Indigenous Empires of Latin America

1. INDIGENOUS
EMPIRES OF
LATIN AMERICA

3. THREE MAJOR INDIGENOUS
EMPIRES
• Aztec
– Located in Central and Northern Mexico
– Capital city – Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City)
• Settled there because of vision by holy man
– That is why the Mexican Flag has an Eagle with a snake
– Innovations in irrigation, calendar, pyramids, trade
– Worshiped god’s of nature, sky, fertility, war
• Practiced human sacrifice
– Last great civilization to stand

4. AZTEC EMPIRE

5. THREE MAJOR INDIGENOUS
EMPIRES
• Maya
– Located in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico
– Achievements; architecture, most accurate
calendar, complex math, first to have concept of
zero, pyramids, trade centers.
– Fought against themselves and practiced human
sacrifice.
– Un-unified and had many capital cities
• Chichen Itza is the best known.
• Tikal was the largest

6. The Mayan Empire

7. MAYAN CALENDAR
2012 is not the end, it is the beginning of an new age.
An AGE or LONG COUNT last 1,872,000 days or over 5000 years

8. THREE MAJOR INDIGENOUS
EMPIRES
• Inca
– Located on and near the Peruvian Andes (Peru)
– Cuzco was their capital city.
– They believed in a great flood and survived by
escaping into the Andes mountains.

9. INCA EMPIRE

11. INCAN BURIAL STONES

14. Columbus Landed in San Salvador, Bahamas in 1492
Two years after Columbus discovered the Americas, Spain
and Portugal began fighting over rights to the land. Line
of Demarcation decided that Portugal will have all lands
east of the 30 meridian and Spain everything to the west.
It was later moved 80 miles west.

15. SPANISH
• 1519 Conquistadores (soldiers or conquerors) and
missionaries came seeking the three G’s –
• Gold, God, Glory

16. • 1500 there were 50 million Indians in the New
World
– Europeans had horses & dogs, and guns & swords
– Indians and bow & arrows and spears
– Many became slaves due to high demands for labor
from Agriculture (Sugar) plantations and Silver and Gold
Mining
• 1600 there were only 8 million
– Due to the decrease in Indian labor the Spanish began
importing slaves from Africa

17. COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

18. COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE
Imports
• Diseases; Small Pox killed
• Slavery enter in the early
1600’s
• Missionaries/Catholicism
• Horses, Cows, Pigs,
Chickens
Exports
• Sugar, coffee, chocolate
• Gold and Silver
• Spices, Peppers
• Corn

19. Latin American History continue
• Many of the Indigenous (Indians) were forced to change
religions and mine for gold.
• Over six million died because they had no immunities to
diseases; namely SMALL POX.
• Early settlers became MESTIZOS – mix of Spanish and
indigenous people.
How
you
doin’
MESTIZO