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Understanding Indigenous Peoples' Day | VOA News

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PBS - Native America Episode 1 - From Caves to Cosmos 

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PBS - Native America Episode 1 - From Caves to Cosmos 

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Native America | Episode 1: From Caves to Cosmos | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: From Caves to Cosmos traces ancient knowledge and cutting-edge science to answer a 15,000 year-old-question - Who were America's First People? The answer hides in Amazonian cave paintings, Mexican burial chambers, and on the waves off California's coast.

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PBS Native America Episode 3 - Cities of the Sky  

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PBS Native America Episode 3 - Cities of the Sky  

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Native America | Episode 3: Cities of the Sky | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Cities of the Sky explores the creation of some of the ancient world's largest and most impressive cities. An archaeologist explores some of the world's largest pyramids in Central America, scientists 3D-scan a lost city of monumental mounds on the Mississippi River, and native elders reveal ancient powers of the sky in modern-day Missouri.

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Independent Lens
Preview: Season 12 | 2m 14s

Since the dawn of cinema, Hollywood has made over 4,000 films about Native people -- over 100 years of movies that shape the way we see Indians ... and the way Indians see themselves. Romanticized and demonized, what does it mean to have your identity defined by the movies. Cree Indian filmmaker, Neil Diamond, sets off on a cross-country journey to explore his Hollywood roots.

Aired: 11/02/10

Rating: TV-PG

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

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Independent Lens | Reel Injun - Trailer | Season 12 | PBS

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Independent Lens Preview: Season 12 | 2m 14s Since the dawn of cinema, Hollywood has made over 4,000 films about Native people -- over 100 years of movies that shape the way we see Indians ... and the way Indians see themselves. Romanticized and demonized, what does it mean to have your identity defined by the movies.

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New York Times - A conversation with Native Americans on Race (#6 in Table of Contents) 

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New York Times - A conversation with Native Americans on Race (#6 in Table of Contents) 

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Video: Opinion | A Conversation With Native Americans on Race

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Native Americans challenge their invisibility in society.

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You can click through Episode one at the bottom of the website - we watched the full episode in class

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Native America | Episode 1: From Caves to Cosmos | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: From Caves to Cosmos traces ancient knowledge and cutting-edge science to answer a 15,000 year-old-question - Who were America's First People? The answer hides in Amazonian cave paintings, Mexican burial chambers, and on the waves off California's coast.

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The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. It contains about 150 rooms.

Credit: National Park Service

The Mesa Verde archaeological region, located in the American Southwest, was the home of a pueblo people who, during the 13th century A.D., constructed entire villages in the sides of cliffs.

Mesa Verde is Spanish for "green table," and the people who lived there are often called the "Anasazi," a Navajo word that has been translated as "the ancient ones" or "enemy ancestors." While they did not develop a writing system, they left behind rich archaeological remains that, along with oral stories passed down through the ages, have allowed researchers to reconstruct their past.

Recently researchers found evidence that the people at Mesa Verde had sophisticated mathematical knowledge, using the golden ratio, a mathematical ratio also used at the Giza Pyramids, to help construct a Sun Temple.

The region the people of Mesa Verde lived in is defined by researchers at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. It encompassed almost 10,000 square miles (26,000 square km) of territory going across the states of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, with part of the region in Colorado forming Mesa Verde National Park.

It was a tough place to make a living. "Cold, snowy winters give way to hot, dry summers, and periods of relatively abundant moisture are punctuated by sporadic - but sometimes prolonged - periods of drought," wrote a team of Crow Canyon researchers in a 2011 online article. "Living off the land has always been, and continues to be, a challenge, but one that people through the ages have met with extraordinary ingenuity and resilience."

The Crow Canyon researchers noted that after A.D. 500, a people whom archaeologists refer to as the "Basketmakers" (named from their finely woven baskets) moved from the peripheries of the Mesa Verde archaeological area into the center. They grew corn, squash and beans, supplementing these crops by hunting game and collecting wild plants.

In the time after they moved into the center of Mesa Verde, they developed pottery and the bow and arrow. The adoption of the bow appears to have increased their hunting proficiency, resulting in some game animals, like deer, eventually becoming overhunted and replaced with domesticated turkey.

They lived in simple pit houses with a hearth, fire hole and room for storage. Entered through the roof by way of a ladder, the house was cool in the summer and warm in the winter because it was partly underground.

These people came together in what we call "great kivas," which were also located partly underground. "These very large (more than 100 square meters, or 1,076 square feet), round structures are thought to have been used for public gatherings during which members of the community socialized, performed ceremonies, or discussed issues important to the group," the Crow Canyon researchers wrote.

Another view of the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde.

Credit: National Park Service

This way of life appears to have been quite successful, at least for a time. A team of researchers reported in a 2007 article in the journal American Antiquity that a portion of the Mesa Verde region, located in Colorado, more than doubled in population between roughly A.D. 700 and 850.

At this time, larger communities began to appear in Mesa Verde. These communities used a new type of above-ground structure known to archaeologists as "room blocks." Built in addition to pit houses, they contained fire hearths and places for storage. Crow Canyon archaeologists noted that these room blocks were made of adobe, stone and plant materials, with stone masonry becoming more important as time went on.

But, just as the population peaked, something happened and the people left in droves. The researchers in the American Antiquity article noted that the area of land they were studying, in Colorado, saw its population rapidly shrink between A.D. 850 and 930 to a level not much above zero. This appears to have happened across the Mesa Verde region, with the population moving south to places like Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.

Recent research suggests that a change in climate played a role in this emigration. In a 2008 article in the journal American Scientist, researchers noted that pollen remains indicate that the weather in at least part of the Mesa Verde region became colder.

"Presumably, the most productive portions of this area became cold enough in the 900s to make maize [farming] risky. Dry winters compounded this problem."

This downturn in the climate did not last and evidence indicates that after A.D. 930 people moved back into the Mesa Verde region.

Their time at sites like Chaco Canyon, to the south, influenced them, and they brought back a type of building that archaeologists call a "great house." These buildings functioned as community centers, of sorts, that stood on high ground and contained multistory rooms.

The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center archaeologists noted that "like great kivas, great houses were public structures, probably used for community-wide ceremonies and meetings," they wrote. "In addition, great houses - with their large storage capacity - may have served as central storage and distribution facilities for both food and trade items."

A sun temple was constructed at Mesa Verde using the golden ratio and its design used a variety geometric shapes that were constructed with great precision. In addition, the people of Mesa Verde also constructed unroofed circular structures for outdoor ceremonies. Recent research reveals that a circular structure sometimes called " Mummy Lake" (which, despite its name, has no mummies) did not actually hold water but was likely used for some form of outdoor ritual.

Mesa Verde also took part in a vast trade network. "The presence of Chaco-style pottery vessels, macaw-feather sashes, and copper bells at some sites indicates that the Pueblo people of the Mesa Verde region were part of a vast trading network that included not only Chaco Canyon but much more distant locations in Mexico as well," write the Crow Canyon archaeologists.

During the 12 th century there were periods of drought and violence that drove some people to leave Mesa Verde, wrote Donna Glowacki, an anthropology professor at the University of Notre Dame, in her book "Living and Leaving: A Social History of Regional Depopulation in Thirteenth Century Mesa Verde" (University of Arizona Press, 2015). When environmental conditions stabilized in the early 13 th century, the population increased in the Mesa Verde region, in some areas quite dramatically, wrote Glowacki.

During this time of population increase, in the early 13 th century, people began creating what are called "cliff dwellings," which are houses, and in some cases entire villages, built into cliff edges. The National Park Service estimates that there are about 600 of these preserved at Mesa Verde National Park. Built near springs, the naturally enclosed sites offered protection against both the elements and intruders.

"Many of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde are small, only one or two rooms built in alcoves or shallow caves," wrote archaeologist Larry Nordby in a chapter of the book "The Conservation of Decorated Surfaces on Earthen Architecture" (J. Paul Getty Trust, 2006). He noted that one of the largest cliff-dwelling sites is a place we call "Cliff Palace." It contains about 150 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas that were used, presumably, as a gathering place for rituals.

Cliff Palace also had many decorations that are not well preserved. "Fairly typical examples of embellishments are a panel of numerous stamped handprints above doorways and a series of zoomorphic (animal) figures painted onto plasters," Nordby writes.

The cliff settlements were not to last. Another population collapse occurred, this time at the end of the 13th century, leaving sites like Cliff Palace abandoned and falling into ruin. The people appear to have migrated south again to sites in Arizona and New Mexico.

In the American Scientist article, researchers noted that a mix of factors seemed to be involved in this collapse. "A combination of factors - including climate change, population growth, competition for resources and conflict - seem to have sparked the move," they wrote.

At one Mesa Verde site called "Sand Canyon," people late in the 13th century were depending more on wild plants and were eating less domesticated turkey. With the population shrinking, the site fell into ruin and "refuse was being deposited in once-important civic or ceremonial structures, such as the great kiva," the researchers wrote.

There were also signs of a battle. "Excavators found 23 complete or fairly complete human bodies, as well as scattered bones from at least 11 other individuals, indicating that at least 34 people died at or near the end of the village occupation," the researchers wrote, noting that "none of these bodies was formally buried, and at least eight exhibit direct evidence of violent death."

The people who left Sand Canyon, before the final fall, likely joined the other people of the Mesa Verde region in migrating south to new lands.

A recent study reveals that a "megadrought" even worse than the drought that wiped at Mesa Verde, may hit the American Southwest by the end of the 21 st century. The effects on the people living in the American Southwest could be severe, leaving future inhabitants to grapple with water shortages amidst a hotter, more arid, environment.

Aside from leaving future inhabitants struggling for water the changing environment also poses threats to the Mesa Verde ruins. In 2014, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report noting that Mesa Verde National Park has already suffered the loss of much of its forest due to wildfires. These wildfires, as well as flash flooding caused by the loss of vegetation, have already caused damage to the ruins at Mesa Verde and could get worse in the future.

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Mesa Verde: Cliff Dwellings of the Anasazi

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The Mesa Verde archaeological region, located in the American Southwest, was the home of a pueblo people who, during the 13th century A.D., constructed entire villages in the sides of cliffs. Mesa Verde is Spanish for "green table," and the people who lived there are often called the "Anasazi," a Navajo word that has been translated as "the ancient ones" or "enemy ancestors."

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Native America | Episode 2: Nature to Nations | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations-from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments?

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What Are the Nazca Lines?

There are three basic types of Nazca Lines: straight lines, geometric designs and pictorial representations.

There are more than 800 straight lines on the coastal plain, some of which are 30 miles (48 km) long. Additionally, there are over 300 geometric designs, which include basic shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and trapezoids, as well as spirals, arrows, zig-zags and wavy lines.

