2.4.

Civilizations in Latin America

 The Americas include two continents, North America and South
America. Within these geographic regions lies Mesoamerica, which is
made up of Mexico and Central America, a major spot where
culture and civilization first thrived in that part of the world.
 Sometime between 12, 000 and 10,000 years ago, most scholars
believe, people first arrived in the Americas from Siberia and
Alaska through a land bridge currently known as the Bering Strait.
 In the Americas, as elsewhere, the greatest adaptation to this huge
and new continent endowed with great mountains, rivers, jungles, and
deserts occurred when people learned to domesticate plants and
animals. These changes took place slowly between about 8500 B.C.
and 2000 B.C.
 The first people in the Americas were nomads who lived by hunting
and gathering.
 At about 11,000 years ago, massive changes in climate led to the
melting of glaciers, the submersion of the land bridge and the
extinction of many large animals.
 Increasingly people began to rely on plants as a source of food in order
to survive. Gradually, farming started.
 The earliest traces of farming in western hemisphere dating from
around 7000BC have been found in south central and north
eastern Mexico.
 In Mesoamerica, Neolithic people cultivated a range of crops like
beans, sweet potatoes, pepper, tomatoes, squash, and maize-the
Native American name for corn.
 People in South America cultivated crops such as maize and cassava
and domesticated llamas and other animals valued for their wool.
 By 3000 B.C. in parts of South America and 1500 B.C. in parts of
Mesoamerica, farmers had settled in villages.
  The population then expanded, and some villages eventually grew
into the great early cities of the Americas.

Some of the major centers of culture and civilization that flourished in

Mesoamerica.
2.4.1. The Maya
 They were the earliest people to build large cities by 300 B.C in
what is now Guatemala.
 By about 250 A.D., the Maya Golden Age also known as the Classic
Period, began, with city-states flourishing from the Yucatán
Peninsula in Southern Mexico through much of Central America.
 They lived scattered across the land.
 They developed two farming methods that allowed them to thrive in
the tropical environment.
 The Maya cities that developed before and during the Classic Period
never formed an empire.
 There were many city-states of which the most powerful were Tikal
and Calakmul.
 Conflicts and wars were common among the different city-states.
 City-states maintained regular contact through trade, which
generated a great deal of wealth.
 Trade goods include items of daily use such as honey, salt, and cotton
and nonessential but prized items such as feathers, precious stones,
and jaguar hides, which might have been used in ceremonies or to
show status.

Society

 They displayed distinct social hierarchy.

 Each Maya city had its own ruler, who was usually male.
  Maya records and carvings show that women occasionally governed
on their own or in the name of young sons.
 Nobles gave many functions such as military, leadership,
management of public works, collection of taxes, and enforce
laws.
 Scribes, painters, and sculptors were also highly respected.
 Merchants formed a middle class in society; the wealthiest and
most powerful merchants were certainly nobles.
 The majority of the Maya were farmers. They grew maize, beans, and
squashes well as fruit trees, cotton and flowers.
 There were also slaves in some cities that had been captured in war.

Culture;
 Their culture included impressive advances in learning and the arts.
 they developed a complex polytheistic religion.
 The cities of Maya today are known for their towering temples and
palaces built from stone.
 Temples rested on pyramid shaped platforms were the edifices where
priests performed rites and sacrifices. Some temples also serve as
burial places for rulers, nobles and priests.
 The Maya also developed a hieroglyphic writing system, which
scholars did not interpret until recent decades.
Decline:
 About 900 A.D., the Maya stopped building cities, and their
civilization began to decline.
 Some suggest that over population, disease, or drought disrupted
Maya life.
 Others think that peasants revolted against the priests and nobles.
 By the time the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the Maya mostly lived
in farming villages.
2.4.2. The Aztecs
 As Maya civilization weakened, other people such as the Zapotec and
Toltec fought for control of Southern Mexico.
 They also built large cities and pyramid temples.
 In the 1200s A.D., the Aztecs pushed their way into the valley of
Mexico.
 Like the Romans, the Aztec built roads to link distant outposts to the
capital.
 Soldiers were stationed at strategic spots along the roads to
protect travelers such as merchants, who carried on a brisk trade.
 In the 1500s, Tenochtitlan was a bustling city with about 100,000
inhabitants.
 As the population of the city grew, they expanded their island capital.
 Engineers built walkways, roads made of packed earth, to connect the
island to the mainland.
 Farmers filled in parts of the lake and dug drainage canals to create
more farmland. They anchored reed baskets filled with earth in the
shallow lake. They then planted crops in the baskets, which became
floating gardens.
 A huge pyramid temple and the emperor’s palace dominated
Tenochtitlan.
 The palace served as a storehouse for tribute. It also housed the
royal family, thousands of servants and officials, a zoo, and a
library of history books and accounting records.
 Like the Romans, the Aztec adopted ideas from the people they
conquered.
 Aztec priests used the knowledge of astronomy and mathematics.
 Like the Maya, they developed a 365-day solar calendar.
 Aztec priests used herbs and other medicines to treat fevers and
wounds.
 Its physicians could set broken bones in place and treat dental
cavities.
  They also prescribed steam baths as cures for various ills, a therapy
still in use today.
Religion
 The Aztec worshipped many gods, including the gods of corn, rain,
sun, and war.
 Their calendar was like a religious text. It told the people which month
was sacred to each god and goddess.
 A large class of priests performed the ceremonies that were meant to
ensure the good will of the gods.
 Aztec religious practices included human sacrifices offered to the sun
god.
 The victims in these sacrifices were prisoners of war.

