so when we talk about indigenous american populations some of the larger civilizations that we tend to focus on are the maya thinkers and the aztecs and this map shows you where those civilizations are located so we have the aztec region shaded in red right here so about present-day mexico the yucatan peninsula present-day guatemala we have the mayan empire and this orangish shaded region right here present-day peru would be the inca empire so let's go ahead and talk about the aztec empire first so the aztecs are known for a couple of things one being um i say warlike that sort of has a negative connotation but they're not native to where they eventually settle so the major political and religious city in the aztec empire is tenochtitlan which is roughly present day mexico city they're actually going to come from regions up north and they're gonna come down and and conquer those outer lying regions until they get to where they eventually settle and in the middle of the city there's this huge pyramid step pyramid temple and and so tenochtitlan was a city that supported a population between two and two and three hundred thousand so it was an extensive setting but they're known for that they're known for conquering outer lying regions especially for resources they're also known for their religion so the aztecs have a fairly fatalistic religion and i say that because they believed that if they didn't make regular sacrifices to their gods and goddesses as a polytheistic religion then their gods and goddesses would bestow life upon the aztec people and and the empire and those sacrifices were human sacrifices and the aztecs weren't the only civilization to make human sacrifices but they are known for it and it's very much tied into that kind of fatalistic religion that the aztec had um and the aztec would actually go to wars with people they recall flower wars interestingly enough flowers in the united states at least in us history are kind of kind of related to peace like the 1960s peace movement flower power that kind of thing but in the aztec empire flowers were symbolic of war and warriors and so they went on these flower wars and these were wars against different peoples in the region solely to capture individuals that could be taken back and sacrificed to their gods so they had wars specifically for human sacrifice which is another thing that we remember about them they are going to be very advanced at architecturally they build aqueducts and causeways and could pipe water into individual homes a lot of the things that we say about um the romans and the europeans well the aztecs had that technology as well so that's important to know one of the more interesting things that we know about the aztecs is the contact that they have with europeans hernando cortes comes over in 1519 with 600 conquistadors who are basically men that fernando cortez is hired to come over and take over land resources whatever and so he and his conquistadors come over in 1519 and that's the contact that they have with the aztecs there's a story that often gets told about that encounter that still kind of persists if you will in history and it's a story that you may have heard if you've taken a world history class before or learned anything about the aztec empire and the story goes that hernando cortez and his men come over they get off their ships they're on horses horses are not native to the americas first horses that show up in the americas north central and south america come with europeans they're not native to the americas so these men get off these ships with these horses and gleaming iron armor and the story goes that the aztec leader a man named montezuma looks at hernando cortez and his men and sees and cortez of representation a human representation of one of the theater gods and that is why montezuma brings him in to tenochtitlan and allows the spanish inn which makes it easier for the spanish to eventually take over that region the reason i'm telling you this story is because we have to question it we have to question it and latin american historians in particular in the past 15 20 years have done just that and the reason they question the reason we question it is because that story comes to us from the spanish it's hernando cortez's story what we're missing here is the aztec perspective and that's important and actually if we start looking at the evidence there's no not a lot of evidence to suggest that that story is true in fact there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it isn't true that that isn't the way it happens so what does the evidence show us well the evidence shows us that yeah the spanish show up in 1519 and yeah they're they're welcomed into the city but not necessarily because montezuma sees hernando cortes as a god but because he's unsure about the motives of these new interesting people right when the spanish get in they're gonna find a lot of gold aztec empire was dripping in gold there were gold mines outside of tenochtitlan so it's one of those three g's i know you've heard the three g's before right god gold and glory the three things that are going to motivate spaniards and other europeans to come over to the americas gold is one of them so they see all this gold and they're very interested and they want more and more of it and eventually because they want more and more of this gold they're overstaying their welcome and unknowingly as well with any of those contacts with indigenous populations the spanish are going to bring diseases like smallpox with them that indigenous populations have no immunities against so because of all of that montezuma actually kicks the spanish out of tenochtituan in 1520 now i told you a couple of minutes ago that the aztecs were very religious it stands to reason that if montezuma saw cortez as an aztec god he's not going to want to anger that god by kicking him out of the the city and yet that's exactly what he does eventually the spanish are going to come back they come back in in 1521 and with superior weapons guns swords all that good stuff um they're going to conquer that region and i say conquer that region that's one of the the ways that europeans in general are going to take over conquer steal the land of indigenous populations that coupled with diseases that the europeans are going to bring over it weakens those civilizations in some ways quite extensively smallpox in particular is a very deadly disease and in some instances kills 90 of indigenous populations and that prevents those groups those civilizations and those populations from mounting a defense against the europeans who are coming over and that played a role in the aztec empire as well so in 1521 hernando cortes and his conquistadors are going to conquer the aztec empire and all of that gold now becomes spanish gold the spanish began to ship boatloads of that gold back to spain and also to rome which was the holy see the pope um spain was the catholic empire and so we interestingly enough see connections we see connections between the americas and european history and we see interesting ways um where that part of history where europeans are starting to come over and there's contact between europeans and indigenous populations we see evidence of that contact in interesting ways for instance um several years ago i was in rome and one of the things that my husband and i did was to go to different churches in rome and there are a lot of really beautiful churches in rome one of them is a church called santa maria de madre so it's known for its roof or it's its ceiling i should say not the roof but the ceiling and if you walk into the ceiling it's a it's a fear or this church rather it's a cathedral and so the ceiling is very high and if you look up it's gilded and it's just gorgeous but the reason i mention it is that every bit of that gold is aztec gold every bit so when the spanish conquer the aztec empire that gold is going to be sent back to europe and in this case rome and it ends up in one of the churches in rome it's evidence of that that contact and what the europeans are going to do with that contact um take those resources and move them elsewhere so something to keep in mind um very quickly the mayans and the incans so the mayans are going to be yucatan peninsula um they're actually that empire is actually gonna die out by the time the europeans show up they're not as extensive or as strong and sort of cohesive civilization as they had been before the 9th 10th century when they died out and part of that is probably because of warring city-states so the mayan empire was created out of city-states so kind of separate entities that were tied together by a similar religion a similar culture and the city-states didn't always get along but the mayans are also known for their architecture for their knowledge of astronomy their knowledge of mathematics interestingly enough their calendar which was supposed to have predicted uh the end of the world in 2012 we're still here so i don't know and a lot of historians and archaeologists said that it didn't really predict the end of the world in 2012 that was kind of a misreading of that but they're known for that calendar as well so the mayan civilization was very extensive just like the aztec civilization and finally the inca civilization so notice the inca civilization is quite long it's quite a big civilization the other interesting thing about the inca civilization this is not true if the aztecs and the mayans they did have a written language the incas did not have a written language so if the inca king wanted to pass down some edict he had to get that information throughout the eco empire and the way that he would do that is through a system of of runners it was kind of like a courier system that carried that information those individuals carried that information from one part of the empire to the other it was a very stratified society inca kings generally married within the family um generally they're sisters and we see that in other other civilizations as well ancient egypt is a good example of that but the idea was that they wanted to keep that sort of family purity you know but genetically that's that's not you know the thing to do there um but that's what they did so and that's one of the things that you might have heard about the ingus um but that's why because they had a very stratified society they felt like the kings needed to be within a certain family so that's why they did it um but the inca empire that empire is going to be around when the europeans start to come over and just like hernando cortez is going to bring conquistadors and conquer the aztec empire in 1521 a man named francisco bizarro is going to bring conquistadors to the inca empire and take over that empire by force in 1531 and begin to funnel those resources to spain and throughout europe all right so that's the aztecs the incas and the mayans