Chapter 11 (The Americas 2500 b.c.e.-1500 c.e.)

Olmec deities

Olmec deities were combinations of gods and humans, included merged animal/spirit and human forms, and had both male and female identities.

Inca expansion

Open lands became scarce, so the Incas tried to penetrate the tropical Amazon forest east of the Andes— an effort that led to repeated military disasters. In dense jungles the troops could not maneuver or maintain order against enemies, who used guerrilla tactics against them. Another source of stress came from revolts among subject peoples in conquered territories. Even the system of roads and message-carrying runners couldn't keep up with the administrative needs of the empire. The empire was overextended.

Aztec slavery

Slaves were the lowest social class. Most were prisoners captured in war or kidnapped from enemy tribes. People convicted of crimes could be sentenced to slavery, and people in serious debt sometimes voluntarily sold themselves. Female slaves often became their masters' concubines. Mexica slaves differed fundamentally from European ones, for they could possess goods; save money; buy land, houses, and even slaves for their own service; and purchase their freedom. If a male slave married a free woman, their offspring were free. Most slaves eventually gained their freedom.

Teotihuacan's key to power (obsidian)

Teotihuacan thrived because it controlled trade of the most valuable goods, especially obsidian, a glasslike volcanic rock that could be worked into objects with both material and spiritual uses. Obsidian knives were used for daily tasks and for important rituals such as the blood sacrifice practiced by the Maya.

Aztec records

The Aztecs wrote many pictographic books recounting their history, geography, and religious practices. They also preserved records of their legal disputes, which amounted to vast files. The Spanish conquerors subsequently destroyed much of this material.

Viracocha Inca

Viracocha Inca emerged as the first Inca leader to attempt permanent conquest. Unlike the sinchis, or kings, of earlier and rival city-states, Viracocha Inca fashioned himself an emperor and, in adopting the name Viracocha, connected himself to the god of creation.

Inca emperor succession

When a ruler died, one of his sons was named the new Inca emperor. He received the title, but not the lands and tribute— nor, for that matter, the direct allegiance of the nobility, bound as it was to the deceased ruler. The new emperor built his own power and wealth by conquering new lands.

Long Count solar calendar

A calendar that was based on a 365- day year and used by the Olmecs. This calendar begins with the year 3114 b.c.e.

Maya social classes

A hereditary nobility owned land, waged war, traded, exercised political power, and directed religious rituals. Artisans and scribes made up the social level below. Other residents were farmers, laborers, and slaves, the latter including prisoners of war.

panaqa

A panaqa, a trust formed by the Inca emperor's closest relatives, managed both the cult of his mummy and his temporal affairs. Chimu split inheritance became the political structure that determined the Inca emperor's authority. The panaqa of descendants of each dead ruler managed his lands and used his income to care for his mummy, maintain his cult, and support themselves, all at great expense.

Maya decline

Archaeologists attribute their decline to a combination of agricultural failures due to drought, land exhaustion, overpopulation, disease, and constant wars fought for economic and political gain.

Aztec women

As the little hands of the newborn male were closed around a tiny bow and arrow indicating his warrior destiny, so the infant female's hands were wrapped around miniature weaving instruments and a small broom: weaving was a sacred and exclusively female art, and the broom signaled a female's responsibility for the household shrines and for keeping the home swept and free of contamination. Save for the few women vowed to the service of the temple, marriage and the household were a woman's fate, and marriage represented social maturity for both sexes. Pregnancy became the occasion for family and neighborhood feasts and celebrations.

