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I just picked this book up today, it seems very interesting, I was wondering if anybody else has read it and if so, has some opinions on the credibility of the book.

   

Haven't read it. What does it propose, that makes you doubt its credibility?

   

That's what I'd like to know...

   

More information might be more appealing and informative.

   

Well, thus farr I have only reached page 62 and the principle topic has been Indian civilizations (and not) and how they lived prior to Europaean contacte. He writes mostly of how several Indians did in fact manipulate their environments (ie. The Inka, the Triple alliance or Aztec, the Maya, and others,) but how they some how managed to preserve the land anyways, and often reconstruct it.

As farr as credibility goes, I would say that most authors tend to state Hypothesii as facte during their writing. To my current point in the book, the author has in most cases mentioned his sources as he goes along.

A very interesting book might I add, did anyone here, for example, know that Indians in Peru and Mexico were conducting genetic engineering to produce Maize by at least 1800 B.C.. It seems that Maize in incapable of natural reproduction on it's own. But yes! a very interesting book.

   

Three great civilizations once existed in Central and South America before the Europeans arrived and when the Europeans first started arriving. They were the Inca, the Maya and the Aztecs.

THE INCA



Inca Empire

Government - Monarchy

Sapa Inca (the king) -
- 1197–1220 Manco Capac
- 1532-1533 Atahualpa
- 1570-1572 Túpac Amaru

Official Language - Quechua

History
- Established 1197
- Spanish conquest 1532–1537
- Disestablished 1572



A view of Machu Picchu in Peru, "the Lost City of the Incas," This was the last stronghold of the Incas, and now an archaeological site.



The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, and at its peak had a large empire by world standards. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cuzco. The Inca Empire arose from the highlands of Peru around 1197. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used conquest and peaceful assimilation to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, including large parts of modern Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile.

In 1533, Atahualpa, the last Inca sovereign emperor (Qhapaq Inka, also Sapa Inca), was executed on the orders of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, marking the beginning of Spanish rule in South America. The Inca Empire was organized in dominions with a stratified society, in which the supreme ruler was the Inca. It was supported by an economy based on the collective ownership of the land.

The Quechua name was Tawantin Suyu[1] which can be translated The Four Regions or The Four United Regions. Before the Quechua spelling reform it was written in Spanish as Tahuantinsuyo. Tawantin is a group of four things (tawa "four" with the suffix -ntin which names a group); suyu means "region" or "province".

The empire was divided into four Suyus, whose corners met at the capital, Cuzco (Qosqo), in modern-day Peru.

The official language of the empire was Quechua, although over seven hundred local languages were spoken.

There were many local forms of worship, most of them concerning local sacred "Huacas", but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti, the sun god. They tried to impose it against the cult of Pachamama which was the main common deity worshiped in the Andean area.

********************************

THE AZTECS



Capital city -

1248-1325 Chapultepec
1325-1521 Tenochtitlan

Official language - Náhuatl

Government - Tributary Empire
Head of Nation - Hueyi Tlatoani (non-hereditary autocrat)

Establishment - 1248
Dissolution - 1521
Population (1520) - 19 million


The Aztecs is a collective term used for all of the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples under the control of the Mexica, founders of Tenochtitlan (and where the modern state of Mexico gets its name from), and their two principal allies, who built an extensive empire in the late Postclassic period in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries in Central Mexico.

The nucleus of the Aztec Empire was the Valley of Mexico, where their capital Tenochtitlan was built upon raised islets in Lake Texcoco. After the 1521 conquest of Tenochtitlan by Spanish forces and their allies which brought about the effective end of Aztec dominion, the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the now-ruined Aztec capital. The capital of the modern-day nation of Mexico, the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City now covers much of the Valley of Mexico and the now-drained Lake of Texcoco.



Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions. For Europeans, the most striking element of the Aztec culture was the practice of human sacrifice which was conducted throughout Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish conquest.

In what is probably the most widely known episode in the Spanish colonization of the Americas, Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs in 1521 thus immortalizing himself and the Aztec Hueyi Tlatoani, Moctezuma II (Motecuhzoma II).

The Aztecs spoke Classical Nahuatl. Although some contemporary Nahuatl speakers identify themselves as Aztecs, the word is normally only used as a historical term referring to the empire of the Mexicas, as distinguished from the Mexicas alone. This article deals with the historical Aztec civilization, not with modern-day Nahuatl speakers.


wikipedia.org

   

Thanks for wiki Xerox, Google U! Wow! The Inca, Maya and Aztecs?!?!?!? An elementary student could’ve told you that – thanks for the historical trivia.

