The Maya, Aztecs, And Incas

Thousands of years ago, three great civilizations lived in what we now call South America. These three civilizations were the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas and they settled in South America and Mesoamerica (a term used to describe the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish) where they lived for thousands of years until the Spanish arrived.
One of the oldest civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Mayan civilization, which is located in modern-day Guatemala, lasted for approximately 3000 years, spanning from 2000 B.C. to the mid-1500s. Many historians split up the civilization’s history into 3 different periods: Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post-Classic. The Classic Period was the height of Mayan culture, in which many of the major cities were built. …show more content…
The Mayan government was a monarchy with each city being its own sovereign state, or city-state, complete with their own rulers and different political struggles. The Mayans had a social class consisting of nobles, commoners, serfs, and slaves. Commoners consisted of servants, farmers, and laborers. While some commoners were able to become wealthy through hard work, as commoners, they were still unable to buy jewelry or clothes of nobility, which consisted of rulers, government officials, tribute collectors, military leaders, high priests, local administrators, cacao plantation managers, and trade expedition leaders. Serfs were people that worked land owned by a local ruler and slaves were prisoners of war, criminals of certain felonies, and impoverished individuals that sold themselves or their family members to slavery. Towards the end of the post-classic period, many of the major Mayan cities had …show more content…
Spanning from 1110 to 1521, the Aztecs ruled most of Northern Mesoamerica at the height of their power from their capital: Tenochtitlan. Similar to the Mayans, the Aztecs had city-states, but they also had an emperor, The Huey Tlatcani, that ruled along with a city council, which has often been compared to the Roman Senate, consisting of priests, judges, governors, and other government officials. The Aztecs worshipped the emperor as a god, and while the emperor did have absolute power, his position was gained through semi-democracy, and he could be removed from office as well. However, the exact means of this is not fully understood. The Aztec social class was very similar to the Mayans, with nobles, commoners, serfs, and slaves. Nobles, who were mostly government/military leaders, high-level priests, and lords, received tribute from commoners, who were farmers, artisans, merchants, and low-level priests, in the form of goods, services, or labor. Any commoner that did not pay tribute became a slave. Commoners lived in a calpulli, neighborhood ward, led by a council or single ruler. On November 8th, 1519, Hernando Cortes arrived in Tenochtitlan. Though initial relations between the Spanish and the Aztecs, led by Moctezuma (alternately spelled as Montezuma), were friendly, after the death of a group of