Mesoamerican Empires

start

Exploring Early American Civilizations

The Mayan, Aztec, and Incan Empires

Map

Incan Empire

Aztec Empire

Mayan Empire

INDEX

Welcome to Chichén Itzá

Mayan Empire

Welcome to Tenochititlán

Aztec Empire

Welcome to Machu Picchu

Incan Empire

MAP

Clues - Across: 16, & 20 Down: 7 & 10

Quipus (above) are made of cotton or wool strings hanging from a main cord. The knots convey meaning through their location, direction, and type. Researchers have a basic understanding of the number system in the quipus, where knots represent numbers. They hope to move beyond math operations to understanding non-numerical words or phrases from the agricultural product inventories. It is an interesting form of communication.

Left: National Geographic video about Quipus

Incan Life

Keeping order in an empire so populated and spread out was challenging, so the Incas developed a census (an official count of the population) to record who worked on which projects (such as mining and road building) and to make sure everyone paid taxes. The Incas kept track of things by using a Quipu, a group of knotted strings in which each knot stood for something, like death, harvest, birth, etc. Colors were used to show different events, and knots were different sizes to show quantity. Since the Incas didn't have a written language, messages were sent by runners across the empire carrying quipus to keep the government up to date. Runners often ran up to 20 miles a day (remember, this was usually done between mountains around 8,000 feet tall!).

Clues - Across: 12 Down: 2 , 4, & 18

Top: Alpacas Bottom: Llama

Llamas & Alpacas

Llamas and Alpacas are closely related animals. They were also the only domesticated animals in the Andes Mountains. Domesticated means that animal species can be used for farming or as a pet. The Inca relied on llamas for meat, wool and fertilizer – but the llama was not a load-bearing animal. Llamas can't pull a plow, nor can they transport human beings. And unlike horses, llamas could never be ridden for war. Also, the Disney movie "The Emperor's New Groove" is set in the Incan empire!

Clues - Across: 14 & 15

Click here to learn about Sacsayhuaman pictured here.

The Incan Empire

Around 1200 CE, the Incans settled into a small village high in the Andes Mountains called Cuzco (which means "center") in what is now Peru. Two hundred years of conquering other people and their lands led to the creation of an empire that was home to as many as 12 million inhabitants and stretched 2,500 miles from one end of South America to the other, crossing the Andes Mountains. Cuzco would eventually become the capital of this empire.

Clues: Bullet points 7 & 8 (only one blank from bullet point 7 is on here). Neither word is in the wordsearch.

Aztec Gods

Clues: Bullet points 3, 4, 5, 6, & 11. One word (a crop starting with a T) is not in the wordsearch.

The Aztec were skilled farmers. This provided success in creating a great empire. The Aztec built islands that they used for planting crops. These islands, called chinampas, were made of mud from the lake bottom, supported on branches and water grass. The Aztec used these to produce multiple harvests each year. Their main crops included corn (maize), beans, peppers, squash, avocados, tomatoes, tobacco, and cotton.

Aqueducts - a watercourse constructed to carry water from a source to a distribution point far away. Canals - a waterway constructed to allow the passage of boats inland.

Tenochtitlán

The Aztecs conquered nearby lands and created an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Even though the Aztec were still in the Stone Age, Tenochtitlán was one of the largest cities in the world during its time. This island city was connected to land by causeways (raised streets of hard earth). Aqueducts were built to bring in fresh water. Canals were used to transport produce to the city's marketplaces. Schools and large temples were constructed, and a yearly calendar was created. Hieroglyphics were used for record keeping.

Clues - Across: 12 & 14

Tlachtli

It has only been possible to partially reconstruct the rules of the ball game, thanks to pictorial representations and stone monuments. We know that at the beginning of the game the ball was thrown onto the court by hand, and that from that moment it could only be touched with the hips and thighs. We do not know the number of players, the scoring system, or how the winner was decided; according to information in the Popol Vuh we can infer that the game could be played one on one, in pairs, or in teams.

The Ball Game was more a ceremonial ritual than a sport and probably represented the symbolic recreation of the mythical combat between night and day.

Clues - Across: 9 & 17 Down: 11, & 13

Above: A video of the last Incan bridge still in use today! Top-left: a road made by the Incas. Middle-left: a bridge the Incas made completely from grass. Bottom-left: a boat made completely from grass.

Incan Accomplishments - part 3

The Incas are also known for their roads. The Incas paved over 2,500 miles worth of road through the mountains! They did this with nothing but stone hammers and bronze chisels. They didn't even have the wheel! Additionally, they built bridges out of grass. They were so skilled with grass that they could build 150-foot-long bridges that could support the weight of over 50 people. The Incans were even known to make boats capable of carrying thousands of pounds with only grass!