Teotihuacan ceremonial center

At the heart of Teotihuacan was a colossal Pyramid of the Sun and a Pyramid of the Moon that were connected by the Avenue of the Dead, along which stood the homes of scores of priests and lords. A cave under the Pyramid of the Sun suggests the ceremonial center's origins. Caves symbolized the womb from which the sun and moon were born.

iyac

Beneath the great nobility of Aztec military leaders and imperial officials was the class of warriors. Parents dedicated their male children to war, burying a male child's umbilical cord with arrows and a shield on the day of his birth. At the age of six, boys entered a school that trained them for war. They were taught to fight with a ma-cana, a paddle-shaped wooden club edged with bits of obsidian, and learned to live on little food and sleep and to accept pain without complaint. At about age eighteen, a warrior fought his first campaign. If he captured a prisoner for ritual sacrifice, he acquired the title iyac, or warrior.

tlalmaitl

Beneath the macehualtin were the tlalmaitl, the landless workers or serfs who provided agricultural labor, paid rents in kind, and were bound to the soil— they could not move off the land. In many ways the tlalmaitl resembled the serfs of western Europe, but unlike serfs they performed military service when called on to do so.

mitmaq/mitmaquisuna

Communities raised multiple crops and engaged in year-round farming by working at different altitudes located within a day's journey from home. Some of these zones of cultivation were so distant— sometimes over a week's journey— that they were tended by temporary or permanent colonies, called mitmaq, of the main settlement.

human sacrifice

Human sacrifice to honor the gods was practiced in many cultures of Mesoamerica, including the Inca, the Olmec, the Maya, as the Mexica. The worship of Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird god, became linked to cosmic forces as well as daily survival. In Nahua tradition, the universe was understood to exist in a series of five suns, or five cosmic ages. Four ages had already passed, and their suns had been destroyed; the fifth sun, the age in which the Mexica were now living, would also be destroyed unless the Mexica fortified the sun with the energy found in blood. As a result, historians believe the number of victims increased dramatically during the last period of Mexica rule. A huge pyramid-shaped temple in the center of Tenochtitlan, dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and the god of rain Tlaloc, was used by the Mexica for sacrifices.

macehualli (plural macehualtin)

If a young Aztec man failed in several campaigns to capture the required four prisoners, he became a macehualli, a commoner. Members of this class performed agricultural, military, and domestic services and carried heavy public burdens not required of noble warriors. Government officials assigned them to work on the temples, roads, and bridges. Unlike nobles, priests, orphans, and slaves, macehualtin paid taxes. Macehualtin in the capital, however, possessed certain rights: they held their plots of land for life, and they received a small share of the tribute paid by the provinces to the emperor.

tequiua

If in later campaigns a young Aztec man succeeded in killing or capturing four of the enemy, he became a tequiua— one who shared in the booty and was thus a member of the nobility.

Pachacuti Inca

In 1438 rivals invaded Viracocha Inca's territories and he fled. His son, Pachacuti, remained in Cuzco and fended off the invaders. He crowned himself emperor and embarked on a campaign of conquest. Pachacuti Inca (r. 1438-1471) conquered the Chimu near the end of his reign, and he incorporated beliefs and practices from this northern civilization. After conquering the Chimu, Pachacuti instituted practices that quickly expanded the empire across the Andes. He combined Andean ancestor worship with the Chimu system of a split inheritance, a combination that drove swift territorial expansion and transformed Tawantinsuyu into one of the Inca empire.

Inca

Inca was the name of a ruling family that settled in the basin of Cuzco and formed the largest and last Andean empire. Inca refers to the empire's ruler, while the empire was called Tawantinsuyu, meaning "from the four parts, one," expressing the idea of a unified people stretching in all directions. According to their religious beliefs, the Inca rulers invented civilization. In reality, they inherited it from the civilizations of the Titicaca basin and the Chimu on the northern coast.

cenotes

Limestone formations that created deep natural wells. Cenotes became critical sources of water for the Maya due to their often-arid environment.

Teotihuacan decline

Over time, improvements in other regions decreased Teotihuacan's comparative advantage, as its trading partners produced increasingly valuable goods, spurring competition. By 600 its influence had begun to decline, and in 650 the residents of the city seem to have burned its ceremonial center in what may have been a revolt against the city's leadership.

milpas

Raised narrow rectangular plots that the Maya built above the seasonally flooded low-lying land bordering rivers.

tecuhtli

Referred to as great lords or tecuhtli, Aztec generals, judges, and governors of provinces were appointed by the emperor from among his servants who had earned reputations as war heroes. Acting as provincial governors, they exercised full political, judicial, and military authority on the emperor's behalf. In their territories they maintained order, settled disputes, and judged legal cases; oversaw the cultivation of land; and made sure that tribute was paid.

