Category: South America

High cultures emerged in Mexico (Aztecs), on the Central American Yucatan Peninsula (Maya) and on the west coast of South America in the Andes (Inca Empire). The Chibcha, who settled in what would later become Colombia, had a highly developed agricultural culture. It was similar with the Tupi, who spread their advanced farming techniques by migrating from the Amazon to La Plata, forcing collectors and hunters like the Ges into the forests and savannahs. The inland tribes generally remained at lower cultural levels. The Aruak and Caribs of the north and the Araucans and Guarani of the southern continent were hunters, fishermen and gatherers who only farmed the fields in a rudimentary form. The Guaikuru and Patagonians lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers.

THE MAYA
If the Aztec empire was a rapidly expanding but also unstable empire, that of the Maya was old and comparatively stable. The first evidence of Mayan culture – artistic ceramics and early forms of pyramid architecture – date back to the “pre-classical period” from around 1500 BC. BC to AD 200. The “classical period” of the Maya, also known as the “old empire”, lasted from 200 to 900 AD, with a clear climax in the 8th century. When the European conquistadors reached the continent, the Mayan culture was already in its “post-classical period”, which was possibly initiated by changed climatic conditions, but probably also by hostile invasions from the north. The old cities had been abandoned and new ones founded.

The Maya, also apostrophized as the “Greeks of America”, dominated all other Indian cultures in astronomy and mathematics. Their cities were laid out from an astronomical and religious point of view and, in addition to temples, cult buildings and palaces, also contained places for ball games. There were a number of ceremonial centers in different places. The Maya wrote a complicated hieroglyphic script and also had a school system. From the Aztecs, whose rise accompanied their own cultural decline, they adopted certain religious ideas in their later days and thus also the, albeit less excessively practiced, practice of human sacrifice. For more information about the continent of South America, please check physicscat.com.