   

There's be millions of people in North America who've never heard of these ancient tribes on their doorstep.

   

So? They can get their superficial trivial history from wiki, just like you. Besides, Cut n’ Paste, the thread was about NEW revelations, so your little bit of wiki junk isn’t even relevant as the Aztecs, Maya and Inca aren’t NEW discoveries.

   

hahaha. You might wanna take it easy on him a little there Mustang1.

Anyways, I'd just like to say that the Triple Alliance (what's been called the Aztec Empire) didn't have one sole ruler, it had three rulers each with equal powers over their domain. It was something like tlatoani: essentially the General, the military leader of the Alliance, I can't remember the names of the other two but one meant female serpent: the positions powers can be described as a sort of Internal affairs, and well. I forget the other one. Once I get my books back (I leant a good deal of them to my social teacher) I'll post the rest.

   

Take it easy on Commander Cut n’ Paste, than when asked to elaborate, Cut n’ Run? Nah. He’s not interested in continuing a dialogue on history, only aping trivial nonsense. It wasn’t even relevant – well…he got the correct topic, at least.

   

I was watchin a doumetary on hisoty television (sorry i forgot the title) wich suggests that societies advanve after the discovery of agriculture, follwed by domestication of livestock, as a result of swath grazing. As such there were three agircultiural regions in the Americas. corn was cultivated in an area between central Manitoba and Quebec along the great lakes. This area was occupied byt the Iroquois, Huron, and Ojibwe. As such these natiains tended to devote attention to things other then the aqasition of food, developing, wooden buildings, and literature (Ojibwe recorded legends on birch bark scrolls), and mathematics.

Aztecs and Mayans also had corn and had more developed arcitecture then the Ojibwe but lacked artisitc literature. As tot he Incas they were the most advanced having an empire larger then Rome, the as they had domesticated alpaccas for wool and llamas of pack animals, however they did not have access to draft animals nor was the wheel allpied for transport.

   

The Inca were extremely well gifted stone masons. Of the structures still standing today, you still can't wedge a knife in between the stones...

The Inca also had a policy of moving captured people around the empire, but keeping in mind that Coastal desert people would not fare well in teh Andean climate. They were good like that.

The Incas had a form of brain surgery, where small holes were drilled into the skull in order to relieve pressure on the brain.

Their terraced farming system was extremely effective since it provided good irrigation, crops of all kinds could be grown at different altitudes, crops could be grown in a small space, it prevented mudslides and yielded a crapload of food.

The Incas, like the Romans, had a well-maintained highway system, where they would have runners every 5 miles who would pass along information to eachother, which would then find its way to Cuzco, the Capital...

The result of this was a speedy way to get information around the empire. Also, the runners chewed coca leaves to give them energy...

The Incas did not have a writing system and instead used knotted cords called Qipus to record information, messages, and data...

The Inca believed that gold was the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon.

The Spanish were more impressed with the gold in the Inca Empire than that of the Aztecs. Why? Because the Inca literally had gold and silver lying around the ground and in rivers and even put gold on their temples and houses, which si why the Spanish were shocked to see Cuzco, the "City of Gold".

All the gold and other riches the Emperor collected in his lifetime, were his, adn his alone. So the Incas had many large tombs chock full of silver, gold and expensive blankets...But they did not use any of it...

Instead of taxation, the Incas and the people they conquered payed their dues by doing a certain amount of work.

Inca ships impressed the Spanish because of their size. Inca ships were almost the size of the Spanish Galleons...



That's pretty much all that I know about the Inca( excluding the stuff GB posted.).


The more you know...

   

But see that all falls back on the Incas having corn, potatos, llama meat, possibly milk, leather and wool redilly avaliable unlike say the Plains Cree or Assiniboine whos societies revolved around the following of buffalo as they were in the wrong location for corn and wheat would not be inroduced unitl the 18th century. Bufflo hunting evolved rappidly with the buffle jump but this seems to be the result of the horse intorduced in the 16th century.

Bufflo though an excelt beef animal are hard to handel, they could not be domesticated for ranching let alone the work of oxen, if bufflo could have been trained as pulling animals we would probably have seen further advancement of their socety and differnt lifestyle.

   

However, not even the most advanced society in the americas came up with the idea of the wheel. Without this, beasts of burden, metallurgy and sedentary agriculture that allowed for large surpluses, the societies couldn't advance past the neolithic stage.

   

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