The Americas on the Eve of Invasion

The Americas on the Eve of Invasion

There were several elements of the “Mesoamerican civilization.” Despite different languages, religious rituals, cultural elements, and mythological elements were common to most peoples of Mesoamerica.

The Calendar: Foremost among these common elements was the use of a complex ritual calendar. Among the Aztecs (and earlier Maya and Toltecs) priests marked the passing of time and predicted the future with two calendars, one a solar count of 365 days linked to the passing seasons, another a ritual calendar of 260 days, thought to be based on the length of a human pregnancy.

The two calendars combined to make a longer measure. The period needed for a particular day in the 365 calendar and the 260-day calendar to coincide was 18,980 days, or day years. This measure, called a “bundle of years” by the Aztecs, was given great significance.

The end of each 52 year period was seen as a moment of great danger, at which the gods might end the world. This preoccupation with measuring and recording time went far back into Mesoamerican history—the earliest surviving writing from the region was a Zapotec calendrical note from approx 600 BCE.

Blood Sacrifice: Another important element of Mesoamerican civilization—at least as far back as the Olmecs (about 1200 BCE) was the use of blood sacrifice to honor and win the good will of the gods. Among the Aztecs, long lines of prisoners of war were paraded up steep temple pyramids to be sacrificed by having their hearts ripped from their chests.

The Maya of the Classic Period (250CE-900CE) most commonly beheaded their victims. Both Maya and Aztec worshippers also offered their own blood to the gods.

Women and men drew blood from wounds in their cheeks, ears, arms and legs, while men also made cuts on their private parts. The Mesoamericans worshipped a vast pantheon of gods and goddesses in the course of their civilization. These deities often had alternative names and animal or human twin forms.

The cult of one god in particular was enduringly popular across centuries and cultures: the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl (known to the Maya as Kukulcan).

Quetzalcoatl was associated with wise leadership and was revered as a creator, a wind god, and as the morning star.

In myth, he was said to have departed by sea on a raft of snakes, promising to return. It is a popular theory that some among the Aztecs may have interpreted the coming of Hernan Cortes and his Spanish troops in 1519 as the promised return of Quetzalcoatl from exile.

Ball Games: Another basic element of Mesoamerican civilization was a ball game played on a court shaped like a capital “I.” The court, which formed part of the ritual complex in cities, had sloping or vertical side walls. The object appears to have been to get a rubber ball into the end sections (like ‘endzones.”

An Aztec ball court.

Some courts had rings high on the side walls and extra points might have been scored by getting the ball through the hoop. This would have been very difficult since the players could not direct the ball with their feet or hands…only their hips, elbows, and knees.

The game seems to have been understood as a reenactment of cosmic struggles. To the Aztecs, it was the clash between light and dark, between Quetzalcoatl and his dark brother Tezcatlipoca (to the Maya, it was between Hero Twins who go to the underworld to overcome the gods of that most feared realm).

Historians usually divide the era from CE in Mesoamerica into two periods: The classical (ending around 900 CE) The post-classical ( ) The classical era in Mesoamerica occurred several hundred years after the classical era in Europe/Asia, reflecting the independent development of the two hemispheres until about 1450.

Classical civilizations include the Maya ( CE) and the people of Teotihuacan ( CE). Post-classical civilizations include the Toltecs and the Aztecs.

Classical Mesoamerica: The Olmec civilization disappeared completely by about 300 BCE (no one really knows why) but many of their practices and beliefs were carried on by later civilizations. The earliest heirs of the Olmecs were the Maya, who centered their society to the east and south of Olmec settlements (Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador).

Often regarded as the “mother civilization” of Mesoamerica, the Olmec produced the earliest examples of sophisticated artwork and their style was adopted by later peoples, like the Maya and Aztec. The most famous Olmec artifacts are 17 colossal stone heads, presumed to have been carved between 1200 BCE and 900 BCE out of volcanic basalt.

These heads, which range in height from 5 ft. to 11 ft. and weigh as much as 40 tons, are generally thought to be portraits of rulers. Even more amazing is that these heads are up to 80 miles from the nearest stone quarry and this civilization didn’t have pack animals or the wheel. In some cases, the heads were even hoisted up 150 ft to their final position.

Archeologists are still trying to figure out the Olmec religion, but it seems to be based on a jaguar-god. Rulers were also believed to be relatives of supernatural beings.

They left behind almost no known written records (the only ones found were discovered by accident in 2006) and the high humidity has caused all human remains to rot away.

Around the dawn of the Christian era the brilliant and isolated civilization of the Maya was taking shape. The Maya (often called the Greeks of the New World) had a distinctive language and the particular profile—sloping forehead, prominent curving nose and full lips—that is endlessly depicted on their ancient monuments and is still common today among their descendants.

The first permanent Maya villages appeared during the 3rd century CE in the highlands of Guatemala, an area of fertile soil. There they built a ceremonial center, Kaminaljuyu, that dominated the communities around it.

By the 4th century CE, Kaminaljuyu fell under the control of Teotihuacan, and the Maya moved the center of their civilization to the poorly drained Mesoamerican lowlands. From about 300 CE to 900 CE the Maya built more than eighty large ceremonial centers in the lowlands, all with temple-crowned pyramids and palaces, painted in bright colors.

Artist rendering of the Mayan city of Copan (in Honduras):

These ceremonial centers had tens of thousands of people, but most of the populations were peasant villagers who lived in settlements on the periphery of the cities.

In the heavily jungled lowlands, the soil quickly lost its fertility, so the Maya (like other rainforest peoples), practiced slash and burn agriculture.

Slash and burn agriculture would not have been enough to support cities, so the Maya built terraces that trapped silt carried by the rivers, supported by irrigation and drainage systems. These techniques boosted their agricultural productivity, with Maya farmers raising maize, cotton, and cacao (for chocolate) in abundance to support their urban populations of 30,000-80,000 people.

Mayan cities were primarily religious and administrative centers, and trade seems to have been a relatively minor part of Mayan life. Mayan cities did not form an empire. There is no evidence of a dominant capital. These cities were a loose federation bound together by cultural similarities and the shared interests of priests.

The power of the priests depended on education and intellectual superiority over their peasant subjects. They had books on bark paper (which cannot be read). They had a numerical system, including the concept of zero, hundreds of years before the Europeans.

Through their astronomical observations, the Maya accurately predicted the movements of the sun, moon, and planet Venus. They knew the length of the year, including the final fractional day, with NASA-like precision.

This is the famous sarcophagus lid of Pakal the Great (the Mayan king of Palenque), supposedly showing him in an astronaut suit and space capsule:

Their cities varied in size and layout, but all had large pyramids with temples on top, complexes of administrative buildings, houses for the elite, a ritual ball court, and often a series of altars and memorial pillars called stelae.

Stelae (stone columns) were built to commemorate great actions of Maya leaders or to mark ceremonial occasions, and they were inscribed with hieroglyphic script.

The numerical patterning of Mesoamerican cosmology was regularly celebrated in their architecture. Architects followed a template that was based on the four cardinal points and three levels of the universe: earth, heaven, and the underworld.

North was associated with the celestial realm, South was the way to the underworld. East was the place of the rising sun and West was the place of the sun’s descent into darkness. Buildings were oriented based upon these directions.

At the Mayan city of Tikal, the famous Temple of the Great Jaguar contained 9 doors to represent the nine layers of the underworld and the temple itself had 9 levels.

The most famous Mayan pyramid (Chichen Itza—Yucatan Peninsula), the Temple of the Feathered Serpent (Kukulkan) has 9 levels plus four staircases of 91 steps…when added to the single continuous step at the bottom it equals 365.

The Temple of Quetzcoatl was designed with precise acoustics so that a crowd watching and listening in the plaza beneath would have been able to hear the words of a priest making a ritual speech in praise of the gods or celebrating the undying power of the state.

Even the steps were specially designed so that when you stand before the pyramid and clap, the sound made is like that of the sacred quetzal bird.

The architects of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl also positioned the building so that at the spring and autumnal equinoxes, sunlight creates an undulating pattern of shadow and light on the steps so that it appears that Quetzalcoatl is moving.

The Mayan Temple of the Masks at Kabah had 260 masks.

Maya society had clearly delineated social classes, with rulers and other members of the elite serving both priestly and political functions. There were soldiers, but they didn’t seem to have any function within the government. If there was a merchant class, it was a humble one. .