The Nazca Lines are perhaps best known for the representations of about 70 animals and plants, some of which measure up to 1,200 feet (370 meters) long. Examples include a spider, hummingbird, cactus plant, monkey, whale, llama, duck, flower, tree, lizard and dog.

The Nazca people also created other forms, such as a humanoid figure (nicknamed "The Astronaut"), hands and some unidentifiable depictions.

In 2011, a Japanese team discovered a new geoglyph that appears to represent a scene of decapitation, which, at about 4.2 meters long and 3.1 meters wide, is far smaller than other Nazca figures and not easily seen from aerial surveys. The Nazca people were known to collect "trophy heads," and research in 2009 revealed that the majority of trophy skulls came from the same populations as the people they were buried with (rather than outside cultures).

In 2016, the same team found another geoglyph, this time one that depicts a 98-foot-long (30-meter-long) mythical creature that has many legs and spotted markings, and is sticking out its tongue.

And in 2018, Peruvian archaeologists announced they had discovered more than 50 new geoglyphs in the region, using drone technology to map the landmarks in unprecedented detail.

How the Nazca Lines Were Created

Anthropologists believe the Nazca culture, which began around 100 B.C. and flourished from A.D. 1 to 700, created the majority of the Nazca Lines. The Chavin and Paracas cultures, which predate the Nazca, may have also created some of the geoglyphs.

The Nazca Lines are located in the desert plains of the Rio Grande de Nasca river basin, an archaeological site that spans more than 75,000 hectares and is one of the driest places on Earth.

The desert floor is covered in a layer of iron oxide-coated pebbles of a deep rust color. The ancient peoples created their designs by removing the top 12 to 15 inches of rock, revealing the lighter-colored sand below. They likely began with small-scale models and carefully increased the models' proportions to create the large designs.

Most of the known geoglyphs were formed by removing rocks from only the border of the figures (creating a kind of outline), while others were formed by removing rocks from the interior.

Given the low amount of rain, wind and erosion in the desert, the geoglyphs have remained largely unscathed throughout the centuries.

Nazca Lines and Aliens?

Toribio Mejia Xesspe, a Peruvian archaeologist, began a systematic study of the lines in 1926, but the geoglyphs only gained widespread attention when pilots flew over them in the 1930s. Experts have debated the purpose of the Nazca Lines since then.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, American historian Paul Kosok studied the geoglyphs from the ground and air. Based on the relative position of one of the lines he studied to the sun around the winter solstice, he concluded that the geoglyphs had an astronomy-related purpose.

Soon after, María Reiche, a German archaeologist and translator, also concluded that the designs had an astronomical and calendrical purpose. She further believed that some of the animal geoglyphs were representative of groups of stars in the sky.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, other researchers, including American astronomer Gerald Hawkins, examined the Nazca Lines and disagreed with the astronomical explanation for the geoglyphs. They also poked holes in other far-out explanations, such as those relating to aliens or ancient astronauts.

Purpose of the Nazca Lines

More recent research suggested that the Nazca Lines' purpose was related to water, a valuable commodity in the arid lands of the Peruvian coastal plain. The geoglyphs weren't used as an irrigation system or a guide to find water, but rather as part of a ritual to the gods-an effort to bring much-needed rain.

Some scholars point to the animal depictions-some of which are symbols for rain, water or fertility and have been found at other ancient Peruvian sites and on pottery-as evidence of this theory.

In 2015, researchers presenting at the 80th annual meeting of the Society for American Archeology argued that the purpose of the Nazca Lines changed over time. Initially, pilgrims heading to Peruvian temple complexes used the geoglyphs as ritual processional routes. Later groups, as part of a religious rite, smashed ceramic pots on the ground at the point of intersection between lines.

Conservation Issues

Unlike other relics throughout the world, the Nazca Lines are largely spared from unintentional destruction, thanks to their location. But the geoglyphs aren't completely safe.

In 2009, the Nazca Lines suffered the first recorded instance of rain damage. Heavy downpours flowing off the Pan-American Highway-a network of roads that connects nearly all countries in the Americas with a Pacific coast-deposited sand and clay onto three fingers of the hand-shaped geoglyph.

Five years later, environmental group Greenpeace damaged an area near the hummingbird geoglyph during a media stunt. The activists disturbed the upper layer of rocks by the hummingbird when they trampled through the forbidden area of the desert to lay down a large sign that promotes renewable energy.

And in 2018, a commercial truck driver was arrested after he drove onto a portion of the Nazca Lines, etching deep scars into an area roughly 100 feet by 330 feet (about 50 meters by 100 meters). The damage caused by the truck driver renewed calls for greater security and surveillance at the sites.

Sources

Nasca Lines. National Geographic.
Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa. UNESCO.
Knudson et al. (2009). "The geographic origins of Nasca trophy heads using strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope data." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
Mysterious Nazca Line Geoglyphs Formed Ancient Pilgrimage Route. LiveScience.
100-Foot Image of Mythical Creature Discovered in Peru. LiveScience.
Team finds more Peru geoglyphs. Japan Times.
The origins of Peru's mysterious Nasca Lines. BBC.
Rains damage Peru's Nazca lines. The Telegraph.
Peru Is Indignant After Greenpeace Makes Its Mark on Ancient Site. New York Times.
Truck driver plows into Peru's 2,000-year-old archeological enigma. CNN.
Exclusive: Massive Ancient Drawings Found in Peruvian Desert. National Geographic.

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There are three basic types of Nazca Lines: straight lines, geometric designs and pictorial representations. There are more than 800 straight lines on the coastal plain, some of which are 30 miles (48 km) long. Additionally, there are over 300 geometric designs, which include basic shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and trapezoids, as well as spirals, arrows, zig-zags and wavy lines.

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Harmony Square - Educational Videos & Activities

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Native Peoples of the Northwest | Learn about the daily life and culture of Native Peoples

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About 10,000 years ago, people began living on North America's Northwest Coast, a narrow area along the Pacific Ocean that stretches across parts of modern-day Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Yukon and British Columbia in Canada. By 3,000 B.C., people had set up permanent villages along the rivers, peninsulas, and islands of this region.

COOL CULTURE

The ocean and the lush coastal forests provided the Northwest Coast people with everything that they needed to survive. Tribes carved huge canoes made from cedar or spruce trees. The boats could fit up to 30 people, who paddled into the sea to hunt otters, seals, and whales. Salmon was such an important food source that these fish featured in many of their stories, and many tribes held a First Salmon Ceremony to celebrate the salmon's return to freshwater rivers from the ocean.

Many tribes, such as the Tlingit (KLIN-kit) and Haida (HY-dah), showed off their status with totem poles. These carved and painted poles represented a family's history or honored a chief or other important person. The totem poles featured carvings of animals or supernatural creatures associated with family clans. Thunderbirds (a mythical animal that caused thunder when it opened its wings), ravens, and bears stared down from many totem poles.

In the spring and summer, many tribes lived in temporary shelters that could be moved around while they hunted, fished, and gathered berries and roots. During winter, people moved into cedar houses that were large enough for many families to share. Often these homes had totem poles outside. Sometimes the totem poles were used as posts to support the house's roof.

LIFE TODAY

Today the native people of the Northwest Coast have lives like many Americans: They live in modern homes and send their kids to school. But many also remember their heritage by doing things like carving totem poles, hosting traditional feasts, and sharing their culture with others. For instance, the Puyallup (pyoo-AH-lup) tribe has a YouTube channel with videos of events such as the Puyallup powwow. Fish have become part of many of modern tribal businesses: The S'klallam (SKLAH-lum) and the Stillaguamish (stil-AG-wa-mish) operate fish hatcheries.

Many tribes participate in Canoe Journeys, an event hosted by the Lummi (LOO-mee) people. Each year, participants sail oceangoing canoes to a different destination, sometimes taking a month to complete the journey.

Text and photos adapted from the Nat Geo Kids Encyclopedia of American Indian History and Culture.

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Native People of the American Northwest Coast

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Native People of the American Northwest Coast

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Native America | Episode 2: Nature to Nations | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations-from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments?

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Harmony Square - Educational Videos & Activities

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Native Peoples of the Plains | Learn about the daily life and culture of Native Peoples

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Native America | Episode 2: Nature to Nations | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations-from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments?

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Native America | Episode 2: Nature to Nations | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations-from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments?

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https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/nature-nations-gallery-native-america/nature-nations-gallery-native-america/

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Native America | Episode 2: Nature to Nations | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations-from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments?

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Ohlone Youth Summit - Building Tule Boats 

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Ohlone Youth Summit - Building Tule Boats 

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The mounds served many purposes.

"Shellmounds are created by my ancestors as ceremonial places and as burial sites," said Corrina Gould, spokeswoman for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and co-director of Indian People Organizing for Change. Lisjan is one of more than 40 native groups that call the greater Bay Area their home. As colonizers and settlers came to Northern California, they lumped these distinct indigenous groups into one. These days this larger group is most often called Ohlone.

Gould said innumerable burials were found in shellmounds: "Children buried with their mothers who had been lost in childbirth. Elders with babies."

These bodies were then covered with layers of soil, shell and rock.

Growing bigger over time, the shellmounds transformed the flatlands by the bay waters into an undulating, awe-inspiring scene.

The shellmounds also served as an active space for the living.

"People would come and they would trade with each other, and they would have ceremony at the top of these mounds," Gould said.

Archaeologists have found remnants of communal fireplaces, workshops and homes in the mounds. They were so central to community life that it seems there wasn't even time for topsoil to build up or for grasses to grow, said UC Berkeley anthropology professor Kent Lightfoot.

Their height, sometimes taller than 30 feet, served as a focal point to navigate across the bay waters, or to communicate with other tribes.

"You could send signals to other people across the bay because you could see their fires," Gould said, which could, among other things, warn groups about toxic red tide.

"There's all of these things that are in these mounds that tell us this rich history of our people for thousands and thousands of years," she said.

Gould is referring to remnants of daily Ohlone life, like the foods that sustained them: not only the mussel, clam and oyster shells that give the mounds their name, but traces of salmon and sturgeon, deer, and acorns from the ample oak trees.

How many shellmounds were in the Bay Area?

The San Francisco Bay Area was a popular place to live for Native Americans. Natural resources from both water and land were abundant here. The area from Point Sur in the south to the Carquinez Strait in the north was one of the most densely populated places for indigenous people north of Mexico, with roughly 10,000 inhabitants.

All these people meant a lot of villages, and therefore a lot of shellmounds.

But as colonizers and settlers came to California in the 1700s and 1800s, the native population was devastated. They were killed by newly introduced diseases, starvation and genocide. These killings were at times funded by the state of California and the U.S. government.

Native people began to disappear from their traditional land. When their houses of willow branches and tule reeds decomposed, the shellmounds were all that was left to mark where their villages once stood.

In 1909, a UC Berkeley archeologist named Nels Nelson counted 425 shellmounds around the Bay Area. He thought there had been many more, too, that were already worn away by water, time and development.

