Thread 18118887

Medieval mesoamerica appreciation post, unfortunately I was born too late to be sacrificed to the sun god

Honestly i like classic mesoamerica more than posclassic mesoamerica.
In my opinion Teotihuacan>Tenochtitlan

>>18118892
We barely know anything about them outside of the Maya Region besides vague shit like "Material evidence shows that Teotihuacan/Monte Alban/El Tajin were powerful states with a lot of influence" and their aesthetics were objectively inferior to the postclassic imo

>>18118912
>>vague shit like "Material evidence shows that Teotihuacan/Monte Alban/El Tajin were powerful states with a lot of influence"
The thing is the material evidence does show it.
For example, thousands of Multifamiliar complexes have been found in Teotihuacan. This has revealed Teotihuacan had a Gini coeficient of 0.12 (Source: Quantitative Measures of Wealth Inequality in Ancient Central Mexican Communities by Smith, 2014).
Also, i would say mayans of the classic were also better, with cities like Palenque, Tikal or Calakmul (even though i like the posclassic arquitecture more)

I just think they're neat

>>18119066
How come literally not a single piece of historical/historically inspired fiction depicts the samurai-looking back banners the Aztecs and other nahuas used (aside from medieval 2 total war but even then they got it wrong)? It was a pretty major part of their military culture ya know

>>18118937
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9v7ZWGYGdA

>>18118892
>>18118912
>>18118921
I really pray that we someday translate their glyphs and excavate more of the city, despite being the most visited archeological site in the americas its still only 5% excavated.

El Mirador is underrated, its crazy how it was both one of the largest maya cities and one of the first.

>>18118887 (OP)
Why did mesoamerica and south america develop such intricate civilizations but north american natives remained low-density slash and burn farmers/hunter-gatherers?

>>18118887 (OP)
You can go to Mexico today to be sacrificed to Santa Muerta.

>>18120922
is that who brings candy at halloween?

VGH to be a late postclassic nahua nobleman with the wealth and prestige necessary to fight wars while wearing a big expensive gold encrusted papier-mache model of a bird on your back...

actual macuahuitls were far more straight-sword shaped than artistic depictions would make you think.
afaik picrel is the only "surviving" macuahuitl that managed to be traced in a drawing... with the actual artifact now being destroyed

>>18121064
I mean yeah, there's a reason the Spaniards consistently referred to them as swords/broadswords 90% of the time, and even when they didn't, they called them "macanas", which was basically conquistador lingo for any native american close quarters weapon that wasn't a polearm, rather than specifically clubs or maces.
The fact they're commonly called clubs nowadays is a result of people taking stylized depictions where the obsidian blades are set real far apart from one another too literally and the fact most people's definition of a sword is a bit narrower nowadays.

>>18121064
This piece was actually photographed, the only photographed original macuihuitl ever. To add insult to injury they didnt even know what they were looking at and thought it was a samurai weapon, hence the armor

They was black every single one

>>18121064
>>18121497
There's two other specimens, one in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia archives that's never been displayed, and this one:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_Marcos_Macuahuitl,_Museo_del_Templo_Mayor.jpg

>>18120866
Cahokia was pretty big

>>18120866
They didnt. There were some pretty sophisticated agricultural societies with large urban centers, particularly in the midwest and the american southwest, but discussion of those was kind of buried early on to promote the idea that indians were all tribal savages who weren't really using their land and thus there was nothing wrong with taking their land and "enlightening" them, and this myth unfortunately still lives on to this day.

>>18123770
as >>18123041 said Cahokia was really big as well. The central pyramid mound was about the height of a 10 story building. Its very interesting to me that they practiced government organized sports that had major religious significance, just like the mesoamericans. Many southwesterners and southern great lakes indians did it too, this love of sports seems to be an almost universal north american trait.

>>18118912
You shit talk the Monte Alban one more time I'll sacrifice your ass to Quetzalcoatl

>>18120866
The Mississippi river valley and north american East Coast was one contiguous civilizational zone, nigger we have documented state societies as far south as the everglades. This goes without mentioning the complex relationship between states all along the Pacific coast from the channel islands to past Vancouver. Read French and Spanish accounts from the 1600s and 1700s. For fucks sake Washington and early presidents waged war against multiple settled territorial entities until Andrew Jackson finished them off because until then it was open warfare

>16th-century Europeans discovering Japan
>OMG IS THAT A CASTLE!?!?! HOLY SEGOI DESU! GONNA GET ME A KAWAII ASIAN WIFE AND MAKE HUNDREDS OF BABIES WITH HER!!!!

>16th-century Europeans discovering the Americans
>What the fuck is this piece of shit? Where the fuck are we? Who the fuck are you supposed to be? Give me your gold or I'll kill everyone you know and feed their corpses to my pack of war dogs.

Doss anyone know why this happened exactly?

>>18123827
yes

>>18123827
Read accounts from the Spainards that actually interacted with Mesoamerican civilizations, their impression was like your top greentext, they praised their cities, art, etc nonstop

The problem was that there were also a lot of Spanish officials who never interacted with or saw the societies there, who were also fed stories about them doing sacrifices, less complex native societies, plus this being a "New World" made them a sort of "other" beyond just additional Asian kingdoms they already worked into their worldview

Plus, diseases also wiped out a ton of shit so within a generation or two, nobody was even around who really saw Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations at their heigh, and the population collapses meant they could be more easily marginalized without risking revolts etc.

>>18123788
The Zapotecs' main god was pitao cocijo thougheverbeit which was like their version of the pan-mesoanerican rain deity i don't think they even had a Quetzalcoatl equivalent as far as i'm aware