Please post at least three senetences to show that you engaged with the material. Links to useful maps/images would be great.
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Anonymous
said...
in the beginning of the reading about the Incas, it mentioned three rulers that built up the empire within the fifteenth and sixteenth century. i decided to research this because the reading did not elaborate. from this crystalinks site that one of the rulers was Pachacuti, he was considered the greatest ruler and built up the civilization to the greatest extent. he took power in 1438 AD. The next ruler that i found from the crystalinks site was Manco Capac. He was the last of the Inca rulers and was crowned in 1534. i am not sure if these were the rulers that were being referred to in the reading but i think it's something to be further researched.
I wasn't really clear on what microclimates were in the Incan Empire. So, I looked it up and found that they are "variations of the climate within a given area, usually influenced by hills, hollows, structures, or proximity to bodies of water". (thegardenhelper.com/dictionary.html) The reading stated that the advantage of having a microclimate is that if one region failed to provide food, another would still be abundant. I was wondering what (if any) disadvantages there are? Also, the reading said the jaguar pelts came from "hot countries" in the south. Pelts are the skin and fur of the jaguar. I found that the jaguar pelts were a symbol of royalty and power so kings wore them regularly. I also found that many common people wanted to wear the pelts, but were not allowed because they had become identification for the ruling class.
The reading mentioned how the Aztec Empire stretched up to 100,000 square miles. I was wondering how big that actual area was and I found this map of their empire. To put this in perspective, this is about the same size as Oregon or Colorado. Then, I wanted to look up the size of the Inca Empire. I found this map showing more of the conquests and this map showing the cities including Quito and Cuzco.
Then I wanted to look up the warfare that they mentioned in the reading. On the Wikipedia page on the Inca Empire, I read on how the Inca Empire fell. It fell when Pizarro came to conquer them, and with his superior skill, along with civil strife/smallpox/other local help made the Spanish army stronger...even though he only had 180 men to start with. However, I did find it interesting that the Inca tactics with warfare usually was siege warfare and to just overwhelm the enemy with numbers of people, which works sometimes.
As a side note, I wanted to just research quickly Machu Picchu, the "lost" city of the Inca Empire. I especially remember seeing this earlier from a Wild Thornberry's episode. This picture was a pretty good one to show what it looks like now. This city was made of polished dry-stone walls and was unknown to the world for much of history until 1911, and now it is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
I was interested in the geography of the Inca. I found a picture of Machu Picchu, which is also called the lost city of the Incas. I was curious as to why it was called the lost city. This website has some information on this. It says that disease played a big part in wiping out a lot of the Inca population. Smallpox and influenza seemed to be the main contributers. It also says that new Spanish rulers took over the Inca; opressing the people and discarding their traditions and culture. Túpac Amaru was the last Inca ruler before the Spanish conquered. The Spanish used the Inca's "mita", or public service requirment, to work the Inca people to death.
I decided to look at the Incan city of Chavin de Huantar. When looking for this I found a good picture of a time line of the civilizations from a Stanford site. Chavin de Huantar is located in north-central Peru, in between a very dry desert coast, and the hot and humid Amazon. It is thought however, that their culture could have started in the east, because of depictions of plants and animals that could not be found where their city was located.The city itself is located 3150m above sea level in a valley in the Andes Mountains on the Monsa river. This Stanford Site has good information on the city as well as maps and explanations of the old and new temples in the city. There is actually a team of Stanford students that heads down to the city every year to excavate and map points of the city
Like Bretty, I was wondering who the three rulers were because the reading never mentioned their names. I decided to look more into Manco Capac. According to this site, Manco Capac was the last of the Inca rulers and crowned by a Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizarro. Because of the presence of the Spaniards, Capac was tolerated as a firgurehead and didn't really do much. However, he ran away from Cuzco, occupied by the Spaniards, and built up an army. In 1536 he tried to take back Cuzco but the Spaniards had the technological advantage. The siege was give up after 10 months and Capac retreated into the forest. He was still very active though. He fought guerrilla wars against soldiers and settlers. He was killed in 1544 when a few soldiers that he had given refuge to turned on him and killed him.
This is a Video that I found. It is about the Aztec warriors. It is kind of long, and some part are irrelevant and its sometimes makes them seem like blood thirsty monsters. But it does have good historical accuracy, good video footage of artifacts and ruins. It also gives the "life of a warrior", starting with small boy, who grows into fierce warrior.
The reading also described the clothing of the warriors, so I was trying to see if I could find any more information. I found this site about what the warriors wore, along with what common people wore.