Corrina Gould believes that of the shellmounds Nelson documented in 1909, roughly four can still be seen, in such places as San Bruno, Fremont and Richmond.

What happened to the shellmounds?

Let's take a look at the Emeryville shellmound as an example of a larger trend. This shellmound was the biggest one recorded in the Bay Area, more than three stories high and 350 feet in diameter, Gould said.

Demolition of the Emeryville shellmound. But if you look for the shellmound today, you won't find much above ground.

In the late 1800s, developers sheared off the top to create a dance pavilion -- people were literally dancing on graves. At the base of the shellmound, they constructed an amusement park. Decades later the shellmound was leveled completely to make way for a paint factory. And in the early 2000s, the site of this once-busy native village became a busy outdoor shopping center.

This kind of destruction happened across the Bay Area.

But Gould emphasized that the shellmounds are still here, albeit underground.

"It's important for us to preserve and protect what's left," Gould said. "Even if you as human beings can't see it on top, we know that the layers of our shellmounds go way deep underneath the land."

The soil below where shellmounds stood is distinct. It's a dark, rich color from organic material, with white pockets colored by remains of shells.

The rich soil from above-ground shellmounds was used to pave roads, fill in parts of the bay and fertilize gardens. Some of the human remains met similar fates.

Gould said the shellmounds are beneath landmarks that Bay Area residents pass daily: a Burger King in downtown Oakland, or Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

Many skeletons have been unceremoniously unearthed. Construction crews and archaeologists uncovered human bones as recently as the early 2000s, while building the Emeryville shops. Gould said most of these were reburied in an undisclosed location on the original site. In the past, remains were treated differently. Professional and amateur archaeologists sought out human bones and artifacts and sent them to universities.

UC Berkeley's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology has more than 5,000 sets of human remains from the Bay Area alone. A "set" could represent the remains of one or multiple people, or even just an isolated component of a person, according to a spokesman for the museum.

Two years ago, Gould and other Ohlone people viewed the Hearst Museum's collection of human remains.

"From the top of the ceiling to the floor there was all these trays with our ancestor remains up and down," Gould said. "I'll never forget that experience that this institution is holding these humans, and for what purpose? And how many is too many?"

"They were the ancestors, you know, my direct relations." Gould choked up as she spoke, describing her reaction after the visit: "I lay down in bed for three days and couldn't move. And it still hurts."

What's happening with shellmounds now?

Gould and other Native American activists are fighting to acquire land where the oldest Bay Area shellmound, nearly 5,000 years old, once stood: West Berkeley. The space is privately owned, and currently an asphalt parking lot at 1900 Fourth St., between the Fourth Street shopping corridor and the bay. The location has been designated as an archeological landmark by the city of Berkeley since 2000.

The landowners have sought to build housing here in recent years, but their proposals have been rejected by the city of Berkeley. While the owners have challenged the city, a judge recently ruled in favor of the city.

What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate? Ask Bay Curious.

Gould hopes eventually the land will be overseen by Ohlone and other Native Americans. She acknowledges this is just a dream right now, as the owners of the land are not willing to sell. But she said stranger things have happened.

Her vision is a space with native plants, a circular dancing structure for Ohlone ceremonies, and a 40-foot-tall mound with a spiral path and information about the Ohlone.

Gould and others regularly hold intertribal prayers here, on the current parking lot. Over her decades as an activist, Gould said Ohlone events have grown stronger, and the crowds have grown larger.

She sees this as part of a larger Ohlone resurgence: consulting for the Hearst Museum that houses bones of their relatives, reviving dance steps no one has followed in 100 years, and learning traditional languages - not spoken in generations - from tape recordings.

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There Were Once More Than 425 Shellmounds in the Bay Area. Where Did They Go? | KQED

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The mounds served many purposes. "Shellmounds are created by my ancestors as ceremonial places and as burial sites," said Corrina Gould, spokeswoman for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and co-director of Indian People Organizing for Change. Lisjan is one of more than 40 native groups that call the greater Bay Area their home.

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Stretching from Canada to Texas, the Great Plains region was too dry to support large groups of people around 10,000 years ago. But over time the climate became warmer and rainier, allowing grasses to grow. That brought herds of bison-and people weren't far behind. Starting around A.D. 1200, tribes from the north, east, and southeast regions of what's now the United States and the Canadian prairies moved to this area to hunt bison for food, shelter, tools, and clothing.

COOL CULTURE

Many tribes, including the Crow and Arapaho (pronounced uh-RAH-puh-hoh), survived by following bison herds as they migrated from place to place. These groups needed homes that could be quickly taken down and rebuilt again, so they lived in tent-like structures made of buffalo skins called tepees. (The Wichita people and a few other Plains tribes stayed in one place to farm the land, living in beehive-shaped houses made of grass.)

In the mid-1700s, Plains tribes started riding horses that had been brought over from Europe. Groups such as the Blackfeet, Sioux (pronounced SOO), and Comanche (pronounced kuh-MAN-chee) became master riders and warriors, and they controlled huge hunting grounds that supported thousands of members. For instance, at one point, the powerful Comanche tribe had more than 40,000 people.

Because the Plains tribes were spread across so much land, they spoke many different languages-so they developed a single sign language for people of all tribes to communicate with. They also shared a tradition of dance: Different tribes practiced ceremonial dances. The Cheyenne (SHY-an) performed the Animal Dance, meant to send luck to hunters so they would bring back enough food for the tribe. The Caddo (CAD-oh) performed the Turkey Dance, which celebrated the return of warriors from battle; and several tribes performed the Sun Dance, in which dancers prayed for spiritual healing and the welfare of their communities.

LIFE TODAY

Plains tribes didn't hunt more bison than they needed to survive, so the population of these animals remained stable-that is, until European settlers arrived. By the 1880s these newcomers had hunted the bison almost to extinction. Once these tribes lost their main source of food, the U.S. government forced many of them to move to reservations, which are lands reserved for Native Americans. These were often located far from their traditional homelands in present-day Oklahoma, North Dakota, and South Dakota believed to be unsuitable for farming or settlement.

Today the Plains tribes are keeping their culture alive. Many host traditional celebrations for the public to watch, and some have created apps to make sure their languages aren't forgotten. They're also helping preserve their natural resources: Tribes in Texas are working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to restore the region's longleaf pine forests, and other Plains tribes are trying to bring back bison to the region.

Text and photos adapted from the Nat Geo Kids Encyclopedia of American Indian History and Culture.

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Native People of the American Great Plains

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Native People of the American Great Plains

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Native America | Episode 2: Nature to Nations | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations-from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments?

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Voices to Honor for Indigenous Peoples' Day

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Voices to Honor for Indigenous Peoples' Day

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In recognition of Indigenous Peoples' Day, we're highlighting the voices of Native American people through a few of their conversations at StoryCorps. Listen below to the stories and lives of Indigenous people from all backgrounds across the country.
Share your story. StoryCorps Connect makes it possible to interview a loved one remotely and then upload it to the StoryCorps archive at the Library of Congress. Learn more at StoryCorpsConnect.org.
In 1985, Wilma Mankiller made history when she became the first woman to lead the Cherokee Nation. Her family remembers her as an inspiring trailblazer, and as a supportive mother and grandmother.
Read the full transcript here.

Thompson Williams remembers his father, a larger-than-life tribal leader of the Caddo Nation and a veteran of World War II.
Read the full transcript here.

Diane Tells His Name's family is from the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota - something she didn't know until she was an adult, after she discovered she had been adopted.
Read the full transcript here.

Carolyn DeFord, a Puyallup tribal member, remembers her mom, Leona Kinsey, who disappeared twenty years ago. She is part of an epidemic of Native American women who have gone missing and never been found.
Read the full transcript here.

Storm Reyes was working full-time at a migrant work camp at age 8. She remembers the day a bookmobile arrived, and the world was suddenly at her fingertips.
Read the full transcript here.

Want to listen to more StoryCorps stories? Sign up for our Story of the Week newsletter to discover a new voice every week.

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Voices to Honor for Indigenous Peoples' Day

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We're highlighting the voices of Native American people through a few of their conversations at StoryCorps.

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Inca, Maya, and Aztec - The Columbian Exchange

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Inca, Maya, and Aztec - The Columbian Exchange

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The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course World History #23

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Native America | Episode 4: New World Rising | PBS LearningMedia

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Native America: New World Rising examines Native Americans' continued efforts to preserve cultural traditions in the face of conquest and warfare. The hour centers on a little-known empire forged by the Comanches in the American West. Comanche elders speak of how they transformed the horse - a weapon of conquest - into a treasured ally.

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- [Narrator] What we're going to do in this video is think about the significant empires that formed shortly before the European colonization of the Americas. In particular, we're going to focus on the Inca Empire. In other videos, we have talked about the Aztecs. But what's interesting is this period of time in the 15th and early 16th centuries, when these empires form, but then shortly thereafter, about a hundred years after they form, they are conquered by the Spanish conquistadors. So let's focus on the Inca Empire, but keep it in comparison to some of the other significant empires and civilizations we know about. As we enter into the 15th century, we have the kingdom of Cuzco. What we now call the Inca Empire did not exist yet. The ninth ruler of the kingdom of Cuzco, a gentleman by the name of Pachacuti, he decides to go on a fairly aggressive effort of expansion. It is Pachacuti that takes the Incas from the kingdom of Cuzco, and creates an empire. Now as I mentioned, they did not call themselves the Incas. Inca was actually their word for ruler. So this was Pachacuti Inca. Their name for the empire that gets started by Pachacuti was Tawantinsuyu. What's it's really referring to is the four regions. You can see the four regions here that were conquered, with Cuzco at the center. One of the interesting things is that right around the same time, we talk about it in another video, you have the Aztec Empire forming. The Aztec civilization exists well before that, as does the pre-Inca Empire civilizations. But in the 15th century is also when you have the Aztec Empire form. The Mayan civilization, by this point, is in its post-classical period. It's classical period is in bold right over here. But there's still many independent Mayan city states in the Yucatan Peninsula. But the two notable empires here are the Aztecs and the Incas, which form in the 15th century. What makes them an empire is that you have one group, in the case of the Incas, the kingdom of Cuzco, conquering other peoples, and taking tribute from them. Now what was interesting about the Incas is that they were able to form this large empire, the largest empire in the Americas at the time of the European conquest. This empire had 10 million people in it. What's amazing is that you have this large, powerful empire with significant building projects. This is a picture of Machu Pichu. Historians believe that it was built as an estate for Pachacuti. So they were able to do sophisticated construction despite not having a written system as we know it. They had a system of knots for some forms of record keeping. But despite that, they were able to have a sophisticated society. Their way of taxing people was not through formal coinage. They didn't have a monetary system as we know it. Members of their society had to dedicate a proportion of their labor to the empire, to the emperor. This might seem different than what we do, but if you think about it, if my income is taxed at 30% or 35% in, say, the US, essentially what I'm giving to the government is 35% of the work of my labor. I'm just doing it through a monetary system. They did it directly. A certain percentage of my labor would directly have to be for the empire. That's how things like Machu Pichu actually got built. This was called the Mit'a system. Well, like the case with the Aztec Empire, the Inca Empire lasts for about 100 years until the Conquistadors come into the picture. Francisco Pizarro in particular, on his third expedition, is able to conquer this powerful Inca Empire. He does this with only several hundred men. But they were far better armed than the Incas. But many historians believe there was also complacency on the part of the Inca ruler at the time. He didn't believe that these Conquistadors would be able to overtake his army that numbered in the tens of thousands.