Kings were not considered divine, but they communicated directly with supernatural beings and deceased ancestors through rituals in which they drew blood from different parts of their bodies and fell into hallucinogenic trances.

They decorated their bodies with paint and tattoos and wore elaborate costumes of cotton, animal skins, and quetzal feathers.

Religion was central to Maya life, with a pantheon of gods important to sustain agriculture, and many rituals included human sacrifice. Most victims were prisoners of war, especially defeated elites.

Captured commoner/peasants were more likely to be used as part of a labor force to construct public buildings and irrigation and drainage systems. Priests had magical powers that gave them access to the 13 layers of heaven rising above the Earth and the nine levels of Xibalba (Realm of Fright), a sinister underworld (or Hell).

If you were lucky enough to ascend to an afterlife of heavenly ease, you would spend eternity leisurely drinking chocolate, shaded by the strong boughs of the first tree. Only a select few were destined for this…the great majority faced foul and sadistic demons in the underworld.

The gods, like those of Sumeria, were believed to interfere in human affairs, and they possessed both human and animal traits, most frequently those of the jaguar.

Chaan Muan, eighth-century ruler of the Maya city of Bonampak, captures a victim for sacrifice in a jungle raid.

The Maya thought it important to please the gods, who expected honor and reverence from their human subjects. Bloodletting pleased the gods, so sacrificial victims were often lacerated before being decapitated in order to produce more blood.

By about 800 CE, most Maya had begun to leave the cities, and within 100 years, most cities had disappeared, consumed by the jungle. No one really knows why but some theories include: climate change, soil exhaustion, foreign invasion, civil war, or epidemic diseases. Perhaps there was some political or social change that weakened the obedience of Maya peasants to their priest-aristocrats.

Before the Maya were reaching their peak, another civilization was developing in the Mexican highlands to the west. The area was the site of several large lakes fed by water from surrounding mountains, and the earliest settlers channeled the water into their fields to produce an abundance of crops.

Their central city was a religious center known as Teotihuacan (“Place of the Gods”), which began to grow rapidly after about 200 BCE. Like the cities of the Olmecs and Maya, Teotihuacan was a center of religious rituals and government administration. Their monuments were in the pyramidal form (found all over Central America).

Teotihuacan is 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, and when constructed between CE, it covered over seven square miles. It was planned by master architects who wanted clean lines and long distances… through the center of the city runs the Avenue of the Dead, nearly two miles long and lined with low, stone-faced structures.

The Avenue of the Dead

In Teotihuacan, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon are among the largest masonry structures ever built. The Pyramid of the Moon.

The Pyramid of the Sun is 700 ft square at the base and as high as a 20 story building. It is built of sun-dried bricks and sheathed in limestone. The smaller Pyramid of the Moon rises at the northern end of the avenue, and at its south end is the walled Citadel.

Pyramid of the Sun (picture from Pyramid of the Moon). Both completed by 250 CE.

Many scholars consider Teotihuacan to be the first real city of the Western Hemisphere (and the world’s 6th largest at the time), with a population between ,000 people. Like the Maya, most of what we know about these people comes from their art and architecture since most written records were lost when the city declined.

Teotihuacan seems to have been a relatively peaceful place…soldiers and weapons are not prominent in the city’s art and the favorite gods were the benevolent Tlaloc (God of Rain) and Quetzalcoatl (God of Knowledge and Civilization). The bloodthirsty gods that became prominent in later times are notably absent.

But this doesn’t mean human sacrifice wasn’t practiced...one of Teotihuacan’s gods was Xipe Totec.

The sacrificial victim, usually a young woman, was skinned with an obsidian knife and the skin was removed in one piece. Then a priest put it on like a garment and danced solemnly around an altar. This ritual celebrated the coming of spring, when nature puts on a new coat of fresh vegetation.

A priest honoring Xipe Totec:

And like the Maya, priests were an important part of the elite, for they kept precise calendars to ensure crops were planted at the right time. In contrast to Mayan cities, Teotihuacan was a center of extensive trade and commerce, with merchants trading their products throughout Mesoamerica.

The city reached its peak around the 7th century CE, and mysteriously collapsed by about 750 CE. It political system is unknown, but the city’s layout was so organized, there must have been some kind of centralized planning. Some recently uncovered murals suggest the city’s final decades were violent, as temples and houses of the elites were burned down or defaced.

After the decline of the Maya and Teotihuacan, several regional states rose in Mesoamerica, and their hallmark was constant fighting (which is why death is such a prevalent motif). A key change from the classical to post-classical period was a shift to more military organization.

Their capital cities stood on well-defended hills, and their art often focused on warriors.

The glory of Teotihuacan was not destined to last forever and the city’s grandeur probably contributed to its downfall. Its inhabitants laid waste to large areas of countryside to manufacture the lime needed for mortar and stucco used in Teotihuacan’s buildings. This caused erosion and reduced the amount of land available for agriculture.

When food was in short supply, it probably didn’t take much to undermine the once-unchallengeable authority of Teotihuacan’s priests/rulers. At some point in the 7th or 8th centuries, nomads poured south into the Valley of Mexico (probably driven by climatic changes that made farming unsustainable). Teotihuacan was too weak to repel them.

The Toltecs, a group that migrated from northwestern Mexico, were the first to unify central Mexico again after the people of Teotihuacan. Their capital was Tollan (‘the Place of the Reeds’) near the modern city of Tula, northwest of modern Mexico City, which probably reached a population of about 60,000 between CE.

Like the people of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs used the waters coming down from the mountains to irrigate crops of maize, beans, peppers, tomatoes, chilies, and cotton. The Toltecs created a centralized state based on military power, and they conquered lands from Tula south into Central America, including many areas held by the Maya.

Their militarism appeared in their public buildings and temples, which were decorated with representations of warriors or with scenes of human sacrifice. These stelae columns held up the roof of a temple. These are in Tula.

Their temples were also adorned with gruesome chacmools—reclining stone figures with a bowl on the stomach in which the heart of a sacrificial victim was flung – and also skull racks on which heads were displayed. .

A Toltec skull-rack (an idea later adopted by the Aztec).

The Toltecs traded with distant regions, including acquiring turquoise from the southern U.S. and foods from throughout central Mexico. To maintain their power over conquered peoples, they built garrisons which kept the peace and oversaw the collection of tribute.

The Toltecs seemed to have two rulers instead on one, which probably eventually weakened their power. Their most famous ruler was Topiltzin, a priest associated with the god Quetzalcoatl, who was forced into exile in the east, “the land of the rising sun.”

The exile of Topiltzin is one of Mesoamerica’s most famous legends. He lost a power struggle with another faction (warrior devotees of the war god Tezcatlipoca) and when forced into exile, he promised to return.

His return was so anticipated by the Toltecs, and then the Aztecs, that when the Spanish first arrived, the Aztecs believed that Cortes was the exiled hero. After his exile, the Toltec state began to decline, eventually to be replaced by the Mexica, more commonly known as the Aztecs.

Some legends blame the fall of the Toltec on divine punishment against king Huemac II (r ? ) who had fallen into wicked ways. His early years on the throne were said to be exemplary as he was a pious worshipper of the gods. But he was tempted into wrongdoing, wickedness, and vice and it gripped his soul so tightly that he could not find his way back to virtue.

Legend has it that the provinces rebelled against the wicked king and volcanoes visible from Tula began to growl and belch flames. When Huemac II ordered a great sacrificial offering to the gods, a blood-chillingly awful portent was seen.

At the climax of the ceremony, priests bent the chief victim (a high-ranking noble from a rival city) over the sacrificial stone and opened his chest cavity with the sacred flint knife. But inside they could find no heart. In a panic, the priests looked in his chest and found his veins dry and empty with no precious blood that was supposed to spill onto the stones of the temple pyramid.

Yet just a few moments before the man had been walking and talking. Then a terrible stench arose from his body. The priests and people fled from the temple in terror, but many were killed in an epidemic of foul wasting diseases seemingly caused by the stench of the bloodless death.

Huemac encountered divine helpers from the rain god and begged to be spared and be allowed to maintain his position of power and wealth. Enraged at his selfishness, the divinities declared six years of plagues on the Toltec which included crop-killing frosts followed by summer droughts, then destructive floods and wild storms. The Toltec were then plagued with thousands of toads and locusts.