Clues - Across: 2 & 8 Down: 7

The Mayans lasted for 2,000 years

The Mayan Empire

The First Great Civilization of the Americas

In Central America, at the southern end of the Yucatán Peninsula (the southern tip of Mexico) were the Mayans. Mayan life was at its peak from about 250 to 900 CE. The Mayans were in present-day Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico.

Clues: bullet points 9 & 10. One word (starts with C) is not in the wordsearch.

In 1519, the Spanish conquistador (or conqueror) Hernán Cortés arrived. He and his troops fought the Aztecs with the help of tribes that hated the Aztecs. By 1521, the battles and the diseases the Spanish had brought made it too hard to keep fighting. Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, surrendered, and the Spanish built Mexico City over the city of Tenochtitlán.

The End of the Aztec Empire

Clues - Across: 9, 13, & 17 Down: 1, 11, & 15

The Mayan Calendar. The Mayan Calendar ended on December 21, 2012 and many people thought the world would end on this day.

The Mayans believed all life came from the hands of divine powers. They sometimes held festivals in honor of the gods (they were polytheistic) and offered the gods human sacrifices. Planning religious festivities was helped by their development of a calendar based on the seasons. They also developed a system of hieroglyphics, writing in books made from the bark of trees.

The Mayans & Religion

The Mayans created large temple-pyramids. They topped the pyramids with shrines to the gods and surrounded them with other temples and palaces.

Clues: Bullet points 1 & 2

Tenochtitlán means "Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus."

The Aztec Empire

In 1325, the Aztecs built their capital, Tenochititlán, on a swamp island in the middle of Lake Texcoco in what is now Mexico City. They chose this island based on an ancient prophecy that said that the Aztecs would find the site of a great city where an eagle perched on a cactus growing out of a rock. The Aztecs believed they were following their god's orders when they saw this occur at this site.

Clues - Across: 3,16, & 19 Down: 4, 5, 6, 10, 18, & 20

The Mayans successfully grew many crops, from beans to papayas to avocados, and most commonly maize (aka corn). But the slash-and-burn farming technique wore out the soil, and after a few years, farmers had to start over with a new plot of land. Some historians think this is one reason Mayan civilization began to crumble around 900. It may also have been from war, drought, disease, or any number of things.

Farming

The Mayans farmed using a Slash-and-Burn technique. The "slashing" was cutting down trees; the "burning" was setting the tree stumps on fire. The ashes were used as fertilizer for new crops on the cleared land.

Discover Chichen Itza

Clues - Down: 1

Above: numerous pictures of the buildings at Machu Picchu.

Incan Accomplishments - part 1

The Incas are known for their mountaintop buildings, huge walls, and thousands of miles of paved roads. Many of their buildings still stand today, created with only stone hammers and bronze chisels. In fact, they didn't use mortar to keep the stones together. The stones are so perfectly shaped that even 600 years later, you couldn't fit a knife blade between them! For example, Machu Picchu is a 15th-century (1400s) estate you can even walk around in.

Clues - Across: 5 Down: 8 & 19

Above: A 26 second video of an Incan aqueduct still working today!

Above: An Incan aqueduct

Left: Terraces at Machu Picchu. Each "step" would have crops growing on it.

Incan Accomplishments - part 2

The Incas are also known for their farming style. Since the Incas were living on the tops of 8,000-foot-tall mountains, they had to be creative on how to farm. They built terraces. Terraces are ledges that are cut into the mountainside to hold soil in place for farming. Some Incan cities had up to 50 "steps" or terraces for farming. They also built aqueducts to carry water from springs and melted snowfall to their farms (they cut channels into cliffs and made tunnels through mountains with only basic hand tools!).

Clues: Bullet point 7 (1 word is NOT on this page). 1 word (starts with S) isn't in the wordsearch.

The Aztecs faithfully sacrificed humans for the sun god. To them, a few deaths were worth it to protect all their people - no sun = no crops and hungry people. The Aztecs made it easier on themselves by sacrificing people from other tribes. Prisoners from battles and conquests were the most common sacrificial offerings. However, the constant need to capture new prisoners weakened the empire and caused other tribes to hate the Aztecs.

Aztec Religion

The Aztecs worshipped a sun god because they believed this god would bring good harvests - and they also believed that the sun god would rise only with the strength from human blood.

Clues - Across: 3 & 21 Down: 6

Pizarro meeting with Inca leaders

Francisco Pizarro

The End of the Incan Empire

In the 1530s, the powerful Incan Empire ended with the arrival of a Spanish Conquistador named Francisco Pizarro. The Incas were just coming out of a civil war when Pizarro arrived. The Spanish had horses, iron, and weapons, unlike anything the Inas had ever seen. The Spanish also brought diseases like smallpox and measles, which the Incas had never before encountered. These factors helped the Spaniards take over.