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Inca Empire overview (video) | Khan Academy

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Narrator] What we're going to do in this video is think about the significant empires that formed shortly before the European colonization of the Americas. In particular, we're going to focus on the Inca Empire. In other videos, we have talked about the Aztecs.

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History through the eyes of the potato - Leo Bear-McGuinness

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Bay Curious Podcast - First Peoples of the Bay Area 

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Bay Curious Podcast - First Peoples of the Bay Area 

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Most of what we now know as the Bay Area was Ohlone territory, from Vallejo down to Monterey, including San Francisco and the Peninsula. "Now within that, there's at least 54 independent nations," Medina says. While these groups share some things in common, they speak many different languages; Medina speaks one called Chochenyo.

Other groups around the Bay Area include the Miwok - Coast Miwok people along the shoreline of Marin County, and Bay and Plains Miwok further up the Delta - as well as Patwin and Wappo.

As for where the term Ohlone comes from, Medina says there are a few explanations:

"Sometimes people will say that it comes from the name of one of those smaller nations I was describing on the San Francisco Peninsula, but we have another explanation for that in our family here in the East Bay. We believe it comes from the Miwok term which means 'people of the west.' "

How long have people lived in the Bay Area, and what was life like then?

The record is spotty, but humans were definitely here before the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago - and back then the place was not a windswept tundra. The weather was mild, and the low sea level meant the coast was miles further west than today. What's now the bay was more like a lush river valley.

The first people we know of living here probably enjoyed abundant seafood, says Kent Lightfoot, an anthropology professor at UC Berkeley with expertise in California archaeology.

"The earliest people we have really good archaeological records of," Lightfoot says, "were maritime peoples, seafaring peoples who had boats and who had come down the coast."

It's possible another wave of migrants came in to hunt the mammoths and mastodons that roamed the Bay Area around this time. While Lightfoot says there's not great evidence of this, it wouldn't surprise him.

Over the next several thousand years, sea levels rose. The ice age megafauna vanished, but a tremendous array of wildlife remained - including the now-extinct California grizzly bear.

During this period, the people here came to use bows and arrows rather than spears to hunt animals like elk. And they learned to process acorns into a kind of porridge. They also used grass-like tule reeds for everything from building structures and boats to crafting baskets and nets for fish.

Malcolm Margolin, an author and publisher who has written extensively about the native peoples of California, says the shellmounds that can still be found in the region are a hallmark from this age.

"By the time the first Europeans came, the bay had about 400 shellmounds around it. These shellmounds were accumulations of earth, of shells, of ashes from fires, of refuse and burials," Margolin says. Some were around 300 feet in diameter and three stories high and would've taken generations to build up - long enough for their use to gradually shift with time. Perhaps some generations used them as ritual places, others for dwelling, he says.

Today, many shellmounds have become the sites of shopping centers and parking lots. And there are ongoing legal disputes and protests over this type of development. Perhaps the best surviving example of a shellmound is in Coyote Hills Regional Park, but that one is only open to the public on certain occasions.

What happened to the people here?

It's a sad but familiar story: Waves of colonizers came to the Bay Area and killed nearly all the native people living here. Survivors had to give up their land and their way of life.

Margolin calls the genocide "an attempt to erase people," saying, "I think Europeans had no use for Indians. I think they had a sense of them as inferior beings. What they saw were people that didn't have the right clothes, that didn't have the right manners. They didn't have the right religion."

Bay Curious is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, NPR One or your favorite podcast platform.

The devastation came in three waves, starting about 250 years ago with the Spanish.

"The conquest was as cruel as it could be. Indians were drawn into the missions and many of them died either from disease or were killed outright," Margolin says.

Then, during the era of Mexican control that followed, native people were cut loose from the missions. With nowhere to return to, many were forced to work on ranches.

Mexico gave up rights to California at the end of the Mexican-American War. A few months after California became a state in 1850, the first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, said to expect a "war of extermination" against native people.

"Our family experienced a lot of hardships that came with colonization - too many hardships to ever really list," Vincent Medina says.

Through it all, Indigenous people like Medina's great-grandmother quietly preserved and passed on the traditions of their ancestors.

"When not everything could be carried on, one way that our family found to keep these things alive was through documenting them," Medina said. His great-grandmother and other elders wrote thousands of pages on history, language, religion and foods.

"My great-grandmother survived that time," Medina said. She got through it, and she still kept our culture close, passing on as much as she could to everybody in our family around her. And through those efforts that's how so many of us, including myself, grew up empowered with our culture."

Medina says at one point not a single person he knew spoke Chochenyo. But over the past several years, he and others have worked to resuscitate the language, using the documentation their elders left behind as a guide. Now a whole community is conversant.

"That shows healing right there in action," Medina says. "That shows how we can be able to have things back again that we might have not had a short time ago, but that we were always meant to have."

Medina works to make Indigenous culture more visible in other ways, too. He runs Cafe Ohlone - recently relocated to UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology - where the menu features shellfish, acorn soup and even acorn-flour brownies - a hit with kids.

He's one person among many working to revive traditional dance, basketry and even making boats of tule reeds. He sees this as carrying forward a story that began a very, very long time ago.

"Knowing that we're Indigenous here, that we were created here, it gives us that responsibility and that obligation to keep these teachings close with a lot of integrity and a lot of deep care and love," Medina says.

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Who Were the First People to Live in the Bay Area? | KQED

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Most of what we now know as the Bay Area was Ohlone territory, from Vallejo down to Monterey, including San Francisco and the Peninsula. "Now within that, there's at least 54 independent nations," Medina says. While these groups share some things in common, they speak many different languages; Medina speaks one called Chochenyo.

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The Inca civilization flourished in ancient Peru between c. 1400 and 1533 CE, and their empire eventually extended across western South America from Quito in the north to Santiago in the south. It is the largest empire ever seen in the Americas and the largest in the world at that time.

Undaunted by the often harsh Andean environment, the Incas conquered people and exploited landscapes in such diverse settings as plains, mountains, deserts, and tropical jungle. Famed for their unique art and architecture, they constructed finely-built and imposing buildings wherever they conquered, and their spectacular adaptation of natural landscapes with terracing, highways, and mountaintop settlements continues to impress modern visitors at such world-famous sites as Machu Picchu.

Historical Overview

As with other ancient Americas cultures, the historical origins of the Incas are difficult to disentangle from the founding myths they themselves created. According to legend, in the beginning, the creator god Viracocha came out of the Pacific Ocean, and when he arrived at Lake Titicaca, he created the sun and all ethnic groups. These first people were buried by the god and only later did they emerge from springs and rocks (sacred pacarinas) back into the world. The Incas, specifically, were brought into existence at Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) from the sun god Inti; hence, they regarded themselves as the chosen few, the 'Children of the Sun', and the Inca ruler was Inti's representative and embodiment on earth. In another version of the creation myth, the first Incas came from a sacred cave known as Tampu T'oqo or 'The House of Windows', which was located at Pacariqtambo, the 'Inn of Dawn', south of Cuzco. The first pair of humans were Manco Capac (or Manqo Qhapaq) and his sister (also his wife) Mama Oqllu (or Ocllo). Three more brother-sister siblings were born, and the group set off together to found their civilization. Defeating the Chanca people with the help of stone warriors ( pururaucas), the first Incas finally settled in the Valley of Cuzco and Manco Capac, throwing a golden rod into the ground, established what would become the Inca capital, Cuzco.

40,000 Incas governed a territory with 10 million subjects speaking over 30 different languages.

More concrete archaeological evidence has revealed that the first settlements in the Cuzco Valley actually date to 4500 BCE when hunter-gather communities occupied the area. However, Cuzco only became a significant centre sometime at the beginning of the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1400 CE). A process of regional unification began from the late 14th century CE, and from the early 15th century CE, with the arrival of the first great Inca leader Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui ('Reverser of the World') and the defeat of the Chanca in 1438 CE, the Incas began to expand in search of plunder and production resources, first to the south and then in all directions. They eventually built an empire which stretched across the Andes, conquering such peoples as the Lupaka, Colla, Chimor, and Wanka civilizations along the way. Once established, a nationwide system of tax and administration was instigated which consolidated the power of Cuzco.

The rise of the Inca Empire was spectacularly quick. First, all speakers of the Inca language Quechua (or Runasimi) were given privileged status, and this noble class then dominated all the important roles within the empire. Thupa Inca Yupanqui (also known as Topa Inca Yupanqui), Pachacuti's successor from 1471 CE, is credited with having expanded the empire by a massive 4,000 km (2,500 miles). The Incas themselves called their empire Tawantinsuyo (or Tahuantinsuyu) meaning 'Land of the Four Quarters' or 'The Four Parts Together'. Cuzco was considered the navel of the world, and radiating out were highways and sacred sighting lines ( ceques) to each quarter: Chinchaysuyu (north), Antisuyu (east), Collasuyu (south), and Cuntisuyu (west). Spreading across ancient Ecuador, Peru, northern Chile, Bolivia, upland Argentina, and southern Colombia and stretching 5,500 km (3,400 miles) north to south, 40,000 Incas governed a huge territory with some 10 million subjects speaking over 30 different languages.

Government & Administration

The Incas kept lists of their kings ( Sapa Inca) so that we know of such names as Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (reign c. 1438-63 CE), Thupa Inca Yupanqui (reign c. 1471-93 CE), and Wayna Qhapaq (the last pre-Hispanic ruler, reign c. 1493-1525 CE). It is possible that two kings ruled at the same time and that queens may have had some significant powers, but the Spanish records are not clear on both points. The Sapa Inca was an absolute ruler, and he lived a life of great opulence. Drinking from gold and silver cups, wearing silver shoes, and living in a palace furnished with the finest textiles, he was pampered to the extreme. He was even looked after following his death, as the Inca mummified their rulers. Stored in the Coricancha temple in Cuzco, the mummies ( mallquis) were, in elaborate ceremonies, regularly brought outside wearing their finest regalia, given offerings of food and drink, and 'consulted' for their opinion on pressing state affairs.

