infected the population and the conquistadors’ military and technological superiority.
The Mayans are a different story. Their civilization was not conquered; they simply declined and essentially disappeared in the 800s and 900s CE. The reason for this mysterious decline is unknown, though scholars have developed several competing theories.
Some believe that like the great North American civilizations, the Mayans had exhausted the environment around them to the point that it could no longer sustain a very large population. Thus a lack of food and other resources led to heavy competition and warfare among the city-states, resulting in a breakdown of trade alliances and traditional systems of power.
However, this is purely speculation. No one knows for certain what caused the powerful Mayan Empire to decline so quickly or completely, but by the time the Spaniards arrived there were only remnants of the once-mighty empire. Structures still stood, but there was no power, and the people had separated into smaller tribes that put up little resistance. Today, the thing we remember most about them is likely their great stone calendars, showing the extensive knowledge of math and astronomy that this civilization once had.
The Aztecs
The Aztec Empire was actually a triple alliance of three powerful ethnically diverse city-states joined together and holding sway over many other smaller groups and lands taken through conquest. The most powerful of these city states was that of the Mexica, from which the modern Republic of Mexico derives its name, as it covers much of what was once the Aztec Empire and hosts the descendants of that empire amongst its citizens.
The Mexica controlled the city state of Tenochtitlan, which became the capital of the empire. Its central city was built on a raised island in Lake Texcoco and surrounded by raised-bed gardens called chinampas that were built by layering mud and plant vegetation to create highly fertile floating islands. After the Spanish conquest, the lake was filled and modern Mexico City was eventually built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan.
Like many other Native American cultures, agriculture played a large part in the economy and society of the Aztecs, and the climate of the region allowed for extensive agriculture. Along with the chinampas that surrounded the capital, the Aztecs built dams to irrigate valleys. In addition to the maize that was a staple crop across much of the Americas, the Aztecs also cultivated beans, squashes, and chiles as primary food sources.
At its pinnacle, Aztec culture reached remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments, building large stone step pyramids and other structures in the large cities that dotted the empire.
The Incas
The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire, was the largest empire in Pre-Columbian America. The civilization emerged in the 13th century and lasted until it was conquered by the Spanish in 1572. Beginning with the rule of Pachacuti-Cusi Yupanqui, the Incas expanded their borders to include large parts of modern Ecuador, Peru, western and south-central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, north and north-central Chile, and southern Colombia. This vast territory was known in Quechua (the language of the Inca Empire) as Tawantin Suyu, or the Four Regions, which met in the capital of Cusco (located in present-day Peru).
The Inca culture boasted a wide variety of crops, numbering around 70 different strains in total, making it one of the most diverse crop cultures in the world. As much of the empire was situated within the high-altitude of the Andes, farmers had to devise a way to grow crops without open fields. They developed a system of terraced gardens and irrigation that allowed them to utilize the mineral-rich mountain soil.
The Incas built an extensive system of roads throughout their empire to allow for the quick transport of messages, the military, and trade. However, the steep nature of their mountain home meant that they relied entirely on walking and, as a result, their roads were stepped. At its height, this road system covered thousands of miles and connected the estimated 12 million people that populated the empire.
Conclusion
Regardless of how they developed, when Columbus stumbled upon the Americas in 1492, the resulting clash between the Old World and the New World meant that much of the New World's civilizations would be lost forever, cut down by either disease or warfare.