Northern nomads known as the Chichimec (‘Sons of the Dog’) attacked Tula. For three years, Tula was able to hold out (they had a defense force that included a company of women), but their defenses eventually broke down and the Toltecs fled. The Chichimecs, and then the Mexica (Aztecs), flooded across the land, and eventually rebuilt Toltec cities.

The Aztecs viewed the Toltecs with great reverence, mythologizing them as tall, peerless warriors, ruthless conquerors, pioneers of the finest arts and sciences, developers of the Aztec calendar and year count, and writers of just and lasting laws. According to Aztec legend, they built their main city, Tenochtitlan (tay nawch tee TLAN – “Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus”) in a place identified by an eagle perched on a pear cactus with a snake in its mouth.

Tenochtitlan grew to be one of the largest cities in the world, with as many as 300,000 people at its height (double the size of Europe’s largest city at the time—Paris). The city was built on several small islands in Lake Texcoco, connected to the mainland by large causeways (canals).

Tenochtitlan.

To the Spanish first seeing the city, they described it as far grander than anything they had ever seen. Like the people of Teotihuacan before them, the Aztec drained swamps, constructed impressive irrigation works and terraces, and built chinampas, or floating gardens.

Chinampas were an ingenious adaptation that consisted of narrow artificial islands made by heaping lake muck/debris on beds of reeds anchored to the shore.

Chinampas made it possible to sustain urban life by boosting agricultural production. The Aztecs also imposed a tribute system on conquered peoples, who had to contribute maize, beans, and other foods to support Tenochtitlan.

Like the Toltecs before them, the Aztecs rose to power through military might, with tough fighting skills and a tendency towards aggressive expansion. By the early 15th century, they emerged as an independent power that dominated their allies.

The ruling elite of the Aztecs was made up of militaristic aristocrats, whose lives centered on conquest. At the top was a semi-divine king, who was selected by election from among the male members of the ruling family. Below him were his officials, who had earned their positions through heroic military exploits and ruled conquered people in the provinces like feudal lords.

Next was a class of warriors who were recruited from ordinary freemen, and proved themselves in battle by taking at least four prisoners for sacrifice.

Most Aztecs were ordinary free people who tilled the fields, built the buildings and roads, etc At the bottom were serfs, whose rights and duties were similar to those of medieval European serfs, and slaves who were captives or debtors.

Aztec society was patriarchal, but women received high honor for bearing warrior sons, and the spirits of women who died in childbirth were believed to help the sun god in his journey through the sky each day.

The Aztecs also had a large and powerful group of priests. They served as advisors to the king and his officials, and they conducted the elaborate religious rituals that were central to Aztec society. The chief god, Huitzilopochtli (god of war), ruled from the position of the sun at noon, and in order to keep him in his proper place in the sky, the Aztecs believed he must be fed a steady diet of human blood.

This blood came from frequent human sacrifices on altars that lined the main streets of Tenochtitlan. Aztec blood rituals were particularly messy, with thousands of victims taken as war captives or tribute just for that purpose.

When the Emperor Ahuitzotl consecrated the temple of Huitzilopochtli in 1490, at least 20,000 (some accounts say 80,000) prisoners of war were sacrificed.

The Emperor and his close relatives (who were also priests) took turns plunging the knife into victims for as long as their strength lasted; then they turned the duty over to lesser hierarchs. For four days the lines of victims inched forward towards the sacrificial stone, now surrounded by ponds of blood.

The bodies were piled up in heaps and their skulls overflowed the skull rack rising in front of the pyramid. It was said that the center of the city smelled for weeks from rotting flesh and blood.

A special part of the ritual was cutting the heart from the live victims chest, and the heart was then eaten by the Aztec nobility.

Priests used large obsidian (stone) knives.

Sacrifices were carried out in front of large crowds that included the leaders from enemy and subject states, sending the clear message of the power of the Aztec elite. The political message was equally clear: rebellion, deviancy, and opposition were very dangerous.

To the Aztecs, and many of their captives, these scenes of sacrifice did not seem entirely horrible. Death itself was not much feared, and a ritual death at the hands of priests was considered an honor. In the case of soldiers captured on the battlefield, it assured them of a glorious after-life.

One of the most important Aztec religious ceremonies of the year was Panquetzaliztli, held to honor Huitzilopochtli, the divine leader of the Aztecs. Panquetzaliztli was held after the harvest (usually in October), when the nation readied itself for war. Many captive warriors or slaves purchased by merchants at the market became known as “bathed slaves.”

These slaves were picked for their good looks and musical/dancing ability, because in the build-up to the festival, they had to entertain guests at magnificent feasts thrown by the merchants for the nobles. Nine days before Panquetzaliztli, the slaves were washed in a spring sacred to Huitzilopochtli and they began the religious preparation for their own sacrifice.

On the day of the festival, the slaves were led four times around the Great Temple, then in the company of the merchant-donor, they climbed the temple’s steep steps to the shrine of Huitzilopochtli at the top. There a priest dressed as Huitzilopochtli dispatched them. The merchant was awarded their dead bodies, and afterwards he would take them home to be consumed with maize in a cannibalistic banquet.

Each of the Aztec months (there were 20) was sacred to a particular deity, and at the end of each month, victims dressed as that month’s god were respectfully slaughtered. The victims, known as ixiptla (in the god’s image), became the gods they honored and were treated with the greatest reverence and ceremony.

They were said to hold the fire of the god in their bodies, and when they were killed, this divine flame was set free to take residence in the body of a victim marked for sacrifice in a year’s time. Probably the most remarkable ceremony was the one to honor Tezcatlipoca (the god of war and the twin and “dark” brother to Quetzalcoatl).

Tezcatlipoca:

Each year, at the close of the month holy to Tezcatlipoca (in May), a young man of intelligence and good looks was chosen to represent the god and for a year was treated as his embodiment. By day, he lived in the god’s temple, where he learned to play the flute and dance steps sacred to Tezcatlipoca.

At night he was sent out into the city, accompanied by a guard of eight warriors. In every quarter he visited, he played tunes on his flute, shaking the rattles tied to his legs and arms as he danced to signal his coming. The people of Tenochtitlan would bow before him and bring out sick children to be blessed and cured by the passing god.

As the year drew to an end, the emperor would enter the temple and dress the young man in the costume sacred to the god. Then the god-victim was given four young wives, embodiments of significant goddesses. With five days to go until his sacrifice, the emperor went into seclusion and the empire was ruled by the young soon-to-be-victim.

On the final day of the month, the youth was led with full ritual to Tezcatlipoca’s shrine on the Great Pyramid. There he said good-bye to his four wives and was sacrificed. His body was taken away, cooked, and served to the emperor and prominent nobles and military elites. Also present was the young man chosen to carry Tezcatlipoca’s flame in his body for the next 20 Aztec months before he was to be sacrificed.

The Aztecs were very superstitious and events like solar eclipses terrified them. At such times, they made sacrifices of their own people to sustain the sun and life on Earth. People with fair complexions were said to be full of light and were sacrificed to strengthen the sun in its struggle against darkness.

The Aztecs also held frequent sacrifices in the name of the rain god (Tlaloc), which often required the blood of young children. As they were led to their deaths, the children would weep and the onlookers understood the tears that fell would become the rain they prayed for.

One of the most grizzly rituals was to the god Xipe Totec (one of the four primary gods, born before the dawn of time).

Associated with the east and the rising sun, he was the god of new shoots in the spring and of the first growth of the maize plant. Xipe Totec was honored in the second month of the Aztec year (March 6-25) which marked the start of the growing season.

At the festival’s beginning, prisoners of war dressed as Xipe Totec were tied to a sacrificial stone and forced to defend themselves with mock weapons against fully armed warriors. The sacrificial victims were shot to death with arrows so the flow of their blood could symbolically represent the flow of rain on to the fields to nourish the seeds.

After their death, the victims were flayed from head to toe. Priests then wore their skins over their own bodies for the entire month. This gruesome practice symbolized both the earth taking on a new “skin” each year (new foliage), and planted seeds splitting at germination.

By 1500, great inequalities in wealth and privilege characterized Aztec society. Aztec kings and aristocrats legitimized their power by creating elaborate rituals and ceremonies to distinguish themselves from the commoners. Rich dress and jewelry was one way the elite were set apart from the commoners.

The emperor ate his meals behind a gilded screen shielded from spectators; when he traveled, he was carried in a litter on the shoulders of noblemen. Wherever he walked, the ground was covered with cloth so his feet would not touch it. Young nobles were taught the proper way to hold and smell bouquets of flowers.