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Inca rule was, much like their architecture, based on compartmentalised and interlocking units. At the top was the ruler and ten kindred groups of nobles called panaqa. Next in line came ten more kindred groups, more distantly related to the king and then, a third group of nobles not of Inca blood but made Incas as a privilege. At the bottom of the state apparatus were locally recruited administrators who oversaw settlements and the smallest Andean population unit the ayllu, which was a collection of households, typically of related families who worked an area of land, lived together and provided mutual support in times of need. Each ayllu was governed by a small number of nobles or kurakas, a role which could include women.

Local administrators reported to over 80 regional-level administrators who, in turn, reported to a governor responsible for each quarter of the empire. The four governors reported to the supreme Inca ruler in Cuzco. To ensure loyalty, the heirs of local rulers were also kept as well-kept prisoners at the Inca capital. The most important political, religious, and military roles within the empire were, then, kept in the hands of the Inca elite, called by the Spanish the orejones or 'big ears' because they wore large earspools to indicate their status. To better ensure the control of this elite over their subjects, garrisons dotted the empire, and entirely new administrative centres were built, notably at Tambo Colorado, Huánuco Pampa and Hatun Xauxa.

For tax purposes, censuses were taken and populations divided up into groups based on multiples of ten (Inca mathematics was almost identical to the system we use today). As there was no currency in the Inca world, taxes were paid in kind - usually foodstuffs, precious metals, textiles, exotic feathers, dyes, and spondylus shell - but also in labourers who could be shifted about the empire to be used where they were most needed, known as mit'a service. Agricultural land and herds were divided into three parts: production for the state religion and the gods, for the Inca ruler, and for the farmer's own use. Local communities were also expected to help build and maintain such imperial projects as the road system which stretched across the empire. To keep track of all these statistics, the Inca used the , a sophisticated assembly of knotted cords which was also highly transportable and could record decimals up to 10,000.

Although the Incas imposed their religion and administration on conquered peoples, extracted tribute, and even moved loyal populations ( mitmaqs) to better integrate new territories into the empire, Inca culture also brought certain benefits such as food redistribution in times of environmental disaster, better storage facilities for foodstuffs, work via state-sponsored projects, state-sponsored religious feasts, roads, irrigation systems, terrace farms, military assistance, and luxury goods, especially art objects enjoyed by the local elite.

Most splendid were the temples built in honour of Inti & Mama Kilya - the former was lined with 700 2 kg sheets of beaten gold.

Cuzco

The Inca capital of Cuzco (from qosqo, meaning 'dried-up lake bed' or perhaps derived from cozco, a particular stone marker in the city) was the religious and administrative centre of the empire and had a population of up to 150,000 at its peak. Dominated by the sacred gold-covered and emerald-studded Coricancha complex (or Temple of the Sun), its greatest buildings were credited to Pachacuti. Most splendid were the temples built in honour of Inti and Mama Kilya - the former was lined with 700 2 kg sheets of beaten gold, the latter with silver. The whole capital was laid out in the form of a puma (although some scholars dispute this and take the description metaphorically) with the imperial metropolis of Pumachupan forming the tail and the temple complex of Sacsayhuaman (or Saqsawaman) forming the head. Incorporating vast plazas, parklands, shrines, fountains, and canals, the splendour of Inca Cuzco now, unfortunately, survives only in the eye-witness accounts of the first Europeans who marvelled at its architecture and riches.

The Inca had great reverence for two earlier civilizations who had occupied much the same territory - the Wari and Tiwanaku. As we have seen, the sites of Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca played an important part in Inca creation myths and so were especially revered. Inca rulers made regular pilgrimages to Tiwanaku and the islands of the lake, where two shrines were built to Inti the Sun god and supreme Inca deity, and the moon goddess Mama Kilya. Also in the Coricancha complex at Cuzco, these deities were represented by large precious metal artworks which were attended and worshipped by priests and priestesses led by the second most important person after the king: the High Priest of the Sun ( Willaq Umu). Thus, the religion of the Inca was preoccupied with controlling the natural world and avoiding such disasters as earthquake, floods, and drought, which inevitably brought about the natural cycle of change, the turning over of time involving death and renewal which the Inca called pachakuti.

Sacred sites were also established, often taking advantage of prominent natural features such as mountain tops, caves, and springs. These huacas could be used to take astronomical observations at specific times of the year. Religious ceremonies took place according to the astronomical calendar, especially the movements of the sun, moon, and Milky Way ( Mayu). Processions and ceremonies could also be connected to agriculture, especially the planting and harvesting seasons. Along with Titicaca's Island of the Sun, the most sacred Inca site was Pachacamac, a temple city built in honour of the god with the same name, who created humans, plants, and was responsible for earthquakes. A large wooden statue of the god, considered an oracle, brought pilgrims from across the Andes to worship at Pachacamac. Shamans were another important part of Inca religion and were active in every settlement. Cuzco had 475, the most important being the yacarca, the personal advisor to the ruler.

Inca religious rituals also involved ancestor worship as seen through the practice of mummification and making offerings to the gods of food, drink, and precious materials. Sacrifices - both animals and humans, including children - were also made to pacify and honour the gods and ensure the good health of the king. The pouring of libations, either water or chicha beer, was also an important part of Inca religious ceremonies.

The Incas imposed their religion on local populations by building their own temples and sacred sites, and they also commandeered sacred relics from conquered peoples and held them in Cuzco. Stored in the Coricancha, they were perhaps considered hostages which ensured compliance to the Inca view of the world.

Master stonemasons, the Incas constructed large buildings, walls and fortifications using finely-worked blocks - either regular or polygonal - which fitted together so precisely no mortar was needed. With an emphasis on clean lines, trapezoid shapes, and incorporating natural features into these buildings, they have easily withstood the powerful earthquakes which frequently hit the region. The distinctive sloping trapezoid form and fine masonry of Inca buildings were, besides their obvious aesthetic value, also used as a recognisable symbol of Inca domination throughout the empire.

One of the most common Inca buildings was the ubiquitous one-room storage warehouse the qollqa. Built in stone and well-ventilated, they were either round and stored maize or square for potatoes and tubers. The kallanka was a very large hall used for community gatherings. More modest buildings include the kancha - a group of small single-room and rectangular buildings ( wasi and masma) with thatched roofs built around a courtyard enclosed by a high wall. The kancha was a typical architectural feature of Inca towns, and the idea was exported to conquered regions. Terracing to maximise land area for agriculture (especially for maize) was another Inca practice, which they exported wherever they went. These terraces often included canals, as the Incas were expert at diverting water, carrying it across great distances, channelling it underground, and creating spectacular outlets and fountains.

Goods were transported across the empire along purpose-built roads using llamas and porters (there were no wheeled vehicles). The Inca road network covered over 40,000 km and as well as allowing for the easy movement of armies, administrators, and trade goods, it was also a very powerful visual symbol of Inca authority over their empire. The roads had rest stations along their way, and there was also a relay system of runners ( chasquis) who carried messages up to 240 km in a single day from one settlement to another.

Although influenced by the art and techniques of the Chimu civilization, the Incas did create their own distinctive style which was an instantly recognisable symbol of imperial dominance across the empire. Inca art is best seen in highly polished metalwork (in gold - considered the sweat of the sun, silver - considered the tears of the moon, and copper), ceramics, and textiles, with the last being considered the most prestigious by the Incas themselves. Designs often use geometrical shapes, are technically accomplished, and standardized. The checkerboard stands out as a very popular design. One of the reasons for repeated designs was that pottery and textiles were often produced for the state as a tax, and so artworks were representative of specific communities and their cultural heritage. Just as today coins and stamps reflect a nation's history, so, too, Andean artwork offered recognisable motifs which either represented the specific communities making them or the imposed designs of the ruling Inca class ordering them.

Works using precious metals such as discs, jewellery, figures, and everyday objects were made exclusively for Inca nobles, and even some textiles were restricted for their use alone. Goods made using the super-soft vicuña wool were similarly restricted, and only the Inca ruler could own vicuña herds. Ceramics were for wider use, and the most common shape was the urpu, a bulbous vessel with a long neck and two small handles low on the pot which was used for storing maize. It is notable that the pottery decoration, textiles, and architectural sculpture of the Incas did not usually include representations of themselves, their rituals, or such common Andean images as monsters and half-human, half-animal figures.

The Inca produced textiles, ceramics, and metal sculpture technically superior to any previous Andean culture, and this despite stiff competition from such masters of metal work as the expert craftsmen of the Moche civilization. Just as the Inca imposed a political dominance over their conquered subjects, so, too, with art they imposed standard Inca forms and designs, but they did allow local traditions to maintain their preferred colours and proportions. Gifted artists such as those from Chan Chan or the Titicaca area and women particularly skilled at weaving were brought to Cuzco so that they could produce beautiful things for the Inca rulers.

Collapse

The Inca Empire was founded on, and maintained by, force, and the ruling Incas were very often unpopular with their subjects (especially in the northern territories), a situation that the Spanish conquerors ( conquistadores), led by Francisco Pizarro, would take full advantage of in the middle decades of the 16th century CE. The Inca Empire, in fact, had still not reached a stage of consolidated maturity when it faced its greatest challenge. Rebellions were rife, and the Incas were engaged in a war in Ecuador where a second Inca capital had been established at Quito. Even more serious, the Incas were hit by an epidemic of European diseases, such as smallpox, which had spread from central America even faster than the European invaders themselves, and the wave killed a staggering 65-90% of the population. Such a disease killed Wayna Qhapaq in 1528 CE, and two of his sons, Waskar and Atahualpa, battled in a damaging civil war for control of the empire just when the European treasure-hunters arrived. It was this combination of factors - a perfect storm of rebellion, disease, and invasion - which brought the downfall of the mighty Inca Empire, the largest and richest ever seen in the Americas.

The Inca language Quechua lives on today and is still spoken by some eight million people. There are also a good number of buildings, artefacts, and written accounts which have survived the ravages of conquerors, looters, and time. These remains are proportionally few to the vast riches which have been lost, but they remain indisputable witnesses to the wealth, ingenuity, and high cultural achievements of this great but short-lived civilization.

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The Inca civilization flourished in ancient Peru between c. 1400 and 1533 CE, and their empire eventually extended across western South America from Quito in the north to Santiago in the south. It is the largest empire ever seen in the Americas and the largest in the world at that time.