On the same site as the one above, they had a link to an interactive map site. It is actually pretty intresting. It lets you click on major cities, and it has descriptions, pictures, even more smaller regions. I would highly recommend looking at this site
I was curious about the capital Cuzco, because the reading didn't really talk about it. I found this link which also has a map of where it is. Cuzco means "navel", and it was the center of the Inca Empire and the world for the Incas. It was founded in the 11th century by Manco Capac. The Inca stonework didn’t require mortar to cement the stones together; instead the stones were carefully shaped so that they fit tightly together. Inca stone work is still regarded as the best in the world.
Following my interest in Mesoamerican languages, I decided to look up some information about the language of the Incas. I found out that the Incas did not have a written language, but they had a spoken tongue called Quechua. Quechua is still spoken today, but has been split into many different regional dialects. Quechua and its dialects have ten million speakers, more than all the Mayan tongues combined. Like Mayan, Quechua is an agglunative language, composed mostly of compound words and lacking many European constructs such as possessives and prepositions. This map shows where Quechua is spoken today. I also found out that Quechua was not invented by the Incas, but was adopted by them after they conquered a tribe in Peru that spoke it. So the empire would, unlike the Mayan Empire, have a common tongue, the Incas imposed Quechua upon all their conquered lands.
The Aztecs, on the other hand, did not have a single language but an entire branch/family, Uto-Aztecan. The languages of the Uto-Aztecan branch are spoken today in Central America and the Western United States. Most Uto-Aztecan languages are regional dialects derived from Proto-Uto-Aztecan or Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs at the time we are studying. I couldn't find much about how many speakers it has today, but I found a map of distribution for the Uto-Aztecan language family. The thing I found most interesting about Nahuatl is that it has a single trait making it unique from all other languages: it lacks the vowel "e". Instead, another, unpronouncable vowel indicated by a lowercase "i" with a slash through it is used. Nahuatl has a written version that combines glyphs (pictures representing words) and logograms (a rough, early version of letters composed of pictorial symbols that represent certain sounds). Written examples of Nahuatl and other Uto-Aztecan tongues can be found in still existing Aztec codices.
I decided to look more into the Chimu civilization that the Incas wiped out in order to maintain their deterring control over much of the Andeon Region. According to this website, the Chimu existed from 1100 to 1400 CE. Interestingly enough, the Chimu at the end of their era (around the time their conflict with the Inca began) had a greedy and corrupt ruler intent on expanding, even though their zone of jurisdiction was shrinking (much like the situation the Inca were in).
After reading the pages, i decided to research more about Cuzco. In the reading, it says that Cuzco became its largest city and is now situated in Peru. From Wikipedia, it says that Cuzco was originally planned to be in the shape of a puma. The city had two sectors, urin and hanan. Each had two provinces. In the west, there were the provinces of Chinchasuyu and Qontisuyu, and in the east was Antisuyu and Collasuyu. Cuzco was built by Pachacuti and his decendants would each get a portion of the empire every generation in a process called split inheritance.
I wanted to do a little more research about the Codex Mendoza. First off, I didn't really understand what "codex" meant. I found out that it is a type of ancient manuscript. Here is a picture of what it looked like. The main point of the codex is that it contains the history of the Aztecs rulers and their conquests and also has a description of the Aztec life. It has Spanish explanations and commentary since they wanted Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of Spain to see it (so he would be able to understand it.) It was created in Mexico City around 1541. Personally, I thought the different symbols were very confusing so here is a picture of what each symbol represents.
Even though the Codex Mendoza was to reach Charles V, it never reached him. It started in Santo Domingo and then when it was on its way to Spain, the French pirates took it and then it got to Andre Thevet who worked for King Henri II. Later on, Richard Haklyut bought it and when he died, passed it on to a writer (Samuel Purchas.) Then when he died, it got to John Selden. When he died, it was passed on to where it's at today, which is the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Since the majority of the works of the Mexica got destroyed in the temples, the Mendoza Codex is a very valuable text which survived like few. To read more about the journey and the path the Codex took, you can go to this site.
When I knew that the reading was about the Inca Empire, I immediately thought of Machu Picchu. So I decided to look into Machu Picchu a bit more.
On here I found out that Machu Picchu was named one of the "new" 7 wonders of the world, because the majority of the 7 wonders of the ancient world had been destroyed or no longer in existence (Pyramids in Egypt being the only still standing). Machu Picchu joins Chichen Itza and Petra as the other wonders of the world that are located in the Americas.
One thing mentioned in the reading was "cacao", an ingredient in a drink used in Aztec sacrifices. In fact, cacao is the same as the cocoa plant, from which chocolate is made. Cacao was important to Aztec rituals because the Aztec believed that their god, Quetzalcoatl, discovered cacao in a mountain. The Aztecs believed that the cacao drinks were poisonous for women and children, and as such only men used them in ritual.