Quechua

The Incas forced conquered peoples to adopt Quechua, the official language of the empire, which extinguished many regional languages, although another major Andean language, Aymara, endured.

Maya writing system

The Maya developed the most complex writing system in the Americas, a script with nearly a thousand glyphs. They recorded important events and observations in books made of bark paper and deerskin, on pottery, on stone pillars called steles, and on temples and other buildings.

Maya location

The Maya inhabited the highlands of Guatemala and the Yucatán peninsula in present-day Mexico and Belize.

Maya invasions

The Maya resisted invasions from Spaniards and warring Aztec armies by dispersing from their towns and villages and residing in their milpas during invasions. The last independent Maya kingdom succumbed only in 1697, and resistance continued well into the nineteenth century.

Maya trade

The Maya traded jade, obsidian, beads of red spiny oyster shell, lengths of cloth, and cacao beans. Long-distance trade beyond the Maya region played an important part in international relations, and the merchants conducting it were high nobles or even members of the royal family.

Maya calendar

The Maya used a calendar of eighteen 20-day months and one 5-day month, for a total of 365 days, along with the 260-day calendar based on 20 weeks of 13 days. When these calendars coincided every fifty-two years, the Maya celebrated with feasting, ball-game competitions, and religious observance.

Olmec diet

The Olmecs cultivated maize, squash, beans, and other plants and supplemented their diet with wild game and fish.

Olmec trade

The Olmecs traded rubber, cacao (from which chocolate is made), pottery, clay figures, and jaguar pelts, as well as the services of artisans such as painters and sculptors, in exchange for obsidian.

Olmecs

The Olmecs were an early civilization that flourished in the coastal lowlands of Mexico along a region stretching from Veracruz to the Yucatán from 1500 to 300 b.c.e. The Olmecs formed the first cities of Mesoamerica, and they shaped the religion, trade practices, and technology of later civilizations in Mesoamerica.

Inca empire needs

The empire demanded that the ayllus, the local communities with shared ancestors, include imperial tribute in the rotation of labor and the distribution of harvested foods.

khipu

The khipu was an assemblage of colored and knotted strings. The differences in color, arrangement, and type of knot, as well as the knots' order and placement. The khipu was important for recording demographic, economic, and political information to allow imperial rulers and local leaders to understand and manage complex data.

Tikal

The largest Maya city-state may have had forty thousand people and served as a religious and ceremonial center.

Teotihuacan

The most powerful city in classical Mesoamerica, northwest of the lands of the Maya. At its height, between 300 and 600 c.e., its population reached as high as 250,000, making it one of the largest cities in the world at that time.

mit'a

The reciprocal labor carried out within ayllus expanded into a labor tax called the mit'a, which rotated among households in an ayllu throughout the year.

Maya agriculture

The staple crop of the Maya was maize as well as other foodstuffs, including beans, squash, chili peppers, some root crops, and fruit trees.

Maya mathematics

Using a system of bars, where a single bar equals five (— = 5) and a single dot equals one (• = 1), the Maya devised a form of mathematics based on the vigesimal (20) rather than the decimal (10) system. More unusual was their use of the number zero, which allows for more complex calculations than are possible in number systems without it.

Teotihuacan's diverse religion

Two gods that were particularly important to classical period civilizations were Tlaloc (Chac in Maya), the god of rain, and Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent.

split inheritance

Under the system of ancestor worship, the Incas believed the dead emperor's spirit was still present, and they venerated him through his mummy. Split inheritance meant that the dead emperor retained all the lands he had conquered, commanded the loyalty of all his subjects, and continued to receive tribute.