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The rise and fall of the Inca Empire - Gordon McEwan

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Ask History: What Happened to the Aztecs? | History

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- [Lecturer] We've already talked about the Aztec civilization in several videos, but what we're going to focus on in this video is the Aztec empire which shouldn't be confused with the Aztec civilization. The civilization is referring to the broader groups of people over hundreds of years, but the Aztec empire is a very specific entity that formed in the 100 years before Spanish colonization. What you see here is a zoomed in version of what today would be southern Mexico and right over here on the globe and you can see many city-states formed here. A city-state is a city that is also considers itself a state that has its own political organization, its own way of functioning. It's not dependent on any other government forms, and it's analogous to what we see in classical Greece where we have the city-states of Athens and Sparta. Now what's particularly interesting is what's going on around Lake Texcoco in the 14th Century. In 1325 you have the city of Tenochtitlan form on this island in Lake Texcoco and initially Tenochtitlan is one of the weaker city-states around Lake Texcoco. You see many of these city-states, some of the stronger ones you have Texcoco right here, and in particular you have Azcapotzalco, but as we fast forward roughly 100 years, you get to a situation where Azcapotzalco falls into a civil war. Their ruler dies and there's a succession battle and the various city-states around Lake Texcoco take sides. What eventually happens is Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan form what is known as a triple alliance or the triple alliance and are able to conquer the Azcapotzalco. And so in conquering the Azcapotzalco, what you have forming is known as the Aztec empire. Now it starts as an alliance between these three city-states and other city-states in the area, but over time Tenochtitlan which is sometimes referred to as Mexico Tenochtitlan because it is a city-state of the Mexico people and this is where the name Mexico or Mexico actually comes from. Now even though it's an alliance, over time, Tenochtitlan essentially becomes the capital of this alliance, or the capital of this Aztec empire which continues on for roughly 100 years until 1521 when it is defeated by Hernando Cortes. Now the story of how Hernando Cortes is able to conquer this empire is fascinating and I'm not going to be able to go into all of the details in this video, but needless to say he's able to convince several hundred conquistadors to come and try to conquer the empire and he's able to do so by recruiting tens of thousands, some estimates I've seen are 100,000 soldiers from neighboring city-states who had issues with the Mexico or with the Aztec empire and so he's eventually able to take over the famed city of Tenochtitlan. It's really important to recognize how advanced they were at the time. You see these causeways, these bridges leading into the island. They had a fairly advanced dam system to collect freshwater from the rain while also to control flooding. In fact a lot of that was destroyed when the conquistadors came and Mexico City which eventually gets founded over this lake is going to have issues with flooding for some time in the future. In fact the Spanish, in order to control the flooding, end up draining this lake and it's where Mexico City forms. But the big takeaway here is near the end of the Aztec civilization, as we get to the 100 years before the conquistadors arrive, you have this empire form. This empire which starts as an alliance of city-states but eventually becomes a tributary empire. Unlike the neighboring Mayans, which were on the Yucatan peninsula. On this map they would be in this region right over here, the neighboring Mayans were autonomous city-states. Some might have had more power, more influence at different times, but the Aztec tributary state means the other city-states are paying tribute to Tenochtitlan. They are paying revenue, they are paying service to what essentially is the capital or the seat of that empire until it is conquered by the Spanish with, and remember, the Spanish are able to do this with several hundred conquistadors with the help of neighboring city-states and a smallpox epidemic which kills 50% of the population of the region.

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Lecturer] We've already talked about the Aztec civilization in several videos, but what we're going to focus on in this video is the Aztec empire which shouldn't be confused with the Aztec civilization. The civilization is referring to the broader groups of people over hundreds of years, but the Aztec empire is a very specific entity that formed in the 100 years before Spanish colonization.

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The Aztec Empire (c. 1345-1521) covered at its greatest extent most of northern Mesoamerica. Aztec warriors were able to dominate their neighbouring states and permit rulers such as Montezuma to impose Aztec ideals and religion across Mexico. Highly accomplished in agriculture and trade, the last of the great Mesoamerican civilizations was also noted for its art and architecture.

The Aztec civilization, with its capital city at Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), is actually the most well-documented Mesoamerican civilization with sources including archaeology, native books (codices) and lengthy and detailed accounts from their Spanish conquerors - both by military men and Christian clergy. These latter sources may not always be reliable but the picture we have of the Aztecs, their institutions, religious practices, Aztec warfare and daily life is a rich one and it continues to be constantly expanded with details being added through the endeavours of 21st-century CE archaeologists and scholars.

Historical Overview

Sometime around 1100 the city-states or altepetl which were spread over central Mexico began to compete with each other for local resources and regional dominance. Each state had its own ruler or tlatoani who led a council of nobles but these small urban centres surrounded by farmland soon sought to expand their wealth and influence so that by c. 1400 several small empires had formed in the Valley of Mexico. Dominant amongst these were Texcoco, capital of the Acholhua region, and Azcapotzalco, capital of the Tepenec. These two empires came face to face in 1428 with the Tepanec War. The Azcapotzalco forces were defeated by an alliance of Texcoco, Tenochtitlan (the capital of the Mexica) and several other smaller cities. Following victory, a Triple Alliance was formed between Texcoco, Tenochtitlan and a rebel Tepanec city, Tlacopan. A campaign of territorial expansion began where the spoils of war - usually in the form of tributes from the conquered - were shared between these three great cities. Over time Tenochtitlan came to dominate the Alliance, its ruler became the supreme ruler - the huey tlatoque ('high king') - and the city established itself as the capital of the Aztec empire.

Masters of the world, their empire so wide & abundant that they had conquered all the nations.
Diego Durán

The empire continued to expand from 1430 and the Aztec military - bolstered by conscription of all adult males, men supplied from allied and conquered states, and such elite members of Aztec society as the Eagle and Jaguar warriors - swept aside their rivals. An Aztec warrior wore padded cotton armour, carried a wooden or reed shield covered in hide, and wielded weapons such as a super sharp obsidian sword-club ( macuahuitl), a spear or dart thrower ( atlatl), and bow and arrows. Elite warriors also wore spectacular feathered and animal skin costumes and headdresses to signify their rank. Battles were concentrated in or around major cities and when these fell the victors claimed the whole surrounding territory. Regular tributes were extracted and captives were taken back to Tenochtitlan for ritual sacrifice. In this way, the Aztec empire came to cover most of northern Mexico, an area of some 135,000 square kilometres.

The empire was kept together through the appointment of officials from the Aztec culture's heartland, inter-marriages, gift-giving, invitations to important ceremonies, the building of monuments and artworks which promoted Aztec imperial ideology, and most importantly of all, the ever-present threat of military intervention. Some states were integrated more than others whilst those on the extremities of the empire became useful buffer zones against more hostile neighbours, notably the Tarascan civilization.

Tenochtitlan

The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán (today beneath Mexico City) on the western shore of Lake Texcoco flourished so that the city could boast at least 200,000 inhabitants by the early 16th century, making it the largest city in the Pre-Columbian Americas. These inhabitants were divided into several social strata. At the top were local rulers ( teteuhctin), then came nobles ( pipiltin), commoners ( macehualtin), serfs ( mayeque), and finally slaves ( tlacohtin). The strata seem to have been relatively fixed but there is some evidence of movement between them, especially in the lower classes.

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Not only the political and religious capital, Tenochtitlán was also a huge trading centre with goods flowing in and out such as gold, greenstone, turquoise, cotton, cacao beans, tobacco, pottery, tools, weapons, foodstuffs (tortillas, chile sauces, maize, beans, and even insects, for example) and slaves. The Spanish invaders were hugely impressed by the city's splendour and magnificent architecture and artwork, especially the Templo Mayor pyramid and massive stone sculptures. Dominating the city was the huge Sacred Precinct with its temples and monumental ball court. Tenochtitlan's water management was also impressive with large canals crisscrossing the city which was itself surrounded by chinampas - raised and flooded fields - which greatly increased the agricultural capacity of the Aztecs. There were also anti-flood dykes, artificial reservoirs for fresh water, and wonderful flower gardens dotted around the city.

The whole city was designed to inspire awe in the people, especially visiting nobles who, entertained with lavish ceremonies, could see that the Mexica Aztecs truly were:

Masters of the world, their empire so wide and abundant that they had conquered all the nations and that all were their vassals. The guests, seeing such wealth and opulence and such authority and power, were filled with terror. (Diego Durán, the Spanish friar, quoted in Nichols, 451)

Religion

Mythology and religion, as with most ancient cultures, were closely intertwined for the Aztecs. The very founding of Tenochtitlán was based on the belief that peoples from the mythical land of plenty Aztlán (literally 'Land of White Herons' and origin of the Aztec name) in the far northwest had first settled in the Valley of Mexico. They had been shown the way by their god Huitzilopochtli who had sent an eagle sitting on a cactus to indicate exactly where these migrants should build their new home. The god also gave these people their name, the Mexica, who along with other ethnic groups, who similarly spoke Nahuatl, collectively made up the peoples now generally known as the Aztecs.

The Aztec pantheon included a mix of older Mesoamerican gods and specifically Mexica deities. The two principal gods worshipped were Huitzilopochtli (the war and sun god) and Tlaloc (the rain god) and both had a temple on top of the Templo Mayor pyramid at the heart of Tenochtitlan. Other important gods were Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent god common to many Mesoamerican cultures), Tezcatlipoca (supreme god at Texcoco), Xipe Totec (god of Spring and agriculture), Xiuhtecuhtli (god of fire), Xochipilli (god of summertime and flowers), Ometeotl (the creator god), Mictlantecuhtli (god of the dead) and Coatlicue (the earth-mother goddess).

This sometimes bewildering array of gods presided over every aspect of the human condition. The timing of ceremonies in honour of these deities was dictated by a variety of calendars. There was the 260-day Aztec calendar which was divided into 20 weeks, each of 13 days which carried names such as Crocodile and Wind. There was also a Solar calendar consisting of 18 months, each of 20 days. The 584 day period covering the rise of Venus was also important and there was a 52-year cycle of the sun to be considered. The movement of planets and stars were carefully observed (albeit not as accurately, though, as the Maya had done) and they provided the motive for the specific timing of many religious rites and agricultural practices.

The sun, not surprisingly, had great significance for the Aztecs. They believed that the world went through a series of cosmic ages, each had its own sun but finally each world was destroyed and replaced by another until the fifth and final age was reached - the present day for the Aztecs. This cosmic progression was wonderfully represented in the famous Sun Stone but also crops up in many other places too.

The gods were honoured with festivals, banquets, music, dancing, decoration of statues, burning of incense, the ritual burial of precious goods, penances such as blood-letting, and animal sacrifices. Human sacrifice, both of adults and less often children, was frequently carried out to metaphorically 'feed' the gods and keep them happy lest they become angry and make life difficult for humans by sending storms, droughts etc. or even just to keep the sun appearing every day. Victims of human sacrifice were usually taken from the losing side in wars. Indeed, the so-called 'Flowery Wars' were specifically undertaken to collect sacrificial victims. The most prestigious offerings were those warriors who had shown great bravery in battle. The sacrifice itself could take three main forms: the heart was removed, the victim was decapitated, or the victim was made to fight in a hopelessly one-sided contest against elite warriors. There were also impersonators who dressed in the regalia of a specific god and at the climax of the ceremony were themselves sacrificed.