As I was doing the reading tonight, I came across a mention of Cacao, and how it was used in an Aztec drink. I already knew this. What caught me eye was how it was described as "addictive". I looked into this drink. I found this website. I learned that Cocoa powder itself is actually addicitive. I also learned how they made the drink and that, in its natural form, cocoa is far less fattening than in the rocessed form we see in the grocery store or in candy bars.
i was really interested in the Aztecs. I was especially interested in the Machu Picchu. I went and found a couple of images on google because i was really interested in how it looked. picture 1 picture 2 map
In picture 1 that is showing you a very common picture of Machu Picchu. In picture 2 it is showing you an overhead picture of all of machu picchu. and on the map it is showing you the layout of Machu Picchu.
One thing that first interested me was Chan Chan. I wanted to know what it looked like so I could get a sense of the type of architecture they had, where it was, what it was built with, and the layout of the land. I came across an image that showed the type of adobe (building bricks) that they used to build Chan Chan and the layout of the land. I also wanted to find more pictures of what it actually looked like and here is one that I thought really showed a lot of detail. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site which means that it is being preserved currently. Another thing that I immediately noticed as soon as I saw and read about it (but mainly because of the picture) was that the people were surrounded by incredibly environmental diversity. Their environment provided them with everything they really need in their house like jewels, feathers, materials for making clothing, writing resources, and even luxuries for the elite such as chocolate. In the reading, I also saw a picture of the Incan Machu Picchu. It was built in the high Andes mountains. Machu Picchu is an incredible piece of architecture and hereis another picture of it. I was curious to know why it was so important to the Incan's, like why did they build it? What it was made of? Also, what was it's function?
While looking for Aztec artifacts, I came across a huge stone Aztec calendar found in Mexico City. It is almost 12 feet wide and weighs about 25 tons. It was carved in 1479. Apparently the days and length of a year in an Aztec calendar was similar to the Mayan calendar, but less accurate. It had a 365 day year, with a 260 ritual cycle. A "century" was 52 years, and this is sometimes called a "calendar cycle". The Aztec year started with the first appearance of the Pleiades, a cluster of stars, in the east.
I wanted to find out a little bit more about Macchu Piccu.
On the Machu Picchu wiki it states that it is also referenced to as the The Lost City of the Incas. It is also one of the seven wonders of the world. It is a city of the Inca that is located on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. It was constructed in 1450 and abandoned 100 years later. The Inca Emperor Pachacuti was thought to have lived there.
Sorry this is late, tried to post earlier but I think I accidentally previewed it instead.
I was interested in looking into Cuzco. This Link helped me discover more about this capital of Peru. It also has some cool pictures in it to help bring Cuzco to life.
20 comments:
in the beginning of the reading about the Incas, it mentioned three rulers that built up the empire within the fifteenth and sixteenth century. i decided to research this because the reading did not elaborate. from this crystalinks site that one of the rulers was Pachacuti, he was considered the greatest ruler and built up the civilization to the greatest extent. he took power in 1438 AD. The next ruler that i found from the crystalinks site was Manco Capac. He was the last of the Inca rulers and was crowned in 1534. i am not sure if these were the rulers that were being referred to in the reading but i think it's something to be further researched.
I wasn't really clear on what microclimates were in the Incan Empire. So, I looked it up and found that they are "variations of the climate within a given area, usually influenced by hills, hollows, structures, or proximity to bodies of water". (thegardenhelper.com/dictionary.html) The reading stated that the advantage of having a microclimate is that if one region failed to provide food, another would still be abundant. I was wondering what (if any) disadvantages there are?
Also, the reading said the jaguar pelts came from "hot countries" in the south. Pelts are the skin and fur of the jaguar. I found that the jaguar pelts were a symbol of royalty and power so kings wore them regularly. I also found that many common people wanted to wear the pelts, but were not allowed because they had become identification for the ruling class.
The reading mentioned how the Aztec Empire stretched up to 100,000 square miles. I was wondering how big that actual area was and I found this map of their empire. To put this in perspective, this is about the same size as Oregon or Colorado. Then, I wanted to look up the size of the Inca Empire. I found this map showing more of the conquests and this map showing the cities including Quito and Cuzco.
Then I wanted to look up the warfare that they mentioned in the reading. On the Wikipedia page on the Inca Empire, I read on how the Inca Empire fell. It fell when Pizarro came to conquer them, and with his superior skill, along with civil strife/smallpox/other local help made the Spanish army stronger...even though he only had 180 men to start with. However, I did find it interesting that the Inca tactics with warfare usually was siege warfare and to just overwhelm the enemy with numbers of people, which works sometimes.