Commoners lived in small houses and ate a limited diet of staple foods (usually with little animal protein). There was no ventilation so the house soon filled with smoke from cooking. In this single room, stuffy and smoky, the whole family cooked, ate, and slept.

The noble elites lived in large, well-constructed two-story houses and consumed a diet rich in animal protein and flavored by condiments and expensive imports like chocolate from the Mayan regions to the south. Even in marriage customs the two groups were different: the commoners were monogamous and the nobles were polygamous.

In Aztec society, a specialized class of merchants (called pochteca) controlled long-distance trade.

Since they didn’t have draft animals (horses/oxen) or wheeled vehicles, their commerce was dominated by lightweight and valuable products like gold, jewels, feathers and feathered garments, cacao, obsidian knives, and animal skins.

Merchants also acted as eyes and ears for the nobles, giving them political and military intelligence from distant regions. Since they operated outside the Aztec military, merchant expeditions were armed and often had to defend themselves against potential enemies.

Aztec commerce was handled without money or credit. Barter was facilitated by using cacao, quills filled with gold, and cotton cloth as standard units of value to compensate for differences in the value of bartered goods.

The market in Tenochtitlan met every fifth day, and it is estimated that 40,000-50,000 merchants swarmed into the city, rowing their canoes across Lake Texcoco. The Spanish described the market as being under tight government control. There were officers who kept the peace, collected taxes, checked the accuracy of weights and measures, and there was a court of 12 judges who sat to decide cases immediately.

Archeologists have found consistent evidence that all Mesoamerican groups—from the Olmec to the Aztecs—enjoyed ball games, with most of the civilizations building large ball courts in their cities (these are the world’s oldest known ball games). The game was played with a solid rubber ball on slope-sided courts.

The rules of the game are unknown, but appear to be similar to volleyball or racquetball, and the object was to keep the ball in play. Some archeologists believe the ball represented the movement of the sun in the sky. The ball varied in size over time according to the version of the game played, and players could strike the ball with their hips, elbows, forearms, rackets, and bats.

Usually the game was played casually for simple recreation, and was sometimes played by women and children. Some versions had ritual aspects, featuring human sacrifice (to the losers). Some of the rubber balls were even fashioned to look like human heads.

Beginning in 1502 Moctezuma II ruled over a great empire but he and his people were troubled by bad omens. In 1509, ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, a comet appeared in the skies over Lake Texcoco. Strange lights shone in the night sky. A soothsayer foretold that terrible events lay in the future, including the destruction of their empire.

In 1519 Moctezuma was nearly 40 years old and had skillfully ruled for 17 years. But recently his personality had changed; gone was his ability in war and diplomacy, replaced with uncertainty accompanied with spells of brooding. He secluded himself in his palace and was rarely seen in public, consulting with priests and soothsayers, or meditating alone.

Moctezuma was particularly concerned about the exiled Toplitzin/Quetzalcoatl, the giver of knowledge and all good things who had sailed into the eastern sea and promised to return. That had been more than 500 years earlier, and the year the god said he’d return was almost at hand.

Then news came of strange men riding in white-winged ships on the eastern sea. When the news of Cortes and the Spanish landing in Mexico at Veracruz reached Moctezuma (actually the 3rd exploratory trip since 1517), he seems to have been uncertain whether to welcome them with reverence as gods, or with violence, as invaders. Cortes had arrived with 553 men and 16 horses.

Along the coast before arriving at Veracruz, Cortes acquired an invaluable asset: an extremely intelligent native girl who not only knew the local dialects but also the Aztec language. She learned Spanish so easily and quickly that she became Cortes’ interpreter, closest adviser (and mistress). She also became a Christian. Cortes named her Dona Marina (or Malinche).

First, Moctezuma sent supplies along with magnificent offerings including large discs of gold and silver representing the sun and moon, and ritual costumes that had been worn by performers impersonating the gods in religious ceremonies. Some of the food he sent had been ceremonially doused with the blood of a sacrificial victim as was the Aztec custom.

When Cortes rejected the Aztec envoys, Moctezuma changed his mind and had sorcerers cast spells on the Spanish to keep them away. However, the Spanish proved resistant to Aztec magic and Cortes moved his troops towards the Aztec capital. The Spanish allied themselves with Aztec enemies and pushed towards Tenochtitlan.

When the Spanish force and its allies came to Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma met Cortes atop a palanquin carried by four nobles and greeted him with the utmost respect.

A conquistador said of Moctezuma II: “many great lords walked before the great Montezuma sweeping the ground on which he was to tread and laying down cloaks so that his feet should not touch the earth. Not one of these great chieftains dared look him in the face” When the Spaniards arrived, Moctezuma II controlled an area nearly twice the size of Pennsylvania with over 11 million people. He believed himself to be “master of the world.”

Moctezuma gave Cortes a necklace of snail shells and shrimps fashioned from solid gold and a quetzal feather headdress, and in return was presented a string of Venetian glass beads.

Then in a fateful moment, Moctezuma invited the Spanish into his capital. The Spanish were quartered in Moctezuma’s palace near the heart of the city.

Through Dona Marina, Cortes and Moctezuma discussed their respective countries, and Cortes tried (but failed) to convert the Emperor to Christianity. An uneasy friendship developed between the two men. Cortes and his men were given a tour of Tenochtitlan, where they saw the bloody remnants of sacrifices.

But Cortes didn’t trust the unpredictable Moctezuma. Fearing attempts on their lives, Cortes and 30 Spanish soldiers acted swiftly and with audacity by capturing Moctezuma in his own palace and holding him prisoner. Both sides then prepared for war.

When war came, Moctezuma climbed to the palace roof and called for calm, but his warriors jeered him and then in a storm of arrows and stones, severely injured their emperor. He later died from these injuries (or secretly strangled by the Spanish—according to differing accounts).

The Spaniards, led by Cortes, stormed the Great Pyramid, set fire to the shrines, and ripped down sacred Aztec idols. Soon, the once invincible city was sacked and on fire. The siege would last 93 days (of often brutal and bloody fighting). By the time it ended, 2/3 of the Spaniards had been killed or dragged off for sacrifice.

But Cortes was able to maneuver his remaining troops across the lake and into allied territory. From there, Cortes was able to encourage revolt among those oppressed by the Aztecs. About this time Cortes received 600 well-armed Spanish reinforcements (including 40 cavalrymen) from Cuba.

At the end of December 1520, Cortes set out again to take Tenochtitlan. This time he entered the city with over 100,000 Indian allies seeking revenge on their Aztec oppressors. The city was already being ravaged by smallpox (it had killed Moctezuma’s successor, his brother) and thousands of Aztecs.

Cortes had Tenochtitlan’s aqueducts and chinampas destroyed (no fresh water or food) and access to the city cut off. Weakened by hunger and disease, the Aztec warriors fought on to the bitter end as their corpses piled up in the streets and clogged the canals. The fighting stopped when the last emperor, Moctezuma’s 25 year old nephew Cuauhtemoc, was captured.

Andean Civilizations: The first Peruvian civilization is known as the Chavin, after its most impressive center at Chavin de Huantar on the high western slope of the Andes. It was established about 1000 BCE (about the same time as the Olmec in Mexico), and the two cultures share a worship of jaguar gods.

There, in a narrow valley 10,200 ft above sea level, stands an enormous stone building called the Castillo, nearly 250 feet square. Inside is a maze of small rooms and narrow corridors, three stories of them, connected by stairways and ramps. Probably no one ever lived in the Castillo …it was a house for the gods, not mortals. In one of its dim rooms a god still stands: a tall stone idol with the fanged grin of a man-jaguar.

The Castillo:

The Chavin culture seems to have ended abruptly sometime between BCE. Several hundred miles to the south on the arid Paracas Peninsula are the 2,000 year old burial grounds of a people whose textiles are considered exquisite, even today. At one site called Paracas Necropolis, 429 seated mummies were unearthed (most likely important chieftains and priests).

Each mummy was wrapped in several layers of beautifully woven cloth. The innermost wrapping was a shroud of plain white cotton, in one case 13 ft wide and 84 ft long. Then came layers of smaller colored cloths and garments of alpaca and vicuna wool. Tucked at intervals were food for the dead man, clothing, weapons, gold ornaments, and pottery.

The stitches of the embroidery are minute and by some miracle of prescientific chemistry, the dyes are almost as vivid today as when the cloth was made.