Architecture & Art

The Aztecs were themselves appreciative of fine art and they collected pieces from across their empire to be brought back to Tenochtitlan and often ceremonially buried. Aztec art was nothing if not eclectic and ranged from miniature engraved precious objects to massive stone temples. Monumental sculptures were a particular favourite and could be fearsome monstrosities such as the colossal Coatlicue statue or be very life-like such as the famous sculpture of a seated Xochipilli.

Organised in guilds and attached to the main palaces, artisans could specialise in metalwork, wood carving or stone sculpture, with materials used such as amethyst, rock crystal, gold, silver, and exotic feathers. Perhaps some of the most striking art objects are those which employed turquoise mosaic such as the famous mask of Xuihtecuhtli. Common forms of pottery vessels include anthropomorphic vases in bright colours and of special note was the finely made and highly prized Cholula ware from Cholollan.

Aztec art depicted all manner of subjects but especially popular were animals, plants and gods, particularly those related to fertility and agriculture. Art could also be used as propaganda to spread the imperial dominance of Tenochtitlan. Examples such as the Sun Stone, Stone of Tizoc, and Throne of Motecuhzoma II all portray Aztec ideology and seek to closely correlate political rulers to cosmic events and even the gods themselves. Even architecture could achieve this aim, for example, the Templo Mayor pyramid sought to replicate the sacred snake mountain of Aztec mythology, Coatepec, and temples and statues bearing Aztec symbols were set up across the empire.

Collapse

The Aztec empire, which controlled some 11,000,000 people, had always had to deal with minor rebellions - typically, when new rulers took power at Tenochtitlan - but these had always been swiftly crushed. The tide began to turn, though, when the Aztecs were heavily defeated by the Tlaxcala and Huexotzingo in 1515. With the arrival of the Spanish, some of these rebel states would again seize the opportunity to gain their independence. When the conquistadors finally did arrive from the Old World sailing their floating palaces and led by Hernán Cortés, their initial relations with the leader of the Aztecs, Motecuhzoma II, were friendly and valuable gifts were exchanged. Things turned sour, though, when a small group of Spanish soldiers were killed at Tenochtitlan while Cortés was away at Veracruz. The Aztec warriors, unhappy at Motecuhzoma's passivity, overthrew him and set Cuitlahuac as the new tlatoani. This incident was just what Cortés needed and he returned to the city to relieve the besieged remaining Spanish but was forced to withdraw on 30 June 1520 in what became known as the Noche Triste. Gathering local allies Cortés returned ten months later and in 1521 he laid siege to the city. Lacking food and ravaged by disease, the Aztecs, now led by Cuauhtemoc, finally collapsed on the fateful day of 13 August 1521. Tenochtitlan was sacked and its monuments destroyed. From the ashes rose the new capital of the colony of New Spain and the long line of Mesoamerican civilizations which had stretched right back to the Olmec came to a dramatic and brutal end.

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The Aztec Empire (c. 1345-1521) covered at its greatest extent most of northern Mesoamerica. Aztec warriors were able to dominate their neighbouring states and permit rulers such as Montezuma to impose Aztec ideals and religion across Mexico. Highly accomplished in agriculture and trade, the last of the great Mesoamerican civilizations was also noted for its art and architecture.

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It's long been one of ancient history's most intriguing mysteries: Why did the Maya, a remarkably sophisticated civilization made up of more than 19 million people, suddenly collapse sometime during the 8th or 9th centuries? Although the Mayan people never entirely disappeared-their descendants still live across Central America-dozens of core urban areas in the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula, such as Tikal, went from bustling cities to abandoned ruins over the course of roughly a hundred years.

Scholars and laypeople have proposed countless theories accounting for the collapse, ranging from the plausible (overhunting, foreign invasion, peasant revolt) to the absurd (alien invasion, supernatural forces). In his 2005 book , though, Jared Diamond put forth a different sort of theory-that a prolonged drought, exacerbated by ill-advised deforestation, forced Mayan populations to abandon their cities. That hypothesis has finally been put to the test with archaeological evidence and environmental data and the results published this week in a pair of studies.

In the first study, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Arizona State University analyzed archaeological data from across the Yucatan to reach a better understanding of the environmental conditions when the area was abandoned. Around this time, they found, severe reductions in rainfall were coupled with an rapid rate of deforestation, as the Mayans burned and chopped down more and more forest to clear land for agriculture. Interestingly, they also required massive amounts of wood to fuel the fires that cooked the lime plaster for their elaborate constructions-experts estimate it would have taken 20 trees to produce a single square meter of cityscape.

The other study, published by researchers from Columbia University and elsewhere this week in Geophysical Research Letters, applied quantitative data to these trends. Using population records and measurements from current forested and cleared lands in the region, they constructed a computer model of deforestation in the Yucatan and ran simulations to see how this would have affected rainfall.

Because cleared land absorbs less solar radiation, less water evaporates from its surface, making clouds and rainfall more scarce. As a result, the rapid deforestation exacerbated an already severe drought-in the simulation, deforestation reduced precipitation by five to 15 percent and was responsible for 60 percent of the total drying that occurred over the course of a century as the Mayan civilization collapsed. The lack of forest cover also contributed to erosion and soil depletion.

In a time of unprecedented population density, this combination of factors was likely catastrophic. Crops failed, especially because the droughts occurred disproportionately during the summer growing season. Coincidentally, trade shifted from overland routes, which crossed the heart of the lowland, to sea-based voyages, moving around the perimeter of the peninsula.

Since the traditional elite relied largely upon this trade-along with annual crop surpluses-to build wealth, they were sapped of much of their power. This forced peasants and craftsmen into making a critical choice, perhaps necessary to escape starvation: abandoning the lowlands. The results are the ornate ruins that stretch across the peninsula today.

The collapse is especially intriguing because it seemingly occurred at "a time in which developed a sophisticated understanding of their environment, built and sustained intensive production and water systems and withstood at least two long-term episodes of aridity," says B.L. Turner, the lead author of the ASU study. In other words, the Maya were no fools. They knew their environment and how to survive within it-and still they continued deforesting at a rapid pace, until the local environment was unable to sustain their society.

One of the lessons of these complementary studies, says climate modeler Robert Oglesby of the University of Nebraska, who worked on the second paper, is that our reshaping of the environment can often have unintended consequences-and we may not have any idea of what they are until it's too late. For a present-day example, we can even look to another region where the ancient Maya lived, Guatemala, which is undergoing rapid deforestation. "There's a tremendous amount of change going on in Guatemala," said Oglesby. "They may be that much more vulnerable to a severe drought."

About Joseph Stromberg

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Why Did the Mayan Civilization Collapse? A New Study Points to Deforestation and Climate Change

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It's long been one of ancient history's most intriguing mysteries: Why did the Maya, a remarkably sophisticated civilization made up of more than 19 million people, suddenly collapse sometime during the 8th or 9th centuries?

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Tenochtitlan -The Venice of Mesoamerica (Aztec History)

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Mayan civilization (video) | Early Americas | Khan Academy

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An overview of the Mayan civilization as well as the great city of Teotihuacan.

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The Maya are an indigenous people of Mexico and Central America who have continuously inhabited the lands comprising modern-day Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and southward through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The designation Maya comes from the ancient Yucatan city of Mayapan, the last capital of a Mayan Kingdom in the Post-Classic Period. The Maya people refer to themselves by ethnicity and language bonds such as Quiche in the south or Yucatec in the north (though there are many others). The `Mysterious Maya' have intrigued the world since their `discovery' in the 1840's by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood but, in reality, much of the culture is not that mysterious when understood. Contrary to popular imagination, the Maya did not vanish and the descendants of the people who built the great cities of Chichen Itza, Bonampak, Uxmal and Altun Ha still exist on the same lands their ancestors did and continue to practice, sometimes in a modified form, the same rituals which would be recognized by a native of the land one thousand years ago.

MAYA Origins

The history of Mesoamerica is usually divided into specific periods which, taken together, reveal the development of culture in the region and, for the purposes of this definition, the emergence and cultivation of the Maya Civilization.

The Archaic Period: 7000-2000 BCE - During this time a hunter-gatherer culture began to cultivate crops such as maize, beans and other vegetables and the domestication of animals (most notably dogs and turkeys) and plants became widely practiced. The first villages of the region were established during this period which included sacred spots and temples dedicated to various gods. The villages excavated thus far are dated from 2000-1500 BCE.

The Olmec Period: 1500-200 BCE - This era is also known as the Pre-Classic or Formative Period when the Olmecs, the oldest culture in Mesoamerica, thrived. The Olmecs settled along the Gulf of Mexico and began building great cities of stone and brick. The famous Olmec heads strongly suggest highly sophisticated skill in sculpture and the first indications of Shamanic religious practices date from this period. The enormous size and scope of Olmec ruins gave birth to the idea that the land was once populated by giants. Though no one knows where the Olmecs came from, nor what happened to them, they lay the foundation for all the future civilizations in Mesoamerica.

The Zapotec Period: 600 BCE-800 CE - In the region surrounding modern-day Oaxaca, the cultural center now known as Monte Alban was founded which became the capital of the Zapotec kingdom. The Zapotecs were clearly influenced by (or, perhaps, related to) the Olmecs and, through them, some of the most important cultural elements of the region were disseminated such as writing, mathematics, astronomy and the development of the calendar; all of which the Maya would refine.

The Teotihuacan Period: 200-900 CE - During this era the great city of Teotihuacan grew from a small village to a metropolis of enormous size and influence. Early on, Teotihuacan was a rival of another city called Cuicuilco but, when that community was destroyed by a volcano c. 100 CE, Teotihuacan became dominant in the region. Archaeological evidence suggests that Teotihuacan was an important religious center which was devoted to the worship of a Great Mother Goddess and her consort the Plumed Serpent. The Plumed Serpent god Kukulkan (also known as Gucamatz) was the most popular deity among the Maya. Like many of the cities which now lie in ruin throughout the southern Americas, Teotihuacan was abandoned sometime around 900 CE.

The El Tajin Period: 250-900 CE - This period is also known as the Classic Period in Mesoamerican and Mayan history.

The El Tajin Period: 250-900 CE - This period is also known as the Classic Period in Mesoamerican and Mayan history. The name `El Tajin' refers to the great city complex on the Gulf of Mexico which has been recognized as one of the most important sites in Mesoamerica. During this time the great urban centers rose across the land and the Maya numbered in the millions. The very important ball game which came to be known as Poc-a-Toc was developed and more ball courts have been found in and around the city of El Tajin than anywhere else in the region. Who, precisely, the people were who inhabited El Tajin remains unknown as there were over fifty different ethnic groups represented in the city and dominance has been ascribed to both the Maya and the Totonac.

