All of the Native American groups listed had very advanced cultures. They had religious customs, languages, and trade networks that were unique to their civilizations. They also acted directly in their environments in order to create the best possible situations for their civilization. All of the groups practiced agriculture and selected plants based on taste and vigor.
The Pueblo of the American Southwest lived in adobe apartments. They grew corn, beans, and squash. They also practiced irrigation. The Pueblo were a thriving civilization until the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. The Aztec Empire controlled Central America from what would later become Mexico City. They controlled other tribes through constant warfare, which provided human sacrifices for religious rituals. The Aztec civilization used pyramid-like structures in their religious rites. The Aztec Empire was also brought down by Spanish conquistadors who used horses, gunpowder, and disease to destroy this prosperous civilization.
The Mayan Empire existed on the Yucatan peninsula but disappeared before the arrival of the Spanish. The Mayans were known for their pyramids as well. The Mayan priests were famed astronomers whose star charts allowed them to create an accurate calendar that scientists still admire today for its precision. Mississippian culture is known for its burial mounds in the central United States. Mississippian culture also had extensive trade routes, as goods from all over North America are found within the burial mounds.
Anthropologists and historians are still learning about Native American history before 1492. Charles C. Mann's work 1491 is a good book to read in order to learn more about this growing field of history.
The similarities between all these Native nations are that, except for the Incas, they were all radically democratic, especially compared to European societies with absolute monarchs. Moctezuma is often called an emperor, but his actual title was First Speaker, the elected leader of a council. The Incas were an exception, as the Incan society was a dictatorship with state surveillance and harsh punishments that relocated populations for state control.
Most of these Native nations also had similar levels of technology to one another. They were more advanced than Europeans in medicine, architecture, and agriculture, but less advanced in shipbuilding and use of iron. The exceptions are some of the Mississippi tribes, who had been quite advanced as the Mound Builders but then declined shortly before European invasions.
The differences are that the Inca and Aztec states were enormous. The Incas were the largest state in the Americas, with a population of over twenty million. The Aztec Confederacy held several million people. Mayas had city-states, not an empire. The Pueblos were city-states also, but typically each had about ten thousand people. Mississippi nations were often towns, each ruled separately within the tribe, of about a thousand each.
The differences between the Pueblo People of the Southwest, the Tribes of the Mississippi Valley, and the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs on the eve of contact were quite drastic, for a number of reasons.
First, the geographic regions in which these groups lived varied greatly. The Pueblo People lived in the desert southwest, an area with little water and dramatic, rocky landscapes. As such, the Pueblos lived in villages made from the red rocks of their surroundings, and they ate crops they could raise without as much water, such as corn and beans, as well as animals that they would hunt. The Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans lived in Central and Southern Mexico and experienced hot, humid climates with lots of rainfall. These groups subsisted on a wider variety of foods that grew in their regions. They also hunted. Finally, the tribes of the Mississippi Valley lived in a cooler, wet climate, in an area where the land was much more suitable for farming.
The precontact societies of the these groups did share some commonalities. No groups had been exposed to horses or any working farm animal before Europeans arrived. Each of the three groups also had societal structures that were each unique to their own societies.
No comments:
Post a Comment