Examples of Paracas embroidery:

Over the centuries the Paracas culture gradually merged with the Nazca culture, centered in the Ica and Nazca Valleys 100 miles to the south. The Nazca continued the Paracas tradition of fine cloth production but really distinguished themselves with beautiful polished pottery.

Nazca pottery:

The Nazca region is most famous for its riddles of the desert…the Nazca lines. Believed to be some of South America’s earliest works of engineering, the Nazca lines are only visible from high in the air. Many are huge geometrical figures whose ruler-straight lines and angles could hardly be improved upon today.

Since some of the lines relate to the summer and winter solstices, scholars think they may have served the Nazcas as vast astronomical calendars to help determine date for planting crops or readying irrigation ditches to catch the flow of seasonal rivers. Some of the shapes are believed to be offerings, meant to be seen only by the Peruvian’s sky-dwelling gods.

The Nazca lines:

Several hundred miles to the north, a new group of people called the Mochicas or Moche (after the Moche River) emerged. The Moche built a society that thrived from about CE in a 2,500 sq mile area of modern day Peru.

The Moche built an extensive irrigation system from rivers coming out of the mountains, and cultivated maize, beans, manioc, and sweet potatoes in the lower coastal areas and coca in the higher elevations. Moche society was highly stratified, with wealth and power concentrated in the hands of priests and military leaders.

The wealthy adorned themselves with rich clothing, jewelry, and tall headdresses. Because the Moche had no written records, all we know about them comes from archaeological evidence, especially from a recently excavated tomb that revealed masterfully crafted ceramics, gold ornaments, jewels, and textiles.

The Moche people developed an art form that includes some of the finest sculpture in the history of pottery. The range of designs makes these objects remarkable not only as art, but also as a record of the civilization from which they came. The extensive number of objects produced, suggests that the civilization was an extremely populous one, in which power and wealth were major goals.

Examples of Moche pottery.

Moche architecture featured flat-topped pyramids and ramped platforms with courtyards and plazas. Near Trujillo in the Moche River Valley, there still exists two giant structures, known as the Pyramid of the Sun (Huaca del Sol - a stepped pyramid) and the Pyramid of the Moon (Huaca de la Luna - a terraced platform with large rooms and courtyards).

The Moche Pyramid of the Moon.

The Pyramid of the Sun:

Both temples were built of adobe bricks which will last virtually forever on the rainless coast of Peru. The 60 ft high base of the Temple of the Sun covers 8 acres and has stepped pyramid above that rises over 75 ft. The Temple of the Moon was built over an ancient burial ground, and the desert around it was littered with sea shells, believed to be temple offerings.

Much of what is known about the Moche has been deciphered from complex illustrations, known as fine-line paintings that appear on thousands of ceramic vessels.

What these drawings show, appears to be highly stylized ceremonial combat in which warriors fought one-on-one for the purpose of producing a few vanquished prisoners. These losers were needed to fill a central role in the sacrifice ceremony that followed battle.

Drawing after drawing shows how the prisoners were first stripped of clothing and battle equipment, and then, naked and leashed around the neck with a rope, brought back to a ceremonial center. There the prisoners’ throats were cut, their blood consumed by the ceremony participants, and finally their bodies dismembered (and in some cases, flayed).

The Moche god of decapitation.

Although a warrior society, the Moche did have a taste for luxury. Moche tombs were filled with some of the most splendid pottery and metalwork of the Central Andean Area. Moche ceramics are the best known of ancient Peruvian artifacts, and are among the finest ever known.

Their portrait-head effigy pots are especially notable for realistically depicting human features and portraying emotion.

Like so many other ancient peoples of the Americas, the decline of the Moche isn’t well understood, although it appears to have coincided with a succession of natural disasters, including an earthquake, flood, then thirty years of rain followed by thirty years of drought.

Other people occupied the Andes region after the Moche, but the most famous, most powerful, and best-organized civilization was the Inca, who formed a vast imperial state during the 15th century.

When the Inca began their spectacular sweep along the Andes, Peruvian civilizations had existed for over 2,000 years. All material technologies (cloth, metal, pottery, and architectural) were well advanced but there were several key items common to the Old World that didn’t exist in Peru.

As in Middle America, there was no knowledge of the wheel—or if there was, it wasn’t put to practical use. There was no written language, only a system of keeping records with knotted strings (quipus).

There was also no money or convenient medium of exchange. It is amazing that Peruvian culture developed without these things, usually thought indispensable to the growth of civilization.

From humble beginnings as one tribe among several in the Cuzco Valley, the Inca began around the year 1100 CE. But by 1400, the Inca only controlled areas surrounding Cuzco. The legend of their origin has several variations, but here is the best known:

Four brothers and fours sisters, all children of the Sun God, came out of a cave about 18 miles southwest of Cuzco, and from two nearby caves came a handful of followers. These were the Inca, a word originally identified with a certain group of clans and that later referred to the emperor.

According to the legend, Manco Capac, leader of the group, felt threatened by one of his brothers who was so strong, the stones he threw with his sling blasted ravines into the hills.

Manco Capac sent his brother back into the cave to fetch a sacred llama, but Capac sent in another man who walled up his brother in the cave (where he remains to this day). The two other brothers eliminated themselves by obligingly turning themselves into sacred stones.

That left Manco Capac as the first Inca ruler. He had already married one of his sisters, Mama Occlo, who bore Sinchi Roca, second of the Inca line. Like the Aztecs, this little band under Manco Capac started out as landless wanderers but they quickly overcame this handicap.

Moving toward the fertile Valley of Cuzco, they probed the ground with a golden staff to test the depth of the soil, and when they found a spot they considered good farmland, they decided to settle down. During the battle to drive out the established inhabitants, Mama Huaco, another one of Manco Capac’s sisters killed an opponent with a stone, tore out his lungs and inflated them. Terrified by this horrible spectacle, the others fled in a panic.

During the first 200 years after the Children of the Sun and their followers emerged from the caves, the Inca remained a small and not very powerful group. This changed under their ninth ruler, the Inca Pachacuti (r ).

Under Pachacuti the expansion of the Inca was explosive…wherever their armies went, they were victorious. As they evolved as a civilization, Inca armies became well trained, well equipped, extremely disciplined, and warriors were trained to fight on both mountain and coastal terrain.

Known as fierce and fearless warriors, the Inca reputation for battle and the seeming inevitability of conquest caused many kingdoms to surrender without a fight. But Pachacuti’s military campaigns were not mere forays in search of treasure. They were part of a deliberate plan to unite the diverse lands and peoples of Peru.

To establish a united and stable empire in the patchwork that was Peru, Pachacuti and his advisors developed long-range plans that were masterstrokes of statecraft. Though Pachacuti’s armies fought ferocious battles when necessary, the Inca usually accomplished their goals through diplomacy.

Before attacking a state the Inca sent ambassadors to explain the considerable advantages of joining his empire. Behind its lines were peace and plenty, which would be enjoyed by aristocrats and the common people alike. The local rulers would not be displaced/killed; they would continue to rule under Inca guidance.

Their sons were taken to Cuzco as house captives, where they were indoctrinated with Inca values; their daughters were also taken and indoctrinated—some would be offered as pawns in marriages of alliance with other rulers and others would be sacrificed.

Pachacuti and his successors were careful to avoid inflicting unnecessary hardship on subjugated peoples. For example, they never moved sea-level people to the high mountains where they would have suffered from the cold and altitude. Skilled Inca engineers often created irrigation systems and roads that bettered the material condition of the displaced groups.

Local religions would be respected as long as it made no trouble. On the other hand, the ambassadors made it clear that resistance was futile. Local leaders would be slaughtered along with their families or dragged off to Cuzco where they would be imprisoned in dungeons filled with fierce animals or poisonous snakes.

The one exception to their success was when the Inca attempted to expand eastward into the Amazon rainforest, but on unfamiliar terrain and facing an enemy that fought unconventionally, the Inca didn’t have success. The products of the rainforest were obtainable through barter so the Inca concentrated their efforts in the mountains and along the coast.

The Inca ruled all the people they considered “civilized” (the Amazonians they considered subhuman and not “civilized”). One of the most effective unifying devices employed by Pachacuti and later Inca rulers was the extension of Quechua, the language of the Cuzco region. Just as English spread with the expanding British Empire, Quechua marched with the Inca armies and was used as the formal way to communicate throughout the Empire.

