Aztecs vs Mayans: Who Ruled Mesoamerica?

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1:00They must be part of the same language, right? Well, not really. The Aztecs and the Mayas were among the most famous Mesoamerican peoples, that's present day Central America. But they didn't speak the same language, and they weren't even the same civilization. The two nations lived in different eras. The Aztecs dominated the region from the 14th to the 16th century. Back in Europe, this was near the end of the Middle Ages. The Mayas came before the Aztecs. Historians believe they started building city-states in the 3rd century. Their peak lasted until the 10th century. Now this doesn't mean that the Mayas and the Aztecs didn't have contact with each other. But at the time this happened, the Mayas were on a decline. So the Aztecs traded more with their descendants than with real Mayan people. The two civilizations didn't even live in the same place. The Aztecs built their cities in the north of what is today Mexico. The Mayas lived to the south of them in the Yucatan Peninsula.

2:01Yes, that's also in Mexico nowadays. But the Mayas inhabited parts of modern-day Guatemala and Belize as well. And they spoke a number of languages. There's a whole Mayan language family they spoke, not just one language. Some of those languages have survived through today. Some have shown that there are 6 million indigenous Maya people groups spread across Central America. In Guatemala, there are 21 Maya languages recognized by the authorities. Further north in Mexico, the number of official languages is 29. For the Aztecs, the situation is much simpler. They had a single language. It still has around 1.5 million native speakers, mostly in Central Mexico. That's more than any other family of indigenous languages in the region. But is there a chance a speaker of Aztec languages can understand a speaker of the Maya language? Not by a long shot. The two languages are completely unrelated. In fact, they didn't even share the same writing systems.

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4:05Balance the 325, while supplies last. Soil offer excludes a last-gen Hawaii, loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Sealows.com slash terms for details. Subject to change, point booster subject to exclusions, and more terms apply. One-time only offer. Object or concept. When the Maya's wanted to write the word jaguar, for example, they would draw a small image of the animal. In total, their writing system had more than 800 characters like this one. Way too complicated compared to the modern way we write down words. But the Aztecs were one step behind the Maya's. They used pictograms and ideograms. Simply put, these are elaborate drawings that mark an object, animal, or concept. Compared to Maya and Hyroglyphs, they aren't simple symbols anyone can draw, but true masterpieces of visual art. Only highly skilled painters could draw them. I don't say right, because technically, the Aztecs didn't have a writing system. So you could say that the Maya's were more advanced when it came to language. After all, they had the only known fully developed language in the Americas

5:08before the arrival of Europeans. But in terms of culture and economy, the two societies weren't that much different. Neither of them used work animals for agriculture and transport. The main crop for both peoples, you guessed it, corn. What they called maize. Christopher Columbus was the first to transport corn back to the old continent in 1493. The Mayans also cultivated sunflower, vanilla, and cotton. The Aztecs produced chili, beans, and squashes. When it comes to meat, the Aztecs were happy to catch fish and shrimp. The Mayans penned turkey, just like we do with chicken today. The Aztec Society consisted of nobles and commoners, all led by an emperor. The Mayas mostly lived in independent city kingdoms, ruled by a king and his royal household. There were no wheeled vehicles in these civilizations. Aztec merchants traveled across Mesoamerica, carrying goods on their backs. Not the most comfortable mode of transportation, definitely.

6:11We shouldn't think of Aztec roads as the ones we have today. They were narrower because they saw only foot traffic. Mayas used a similar road system that also included canoes. They wouldn't travel far from the coast though. They carved out these vessels from large tree trumps. An average Mayan canoe was 50 feet long. That's the length of a modern day yacht. The goods these Mayas traded range from salt to pearls. They considered meat a luxury good, together with gold, copper, and turquoise. And can you guess the currency of Mayan merchants? Let me give you a hint. It wasn't metal and paper like it is today, but cocoa beans. They had a fixed market price, which made them the ideal payment option. The situation in modern societies is not much different. Around two-thirds of all countries have picked their currency to the US dollar. From Mesoamericans, cocoa beans were their green bank notes. The Aztecs used the same exact currency, but with a-

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8:15According to legend, the Aztec deity told them to build a city in the place where an eagle sits on a cactus with a snake in its talents. They saw this happen on an island in a lake. This is where they built the city. If you want to find it on the map of Central America today, look for Mexico City. That's the site of an ancient Aztec capital. It even got its name from the ancient nation, because Mexico was an alternate name for the Aztecs. They constructed the city on small artificial islands. It was slightly bigger than the surface area of London Heathrow Airport. The Mayas didn't have a capital city as we know it today. Their civilization spanned across 40 cities. These settlements had a population of 5 to 50,000 inhabitants. Today, these sites could be classified in terms of size as small American towns. But the total number of Mayan cities is not final. Archaeologists keep discovering new ones deep in the jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula.

9:17Quite recently, researchers unearthed a new site in the southeast of Mexico. They found a number of stone columns and named the city after the Mayan word for it. Back in the day, the city was part of the central Maya Lowlands. Today, this region is covered with thick jungle. The Maya abandoned their settlements in this area around the 8th and the 9th century. Historians still cannot agree on why this happened. Some claim overpopulation was the main issue. Others argue the trade routes collapsed, so Mayan cities couldn't flourish anymore. Whatever the case, northern Mayan cities lived on. The descendants of these peoples were there when the Europeans stumbled upon them several centuries later. The Aztecs were also present in today's Mexico at this time. But contact with a foreign culture didn't bring them much good. There was an outbreak of smallpox that sealed the Aztecs fate. This doesn't mean that this American nation left the world states forever though.

10:19Every time we say words like avocado, chili, guacamole, chocolate, and coyote, we are actually reviving the Aztec language. These words are present in pretty much every language on the planet. Mayan words also entered modern English. Linguists argue that the word shark actually comes from a Mayan language. This is the word these ancient Mesoamerican people used for fish. Both ancient civilizations left behind pyramids, and they look very similar in style. The only hint that can help you differentiate between them is that there are way more Mayan ruins that still exist today. Finally, regarding maize, or corn as we call it, there's a story among the Maya descendants that their process of harvesting corn back then was called amazing. Get it, maize, corn. Okay, I made that up. You're not surprised, are you? How many discounts does USA Auto Insurance offer?

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