The Classic Maya Period: 250-950 CE - This is the era which saw the consolidation of power in the great cities of the Yucatec Maya such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal. Direct cultural influences may be seen, in some sites, from the Olmecs and the Zapotecs and the cultural values of Teotihuacan and El Tajin but, in others, a wholly new culture seems to have emerged (such as at Chichen Itza where, though there is ample evidence of cultural borrowing, there is a significantly different style to the art and architecture). This period was the height of the Maya civilization in which they perfected mathematics, astronomy, architecture and the visual arts and also refined and perfected the calendar. The oldest date recorded in this era is on Stele 29 in the city of Tikal (292 CE) and the latest is from an inscription on the Stele at the site of Tonina (909 CE). The city-states of the Mayan civilization stretched from Piste in the north all the way down to modern-day Honduras.

The Post-Classic Period: 950-1524 CE - At this time the great cities of the Maya were abandoned. Thus far, no explanation for the mass exodus from the cities to outlying rural areas has been determined but climate change and over population have been strongly suggested among other possibilities. The Toltecs, a new tribe in the region, took over the vacant urban centers and re-populated them. At this time, Tula and Chichen-Itza became dominant cities in the region. The widely popular conception that the Maya were driven from their cities by the Spanish Conquest is erroneous as the cities were already vacant by the time of the Spanish invasion (in fact, the Spanish conquerors had no idea the natives they found in the region were responsible for the enormous complexes of the cities). The Quiche Maya were defeated at the Battle of Utatlan in 1524 CE and this date traditionally marks the end of the Maya Civilization.

MAYA Culture

The height of the Maya Civilization in the Classic Period produced the incredible cultural advances for which they are well known. The Maya believed deeply in the cyclical nature of life - nothing was ever `born' and nothing ever `died' - and this belief inspired their view of the gods and the cosmos. Their cosmological views, in turn, encouraged their imaginative efforts in architecture, mathematics, and astronomy. Beneath the earth was the dark realm of Xibalba (pronounced `shee-Bal-ba' and translated as `place of fear') from whence grew the great Tree of Life which came up through the earth and towered into the heavens, through thirteen levels, to reach the paradise of Tamoanchan (`place of the misty sky') where beautiful flowers bloomed. In Mayan belief, however, one did not die and go to a `heaven' or a `hell' but, rather, embarked on a journey toward Tamoanchan. This journey began in the dark and treacherous underworld of Xibalba where the Xibalbans who lived there were more apt to trick and destroy a soul than help one.

If one could navigate through Xibalba, however, one could then find the way to ascend through the nine levels of the underworld, and the thirteen levels of the higher world, to paradise. The only ways in which a soul could by-pass Xibalba and travel instantly to Tamoanchan were through death in childbirth, as a sacrificial victim, in warfare, on the ball court, or by suicide (the Maya had a special goddess of suicide named Ixtab who was depicted as the rotting corpse of a woman hanging by a noose in the heavens). Once one reached Tamoanchan there was eternal happiness but, it must be noted, this paradise was not thought to actually exist in the sky but on the earth. After ascending through the thirteen levels, one did not live in the air but, rather, on a mystical mountain back on the planet. It was because of this cyclical view that the Maya did not believe there was anything wrong with human sacrifice. Those people who were offered to the gods did not `die' but simply moved on. This cosmological belief influenced every aspect of the Mayan civilization and rituals were performed regularly in caves, evoking the darkness of Xibalba, and on hills or high temples which symbolized the heights of Tamoanchan.

The great pyramids which characterize so many Mayan sites are replicas of the great mountain of the gods known as the Witzob. The cyclical nature of human existence is mirrored in the famous Maya calendar. The depictions of the many gods and goddesses all go toward their function in helping one through the cycles of life or hindering. The great religious book of the Quiche Maya, the Popol-Vuh, tells precisely this story of the cyclical nature of life through the tale of the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque and their victory over the forces of chaos and darkness symbolized by the Lords of Xibalba. The game the twins are famous for playing, Poc-a-Toc, serves the same purpose.

Poc-a-Toc was the most popular game among the Maya and was far more than `just a game' as it symbolized the human struggle and reflected the way the Maya viewed existence. Two opposing teams of seven men each would face each other on a ball court and try to score a small rubber ball through a vertical hoop affixed to a wall (sometimes as high as twenty feet in the air, sometimes higher) while defending their own goal. What makes the game even more impressive is that a player could not use the hands or the feet, only the hips, shoulders, head and knees. The Spanish bishop Diego de Landa wrote that watching the Maya play Poc-a-Toc was like watching lightning strikes, they moved so quickly. It has long been believed that the losing team (or the captain of the losing team) would be killed at the end of the match but recent advances in deciphering the Mayan glyphs, together with archaeological evidence, suggests it may have been the winning team or the winning captain who was given the honor of a quick death and instant passage to paradise. The game is thought to have been symbolic, not only of the victory of the hero twins over darkness, but of the cyclical nature of life. The Mayanists Schele and Matthews claim, "Many modern myths have grown up about the ballgame. The most popular says that the Maya sacrificed the winners so as to give a perfect gift to the gods. There is no evidence for this interpretation in any of the ancient or historical sources" (210). This is not quite correct, however, as glyphs at many ball courts, Chichen Itza to name only one, could be interpreted as showing the winning team or captain being sacrificed and modern Mayan daykeepers at both Altun Ha in Belize and Chichen Itza in the Yucatan point to the hope of escape from the darkness of Xibalba as the reason for the winners being executed. Whichever team was chosen to die, and under what circumstances (since teams could not have been continually sacrificed as there is evidence of `star' teams) the ball game was deeply meaningful to the Maya as more than just a spectator sport. More information on the particulars of the game, and the life of the ancient Maya in general, comes to light as more heiroglyphics are discovered and interpreted.

The modern day difficulty in deciphering the Mayan hieroglyphics stems from the actions of the same man who, inadvertently, preserved so much of what we know of the Maya Civilization: Bishop Diego de Landa. Appointed to the Yucatan following the Spanish conquest of the north, Landa arrived in 1549 CE and instantly set himself to the task of routing out heathenism from among the Mayan converts to Christianity. The concept of a god who dies and comes back to life was very familiar to the Maya from their own deity The Maize God and they seem to have accepted the story of Jesus Christ and his resurrection easily. Even so, Landa believed that there was a subversive faction growing among the Maya which was seducing them `back to idolatry' and, having failed to crush this perceived rebellion through the avenues of prayer and admonition, chose another more direct method.

On 12 July 1562 CE, at the church at Mani, Landa burned over forty Mayan Codices (books) and over 20,000 images and stele. In his own words, "We found many books with these letters, and because they contained nothing that was free from superstition and the devil's trickery, we burnt them, which the Indians greatly lamented." Landa went further, however, and resorted to torture to extricate the secrets of the subversives among the natives and bring them back to what he saw as the true path of the church. His methods were condemned by the other priests and he was called back to Spain to explain his actions. Part of his defense was his 1566 CE work Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan which has preserved much of the culture Landa tried to destroy and has proved to be a valuable asset in understanding ancient Maya culture, religion, and language.

Only three books of the Maya escaped the conflagration at Mani: The Madrid Codex, The Dresden Codex, and The Paris Codex (so named for the cities where they were found many years after they were brought back from the Yucatan) which have provided scholars with a great deal of information on the beliefs of the Maya and, especially, on their calendar. The codices were created by scribes who made careful observations in astronomy (the Dresden Codex alone devotes six pages to accurately calculating the rising and positions of Venus) and their interpretations of the planets and the seasons exhibit a precision unmatched by other ancient civilizations. So important were their stories and books to the Maya that the Legend of Zamna and the Hennequen Plant describes the great goddess telling the prophet Zamna:

I want you to choose a group of families from my kingdom, and three of the wisest Chilames, to carry the writings which tell the story of our people, and write what will happen in the future. You will reach a place that I will indicate to you and you will found a city. Under its main temple you will guard the writings and the future writings.

The city of Izamal was founded, according to this legend, by Zamna (associated with the deity Itzamna) of the Itzas who placed the sacred writings under the central temple. Izamal became known as the most important pilgrimage site in the Classical Period besides Chichen Itza. Shamans (known as Daykeepers) would interpret the particular energy of the day or month for the people by consulting with the gods presiding over the various months of the Maya calendar.

MAYA Calendar

There are two calendars at work simultaneously in the Maya system: the Haab, or civil calendar of 365 days in an 18 month period of 20 days each, and the Tzolkin, or sacred calendar, of 260 days divided into three groups of months of 20 days. The Haab and the Tzolkin work together, like gears interlocking in a machine, to create what is known as the Calendar Round but cannot account for dates farther in the future than 52 days. For longer calculations, the Maya devised what is known as the Long Count Calendar and is this which has attracted so much international attention in recent years regarding the end of the world on 21 December 2012 CE. As the long count calendar begins 11 August 3114 BCE, it goes into its next cycle (known as a Baktun) on 21 December 2012 CE.

There is nothing in the extant writings of the Maya to suggest any kind of cataclysm accompanies this transition. On 10 May 2012 CE it was reported that Boston University archaeologist William Saturno and Boston University student Maxwell Chamberlain, excavating at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala, discovered a 6x6 foot room dating to 800 CE which seems conclusively to have been a calendar workshop for Mayan scribes. The paintings and inscriptions on the walls of the room show the Maya calendar extending well beyond the year 2012 CE and that future Baktuns were understood to already be underway in the great cyclic dance of time. According to David Stuart, an expert on Maya hieroglyphs at the University of Texas at Austin, "Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. ... The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future."

The months of the years of the Mayan calendars were governed over each by a specific god and, as these gods were eternal, they assured the continuance of the energy of their particular month. As all of life was considered one eternal cycle, the western concept of an `end of the world', so popular in Christian ideology, would have been a completely foreign concept to a Maya scribe.

MAYA Today

In the modern age the Maya still farm the same lands and travel the same rivers as their ancestors did from the north in the Yucatan down to Honduras. The claim that the Maya somehow vanished, simply because their cities were found abandoned, is not only inaccurate but insulting to the over six million Maya who carry on the traditions of their ancestors. Though the region was Christianized in the 16th century CE conquest and inquisition, the old ways are still observed in a hybrid between European Catholicism and Mayan mysticism. The Daykeeper of a village still interprets the energy of a day and rituals are still performed in caves and on hills. On the island of Cozumel shrines to the Virgin Mary and the goddess Ixchel are interchangeable and, often, one and the same. A great deal has been learned about the Maya since the days when Stephens and Catherwood explored and documented the ancient ruins but, for the Maya living today, nothing of importance has ever been forgotten and the cycle of life continues on.

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The Maya are an indigenous people of Mexico and Central America who have continuously inhabited the lands comprising modern-day Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and southward through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The designation Maya comes from the ancient Yucatan city of Mayapan, the last capital of a Mayan Kingdom in the Post-Classic Period.

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