As Pachacuti and his successors embarked on continuous campaigns to subdue the “known world,” an Inca prophesy taught them that they were destined to rule, and within 100 years they forged the largest empire ever created in the Americas.

The Incan Empire stretched from the modern borders of Ecuador and Colombia to more than half-way down the coast of modern Chile– 2600 miles (roughly the distance from Boston to LA or Madrid to Moscow). The empire was long and narrow (only 400 miles at its widest).

The Incan Empire:

The genius of the Inca Empire was its administrative organization. Inca civil and economic control was simple in concept and followed developments that had evolved over the past 3000 years of Pre-Hispanic Andean civilization.

For example, there was an incremental structure of civic control based on decimal multiples of households, with each higher-ranking official being in charge of ten times more households. Like the Incan concept of the cosmos, this structure gave everyone a clear line of responsibility from one level to the next.

The lowest level of government divided their citizens into groups of 10 or sometimes 50 families. The male head of one family was appointed foreman of his group. Ten foremen reported to a higher official, usually a hereditary curaca (or chieftain) who was responsible for 100 families.

Still higher ranking curaca were in charge of 1,000 or 10,000 families. These officials were usually natives of the locality, and if their province entered the Empire without too much resistance, they were chiefs who had ruled before the Inca took over.

Socially, the Inca formalized practices that were ingrained in Andean peoples since ancient times—the idea of reciprocal obligations and of cooperation with one’s kin group of relatives, both blood and by marriage, known as the ayllu. An ayllu was an enlarged family or several families claiming interrelationship.

The head of the allyu was known as the Mallku (literally translates to condor but usually means prince). The allyu were self-sustaining units that would educate their own children and farm or trade for all the food they ate, except in cases of disaster (when they would rely on the Incan storehouse system).

Even though the Inca did not have a monetary system (no money), there were taxes and obligations to the state, called the mit’a which amounted to the same thing. Every individual owed labor to the Inca state, which through the mit’a was fulfilled by the household rather than by each individual.

This system left the household intact and able to fulfill its obligations at home while a family member fulfilled the mit’a service. Quotas of produce (agricultural or textile) were collected into storehouses for redistribution according to need. In this way the Inca ensured that all their subjects had the necessities of life and so they largely prevented rebellions.

Some rebellions did occur, and they were dealt with quickly. Rebellious groups were moved wholesale to distant provinces, where in unfamiliar territory and among strangers, they were outcasts and isolated from their secure social structure. Sometimes, loyal groups were moved into potentially rebellious areas to help keep control.

The Inca expanded the amount of land producing food/cotton by building new terraced fields and rejuvenating old ones.

They built storehouses for food and cotton in the provincial capitals and linked them by a road system that made it easy to move goods and armies throughout the empire.

The efficiency of Incan agriculture provided a good food supply for the Inca and subject peoples, and their roomy storehouses, brimming with surpluses, were insurance against future crop failures. Orphans, the old and the sick were fed when necessary out of public stocks. The Inca followed the Marxist adage: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

The Inca were noted road builders, with roads varying from fully constructed paved roads to narrow paths. Road widths varied from 3ft to over 80ft.

The Inca were masters at engineering roads according to the terrain. Roads through settled districts might be walled and lined with shade trees. Swamps were crossed with viaducts, mountain roads crossed ravines via suspension bridges, and some peaks had tunnels going through them. In some places, travelers were carried across ravines in baskets on cables.

This is the last Inca suspension bridge in existence. Many were still in use through the 19th century.

It is estimated that the Inca road system might have had over 25,000 miles. The Inca also constructed over 10,000 tambos (way stations) along their road system for pilgrims/merchants, spaced at intervals of a day’s journey apart.

Inca roads were a means of control, meant to impress subject peoples with Inca power. They also allowed the Inca army to move quickly throughout the empire. To travel on some roads required royal permission. Imperial communications throughout the empire was conducted by a system of runners.

About every mile along major roads a hut was built to shelter a chasqui messenger. As a runner approached a hut, he called out and the waiting messenger joined him as he ran. The message was relayed orally and perhaps a quipu was passed, after which the fresh messenger ran as fast as he could to the next hut.

Messages could be relayed 150 miles a day this way. Each runner served a 15 day rotation and service was part of the mit’a labor obligation. Messages had to be correct…the penalty was death for passing an incorrect message.

Incan architecture had a simple floor plan (rectangular) no matter the size or purpose of the building. The standardization of form fulfilled the goals of practicality, aesthetics, and a sense of “equality” among Inca citizens. Nails were unknown, roofs were thatched, and the Inca were renown for the fineness of their masonry work.

Three notable Inca architectural features were inclined walls (wider at the bottom than top), no interior room divisions, and trapezoidal doorways.

Incan architecture (especially their stone masonry) astonished the Spanish conquistadors, who could not understand how they put together such enormous stones without mortar or large draft animals.

In the 1460’s emperor Pachacuti began rebuilding Qosqo (Cuzco). At the heart of his planned city was the plaza of Awkaypata, 210 yds x 185 yds, carpeted entirely in white sand carried in from the Pacific and raked daily by the city’s workers.

Awkaypata was the center of the empire (and the center of the cosmos). From this great plaza radiated four highways that marked the four asymmetrical sectors of the empire (Tawantinsuyu “Land of the Four Quarters”). The four quarters reflected the heavenly order of the Milky Way, the vast celestial river of Andean cosmology.

To defend their capital at Cuzco and to provide emergency refuge for the city’s entire population, Inca engineers constructed Sacsahuaman fortress, whose huge zig-zagging stone walls were broken into 66 sharply projecting angles so that defending spearmen could catch attackers in a withering crossfire.

Gigantic bulwarks guard Cuzco’s Sacsahuaman citadel. Most of the stone was quarried on the spot, but the project, for which 20,000 workers were conscripted from the provinces, still took 90 years to finish.

The most famous Inca stone is this…the 12 cornered block in the wall on Hatun Rumiyoc Street (Cuzco).

50 miles NW of Cuzco, nearly 8000ft up, lie the ruins of the ceremonial “lost city” of the Inca, Machu Picchu (means “Old Peak”). Revered as a sacred place and invisible from below, Machu Picchu was completely self-contained, with enough terraced land to feed the population and watered by natural springs.

Machu Picchu, the fabled Inca “lost city.”

The cloud shrouded ruins have palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and some 150 houses, all in a remarkable state of preservation.

Many of the building blocks weigh 50 tons or more and are so precisely sculpted and fitted that the mortarless joints won’t allow the insertion of even a thin knife blade.

It is believed that one of Machu Picchu's primary functions was that of astronomical observatory. The Intihuatana stone (meaning 'Hitching Post of the Sun') has been shown to be a precise indicator of the date of the two equinoxes and other significant celestial periods.

The Spaniards never found Machu Picchu, even though they knew it existed. The mountain top sanctuary fell into disuse and was abandoned some forty years after the Spanish took Cuzco in It was rediscovered until 1911.

By the early 1500’s, the Inca ruled all the “civilized” peoples of South America. The twelfth emperor, Huayna Capac ( ) ruled a stable, and expanding, empire.

He went to the northern provinces to quell an outbreak of rebellion (in today’s Ecuador) when he died of a mysterious disease (smallpox).

The Spanish had introduced smallpox into Mesoamerica and it quickly spread south, devastating all natives in its path (since they had no resistance to it). The disease also killed his chosen heir. The deaths of the emperor and his heir immediately destabilized the empire.

During Huayna Capac’s illness, traders from the northern regions reported the appearance of bearded strangers in strange ships. These men (the Spanish) who were immune to the disease caused Huayna Capac to believe his disease was divine wrath and had been prophesized.

General religious belief among Andean peoples stressed the arbitrary nature and power of the gods, and the death of the emperor and his heir by a mysterious disease, and the ensuring civil war, must have been seen as divine retribution for something they had done.

Without a living designated heir, the imperial household was thrown into confusion. Huayna Capac had over 20 sons, so members of the imperial family split into factions lining up behind the two major contenders, Huascar and Atahualpa.

Huascar was the governor of Cuzco and controlled the largest part of the Empire (a son to Huanyna’s sister-wife), and his half brother Atahaulpa controlled the Kingdom of Quito (who was his son by his favorite concubine). Huascar and Atahualpa:

Huascar seized the throne and initially Atahualpa supported his claim, but rumors spread that Atahualpa was plotting a coup so Huascar declared him an enemy, a traitor, and an outlaw. Civil war ensued, but Atahualpa (the more able leader) had with him in the north the bulk of his father’s veteran soldiers.