2.4.3. The Incas

 The Incas developed an efficient system to govern their huge empire.
 The emperor was an absolute ruler. He divided the empire into provinces and appointed nobles
to govern them.
 Governors were responsible for taking a census so people could be taxed. The government was
sensitive to the aged, sick and poor.
Religion
 Like many other peoples of the time, the Incas worshipped gods and looked to their priests to tell
them the will of the gods.
 The Incas believed that the emperor was the son of the sun god, Inti, the chief god of the land.
As a result, they called themselves the “children of the sun.”
 In Cuzco, the capital of the empire of Inca, priests and priestesses performed outdoor ceremonies
in the Great Sun Temple.
 The Incas developed advanced technology in many areas. They diverted streams and rivers to
mine for gold, which artisans then made into fine ornaments. They also invented a system of
measurement. Inca priests had enough medical knowledge to perform successful brain surgery.
They also learned to treat victims of malaria with quinine. Europeans did not understand the
value of quinine until the 1800s.
 The Inca were able to drag huge stone blocks to build magnificent temples and palaces.
  They shaped the stones to fit perfectly without applying cement between them.
 During the violent earthquakes that occasionally rock the Andes, Inca stone walls sway, but they
do not tumble down. They also built roads that linked distant provinces to Cuzco. The
 Inca also used their building skills for farming. Farmers built terraces, or flat areas, on steep
mountainsides to create land that could be planted.
 The Inca had no system of writing. Certain people, however, memorized their history and taught
it to the next generation. In addition, the government recorded census data, the size of harvests
and historical events.
 In the early 1500s, the Inca Empire reached its greatest size.
 When the Spanish soldiers arrived in the coast of Peru in 1532, internal power rivalry
significantly weakened the empire, which paved the way for easy conquest.
2.5. The Rise and Spread of Christianity
 In 63 B.C., the Romans had conquered Judea, the southern part of Palestine where most Jews of
the time lived.
 The Jews had long believed in a monotheistic religion, Judaism.
 To avoid violating the Jewish belief in one God, the Romans allowed them religious freedom as
they did elsewhere in the vast empire. While most Jews were reluctantly willing to live under
Roman rule, others called zealots were not. They called on Jews to revolt against Rome.
 Some believed that a messiah (anointed king sent by God) would soon appear to lead their people
to freedom. However, the rebellion did not last long.
 In 70 A.D., the Romans crushed the revolt and then destroyed the Jewish temple that ushered in a
gloom period of Jewish enslavement and dispersal.
 Over the centuries since the destruction of Jerusalem, Jewish religious teachers called rabbis
have extended and preserved the Jewish law and Judaism has survived.
 As turmoil engulfed the Jews in Palestine, a new religion, Christianity, arose among
them.
 Christianity began among the followers of a Jew named Jesus. Almost all the information we
have about the life of Jesus comes from the Gospel, the first four books of the New Testament of
the Christian Bible, which early Christians attributed the writing of these books to four followers
of Jesus named St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John.
 According to Jesus, a person’s major duties were “to love the Lord your God with all your
heart” and “to love your neighbor as yourself.”
 He also emphasized the importance of forgiveness.
 Some Jews welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem. Others regarded Him as a dangerous troublemaker.
 Jewish priests, in particular, felt that he was challenging their leadership.
 To the Roman authorities, He was seen as a revolutionary who might lead the Jews in a
rebellion against Roman rule.
 At about 30 A.D., He was arrested and was tried and then condemned to death by crucifixion.
 The first Christians were Jews in Palestine and Syria. Soon, many gentiles (non-Jews) were
converted to Christianity.
 The number of gentile Christians gradually exceeded that of the Jewish Christians. Finally,
Jewish Christians were either assimilated into gentile Christianity or went back to Judaism and
ceased to be Christian.
Officers and Organization
 The head of each local Christian community was the bishop.
 In time, archbishops appeared who had spiritual authority over the bishops, other clergy and
laity of a large area. Then the rank of patriarch emerged.
 A patriarch had spiritual authority over the archbishops, bishops, other clergy and laity of very
large regions called patriarchates.
 There were five patriarchates: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.
 Earlier, the Patriarch of Rome, also called the Pope, was claiming leadership over the other
patriarchs.
 From about the middle of the third century onwards, monasteries where monks and nuns lived
in separate communities were established.
 Those monks who lived together had a leader called abbot and those monks who lived alone
were called hermits.
 Doctrines which were rejected and condemned by the Church were called heresies and the
followers of these doctrines were called heretics.
 The Church’s doctrines were approved by Church councils, which were meetings of the
patriarchs, archbishops and bishops of the Church.
 The Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. established the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and this doctrine
was confirmed by the Council of Constantinople in 385 A.D.
 The doctrine of the Holy Trinity says that one God exists in three persons: God the Father,
God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit and that all these persons are equal.
 The council condemned Arianism, a belief that rejected the divine nature of Jesus.