The civil war lasted six years with Atahualpa eventually victorious when his armies took Huascar prisoner and they captured Cuzco (Huascar would eventually be murdered). This civil war ended just before the Spaniards landed in Peru.

With the imperial armies engaged with fighting each other, recently conquered peoples took back their own power. But most of the common people weren’t really affected, they continued to live as they had for centuries. Smallpox seems to have been more of a concern to the common people than the civil war.

There had actually been a prophesy that Huayna Capac was to be the last Inca and that the demise of the empire would come with the arrival of powerful foreigners. Incan priests saw omens of doom when a full moon had three halos (which they said represented the death of Inti, the sun god; war among Capac’s descendents; and the break-up of the empire).

Many historians believe that by 1526 the empire was so big, the Inca couldn’t control it and it was already beginning to fall apart. Even though Atahualpa won the civil war (after six years of turmoil) and controlled the army, he was disliked and distrusted by many Inca nobles.

Trying to consolidate his power when he occupied Cuzco, he ordered the provincial governors and chief administrators to attend him in the capital. Since many were of Huascar’s lineage or loyal to Huascar, Atahualpa ordered them put to death.

He then ordered the burning of the mummy of his grandfather (the predecessor of Huayna Capac—Tupac Yupanqui-the 11th Inca emperor) which the Inca considered a major sacrilegious offense. Atahualpa now claimed his lineage was the only legitimate one to the imperial throne. To the Inca, it must have seemed that Huayna Capac’s prophesy of their doom was coming true.

The conquest of Peru by the Spanish (Pizarro) required three expeditions over nine years. The first (1524) ended in failure because of storms, the second (1526-7) was recalled by Spanish officials after Pizarro sailed to the Incan city of Tumbez. The hospitable people of Tumbez welcomed the Spaniards and showed them their temple, which was decorated with sheets of gold.

Under strict orders from Pizarro, the Spaniards pretended not to notice the gold and they treated the Peruvians with consideration and respect. The time for conquest and plunder had not come (yet). But Pizarro had a glimpse of the Inca at their peak of order and prosperity. Had he attacked now, the Spanish would have met overwhelming forces that were organized and determined.

It was Pizarro’s good fortune that the weakness of his forces compelled him to delay his assault on Peru until the Inca were distracted and weakened by civil war. So Pizarro returned to Spain in 1528 to visit King Charles V (Luther and de Las Casas fame). He showed the king gold drinking cups acquired at Tumbez as well as live llama and two young Inca he was training as interpreters.

Charles V was impressed and gave Pizarro a royal charter to conquer this “land of gold,” making Pizarro Governor and Captain-General of the lands he had yet to win. When he returned to Panama in the spring of 1531, he set sail for Tumbez with three ships, 180 men, and 27 horses.

Instead of heading directly for Tumbez, Pizarro landed well north and began pirate raids along the coast which met little resistance. The Inca had abandoned their frontier because of their civil war.

Pizarro was familiar of the exploits of Cortes and thought the disarray of the Inca offered an opportunity to use Indians against Indians, as Cortes had done. He miscalculated for no Peruvians helped him attack the Inca.

Before he reached Tumbez, Pizarro was reinforced by 130 additional men and horses from Panama. When he reached Tumbez, he found the city almost deserted and largely destroyed. As the Spanish went down the coast, whole valleys were without men of military age, all of them conscripted by Atahualpa’s armies.

Learning that Atahualpa was camped near Cajamarca in the Andes, Pizarro left a garrison on the coast and turned eastward into the mountains, following a narrow but well-paved road. No Inca opposed him; the fortresses that watched the road were empty and silent, the bridges across mountain chasms undestroyed, the narrow passes unguarded. Pizarro had less than 200 men.

Up into the mountains they went, the horses having to be led . They were met by a high-ranking Inca noble envoy from Atahualpa who said the Inca wanted to be friends with the Spanish and that Atahualpa was awaiting them in peace at Cajamarca.

Several weeks later, the Spanish came to an oval shaped valley high in the Andes that had the small city of Cajamarca at the far end. A few miles from the city, clouds of vapor rose from the hot springs that was a favorite “health resort” of the Inca (where Atahualpa was camped).

Pizarro and his men marched into Cajamarca and saw it deserted, thinking it was a trap. Once Pizarro secured the town, he sent Hernando de Soto (later the “discoverer” of the Mississippi River) and 15 horsemen to visit the Inca. Inca soldiers and noblemen, adorned in gleaming golden ornaments, surrounded Atahualpa, who sat on a low stool.

Even though Atahualpa had never seen a horse or the bright steel armor the strangers wore, he gave no hint that he was impressed. The Spaniards rode up to him, bowed politely without dismounting and announced (through an interpreter) that their commander invited the emperor to visit him at his quarters. At first Atahualpa did not reply; then he smiled.

“Tell your commander that I am keeping a fast that will end tomorrow. Then I will visit him with my chieftains.” De Soto noticed that the emperor was fascinated by the horses so digging his spurs into his, he gave a brilliant display of horsemanship, dashing away at a gallop, rearing, wheeling. Then he rode full speed at Atahualpa, stopping the horse so close that flecks of foam fell on the emperor’s clothing.

Not a tremor of expression crossed Atahualpa’s face. Deeply affected by this display of fortitude (and also the hundreds of well-disciplined soldiers), the Spanish returned to Pizarro in low spirits. Atahualpa was obviously no weakling like Moctezuma, who was paralyzed by religious doubts and fear.

De Soto’s report caused panic in the Spanish camp, but Pizarro was pleased, for only desperate men would be willing to risk the bold scheme he proposed…he convinced his men that their only hope of survival was to capture Atahualpa within the sight of his powerful army. Anything less would mean the destruction of the tiny band of Spaniards.

At dawn, Pizarro positioned his men around the town’s plaza, and when the signal was given (the firing of a rifle), his men were to emerge and slaughter the emperor’s followers and seize the emperor. Shortly after midday the emperor’s procession moved slowly along the city’s avenue…first came attendants to sweep the ground followed by nobles whose golden jewelry blazed in the sun.

Then came Atahualpa riding in a golden litter carried on the shoulders of his highest-ranking noblemen.

A half-mile from the city’s plaza, Pizarro relayed a message to Atahualpa that he was providing entertainment and he expected the emperor to join him for dinner. The emperor replied that he accepted the invitation and that he would leave most of his warriors behind, and those he brought would be unarmed.

To Pizarro, this was a sign that God was on the side of the Spanish. Historians believe that it never occurred to Atahualpa that the Spaniards might attack him…the power of the Inca was so absolute that any such action was unthinkable.

When Atahualpa entered the plaza no Spaniard was in sight. “Where are the strangers?” he said. Pizarro’s chaplain came forward and after a long discourse in Christian theology (that the Inca didn’t understand) he told Atahualpa that he must change his religion and become a vassal of Charles V of Spain. Atahualpa was not pleased.

Atahualpa said “I will be no man’s vassal. I am greater than any prince on earth. As for my religion, I will not change it. You say your God was put to death, but mine” –and he pointed to the sun—”still lives.” The priest handed Atahualpa his Bible and the emperor threw it down.

The priest screamed at Pizarro “While we are arguing with this arrogant dog the fields are filling with Indians. Set on him! I absolve you.” Pizarro waved a white scarf, a gun thundered, and the slaughter began.

Atahualpa’s retainers desperately crowded around the royal litter but they had no weapons. They clung to the horses so Atahualpa wouldn’t be injured until the Spaniards cut them away with their swords. Fearing that the emperor might be injured, Pizarro shouted that any soldier that harmed him would be put to death.

Pizarro was slightly cut on the hand (by one of his own men) and that was the only Spanish injury that day. Atahualpa was captured and dragged to a nearby building. Out of sight, the Inca then ceased all resistance to the Spanish. Panic spread through the Inca warriors left behind and they fled.

The massacre had lasted little more than half an hour, but at least 2,000—some reports say 10,000—Inca were killed, including the key nobles which were the Empire’s administrative core. When all was quiet, Pizarro invited Atahualpa to dinner as promised. The banquet was held near the plaza in a building still carpeted with the dead.

Pizarro sat next to his captive who showed remarkable composure. “It is the way of war,” the Emperor remarked with dignity, “to conquer or be conquered.” Pizarro ordered brought to Cajamarca Atahualpa’s court, including his favorite concubines, his cooks and other servants, and young girls who waited on him hand and foot.

Even though he was a prisoner, Atahualpa continued to live as the Emperor (including dining off of solid gold plates)…but all orders given in his name were from Pizarro. The people of the Empire, accustomed to obeying the Emperor’s every wish did not question the stranger through whom they believed their ruler was speaking.

For the next nine months (while Pizarro waited for reinforcements), Atahualpa lived in captivity. He noticed the extraordinary effect gold had on the Spaniards and this gave him an idea to escape captivity. To Atahualpa, gold was a decorative material; since the Inca didn’t use money, he couldn’t understand its importance as a medium of exchange…but he saw that the Spanish craved it above all else.

One day, Atahualpa and Pizarro were in a building and the Emperor offered to cover the floor in gold if Pizarro released him. The Spaniards present were dumbfounded by this proposal and couldn’t speak, so Atahualpa increased his offer. He stood on his tiptoes, reached as high as he could, and offered to fill the room (17 x 22ft) with gold to that point.

Pizarro also demanded an adjoining room be filled twice with silver. Atahualpa agreed, asked for two months to accomplish the task, and ordered the collection of gold and silver objects from around the empire.

To the Inca, gold and silver represented the essence of the sun and the moon. The importance of objects lay in the imagery of the gods they represented. To the Spanish, their interest was purely monetary…they cared neither for Incan artistry nor for the religious value a piece carried.

Incan gold work.

Fearing that once the rooms were filled with treasure the Inca would attack the Spanish, Pizarro sent three of his men to Cuzco (600 miles away) to determine the state of the Inca. On Atahualpa’s orders, they were to be carried on litters by troops of bearers, and during their journey they were greeted with reverence, not hostility. They reported back that Peru was peaceful.

When at last Pizarro declared the ransom paid, he ordered that all the gold be melted down to ingots except for a few objects of artistic interest. Charles V was to receive 20% of the gold, the remainder divided up between Pizarro and his men. Atahualpa then demanded his freedom.

But the Spaniards, fearing for their safety if the Emperor lived, put him on trial charged with idolatry, polygamy, and incestuous marriage. He was also charged with usurping the throne and having his half-brother (Huascar) murdered. He was pronounced guilty and condemned to death by burning at the stake.

A stake was set up in the city plaza, Atahualpa was bound to it, and bundles of sticks were set around. The priest approached Atahualpa with his crucifix and told him that if he converted to Christianity, he would be strangled instead of burned alive. Atahualpa agreed, was immediately baptized under the name Juan de Atahualpa, then strangled by a cord around his neck.

So died the last of the ruling Incan emperors, and the Empire died with him. It shattered into helpless fragments which passively accepted Spanish control. To the common people, the Spaniards were merely a new class of rulers, just as remote and probably no worse than the Inca had been.

Death in the Andean world was not considered the end of existence; it was the next state of being after life on earth. Archeological evidence of elite and common burials shows that elaborate preparations were made, almost throughout life, for this next state of being.

This Andean worldview applied to all things, humans, animals, and plants—and to the Earth itself as a ‘living’ entity. Archeologists believe the Inca (and other Andean peoples) looked at life like the cycles of a plant…progressing from newborn, through infanthood, puberty, young adulthood, old age, and death, enduring as a mummy.

The mummified body was likened to a dried pod from which seeds of new life dropped.

The Inca (and Andean cultures) believed that the essence of a dead person ultimately went to a final resting. The physical body was only a vessel for this life—the person’s ‘vital force’ or soul, found its way to pacarina. Pacarina was the place of origin of one’s ancestors and the ultimate source of rebirth. It could be a rock, a tree, cave, lake or spring– a magical shelter from the difficult world.

Inca mummies were kept very much as a part of the lives of the living. They were visited regularly and brought out on ritual occasions. They were consulted for advice, honored with recitals of poetry and stories, and even ‘fed’ on ritual occasions.

Almost all Inca rituals included sacrifice, usually of llamas or guinea pigs. Brown llamas were sacrificed to Viracocha (the Creator); white llamas to Inti (the sun God); and dappled to Illapa (the Thunder God). Coronations, war, or natural disasters involved human sacrifice to solicit the gods or to make them happy.

A special child sacrifice—the capacocha—was preceded by a ritual procession along a sacred ceque line (sacred pathway) in Cuzco. Children were sacrificed because they were considered the “purest” beings. The capacocha happened after the death of the emperor (Inka) or during a famine (or other disaster).

The victims were almost always provincial (non-Inca) children aged 6-15 who were physically perfect. After the victim had been well fed for months or even years, so as to offer him or her to Viracocha well satisfied, he/she was clubbed or strangled, and had the throat slit or the heart cut out and offered to Viracocha while still beating. Some were left to die of exposure.

As the journey was often extremely long and arduous, especially for the younger victims, coca leaves were fed to them to aid in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to minimize pain, fear, and resistance, then killed.

The child’s parents participated and considered the choice of their child to be an honor. Capacocha victims were sanctified in Cuzco (they had an audience with the emperor and a feast was held in their honor) before walking back to their province to be sacrificed. They were dressed in fine clothes and jewelry.

The mummy of a sacrificed child.

All Andean peoples worshipped mountain gods, but only the Inca went high into the mountains to kill and bury sacrificial victims. Special sacrifices were made of children, who were marched barefoot to the mountain-top where they were sacrificed (or sometimes left there to freeze).

This girl and two other children were left on a mountaintop to succumb to the cold as offerings to the gods, according to the archaeologists who found their mummified remains in Argentina in 1999.

The Incan economic system functioned completely without money. This lack of currency didn’t surprise the Spanish…much of Europe did without money until the 18th century. But the Inca didn’t even have markets. Everything that was built, farmed, herded, produced, or mined was owned by the emperor but most was given over for public consumption.

This became known as Incan socialism. Even though we “moderns” think this system was inherently inefficient, it produced surpluses, not want. The Spanish were stunned to find warehouses overflowing with grain, untouched cloth, and supplies. The Inca had “eradicated” hunger in their empire (and not many empires in history can claim that feat).

Fun stuff: The emperor was carried on a golden litter—the emperor (known as the Inka)—did not walk in public. He would appear with such majesty that “people would leave the road and allow him to pass…that they adored and worshipped him by pulling out their eyebrows and eyelashes.”

Minions collected and stored every object he touched, food waste included, to ensure that no lesser persons could “profane these objects with their touch.” The ground was too dirty to receive the Inka’s saliva so he always spat into the hand of a courtier. The courtier wiped the spittle with a special cloth and stored it for safekeeping.

Once a year, everything touched by the Inka—clothing, food, garbage, bedding, saliva—was ceremonially burned. The 10th Inka (Thupa (Topa) Inka) started the custom of marrying his sister (Thupa might have actually married two of his sisters)

Even though this was genetically unsound, (and very creepy), to the Inca it made perfect sense…only close relatives of the Inka were seen of sufficient purity to produce his heir. The Inka’s sister-wive(s) would go with him on military campaigns, along with a few hundred or a thousand of his “subordinate” wives.

The massive scale of Thupa’s domestic arrangements didn’t seem to impede his army’s progress…by his death in 1493, he had doubled the size of the empire. In terms of area conquered during his lifetime, he was in the league of Alexander the Great and Chenghis Khan.

Trans-Pacific Riddles: Just how isolated was ancient America? Recently archeologists have noted several resemblances between East Asian and American artifacts and art styles. One theory, which has created a lot of controversy among scholars, is that Asian peoples, in voyages eastward, may have made contributions to New World cultures.

Eastern Asia (Shang Dynasty China) Feline divinity 18-12th Century BCE Shang and Olmec priests also built similar earthen ceremonial platforms, and used the same kind of small reflecting mirrors in religious rituals. Ancient America (Chavin) Feline divinity 10-5th Century BCE

Lion-headed thrones are shown in representations of deities in India and of Maya dignitaries. The Maya shared other ritual expressions with Hindu- Buddhist culture, including stepped temple pyramids, doorways with serpent columns and balustrades, and sacred tree forms.

Eastern Asia Ancient America

Wheeled animals made in India may have inspired similar figures found in Mexican tombs; the wheel was not otherwise used in ancient America, possibly because there were no strong draft animals. Certain types of looms and pottery-making techniques were also shared by Asians and early Americans.

The Americas on the Eve of Invasion

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