As a side note, I wanted to just research quickly Machu Picchu, the "lost" city of the Inca Empire. I especially remember seeing this earlier from a Wild Thornberry's episode. This picture was a pretty good one to show what it looks like now. This city was made of polished dry-stone walls and was unknown to the world for much of history until 1911, and now it is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
I was interested in the geography of the Inca. I found a picture of Machu Picchu, which is also called the lost city of the Incas. I was curious as to why it was called the lost city. This website has some information on this. It says that disease played a big part in wiping out a lot of the Inca population. Smallpox and influenza seemed to be the main contributers. It also says that new Spanish rulers took over the Inca; opressing the people and discarding their traditions and culture. Túpac Amaru was the last Inca ruler before the Spanish conquered. The Spanish used the Inca's "mita", or public service requirment, to work the Inca people to death.
I decided to look at the Incan city of Chavin de Huantar. When looking for this I found a good picture of a time line of the civilizations from a Stanford site. Chavin de Huantar is located in north-central Peru, in between a very dry desert coast, and the hot and humid Amazon. It is thought however, that their culture could have started in the east, because of depictions of plants and animals that could not be found where their city was located.The city itself is located 3150m above sea level in a
valley in the Andes Mountains on the Monsa river. This Stanford Site has good information on the city as well as maps and explanations of the old and new temples in the city. There is actually a team of Stanford students that heads down to the city every year to excavate and map points of the city
Like Bretty, I was wondering who the three rulers were because the reading never mentioned their names. I decided to look more into Manco Capac. According to this site, Manco Capac was the last of the Inca rulers and crowned by a Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizarro. Because of the presence of the Spaniards, Capac was tolerated as a firgurehead and didn't really do much. However, he ran away from Cuzco, occupied by the Spaniards, and built up an army. In 1536 he tried to take back Cuzco but the Spaniards had the technological advantage. The siege was give up after 10 months and Capac retreated into the forest. He was still very active though. He fought guerrilla wars against soldiers and settlers. He was killed in 1544 when a few soldiers that he had given refuge to turned on him and killed him.
This is a Video that I found. It is about the Aztec warriors. It is kind of long, and some part are irrelevant and its sometimes makes them seem like blood thirsty monsters. But it does have good historical accuracy, good video footage of artifacts and ruins. It also gives the "life of a warrior", starting with small boy, who grows into fierce warrior.
The reading also described the clothing of the warriors, so I was trying to see if I could find any more information. I found this site about what the warriors wore, along with what common people wore.
On the same site as the one above, they had a link to an interactive map site. It is actually pretty intresting. It lets you click on major cities, and it has descriptions, pictures, even more smaller regions. I would highly recommend looking at this site
I was curious about the capital Cuzco, because the reading didn't really talk about it. I found this link which also has a map of where it is. Cuzco means "navel", and it was the center of the Inca Empire and the world for the Incas. It was founded in the 11th century by Manco Capac. The Inca stonework didn’t require mortar to cement the stones together; instead the stones were carefully shaped so that they fit tightly together. Inca stone work is still regarded as the best in the world.
Following my interest in Mesoamerican languages, I decided to look up some information about the language of the Incas. I found out that the Incas did not have a written language, but they had a spoken tongue called Quechua. Quechua is still spoken today, but has been split into many different regional dialects. Quechua and its dialects have ten million speakers, more than all the Mayan tongues combined. Like Mayan, Quechua is an agglunative language, composed mostly of compound words and lacking many European constructs such as possessives and prepositions. This map shows where Quechua is spoken today. I also found out that Quechua was not invented by the Incas, but was adopted by them after they conquered a tribe in Peru that spoke it. So the empire would, unlike the Mayan Empire, have a common tongue, the Incas imposed Quechua upon all their conquered lands.
The Aztecs, on the other hand, did not have a single language but an entire branch/family, Uto-Aztecan. The languages of the Uto-Aztecan branch are spoken today in Central America and the Western United States. Most Uto-Aztecan languages are regional dialects derived from Proto-Uto-Aztecan or Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs at the time we are studying. I couldn't find much about how many speakers it has today, but I found a map of distribution for the Uto-Aztecan language family. The thing I found most interesting about Nahuatl is that it has a single trait making it unique from all other languages: it lacks the vowel "e". Instead, another, unpronouncable vowel indicated by a lowercase "i" with a slash through it is used. Nahuatl has a written version that combines glyphs (pictures representing words) and logograms (a rough, early version of letters composed of pictorial symbols that represent certain sounds). Written examples of Nahuatl and other Uto-Aztecan tongues can be found in still existing Aztec codices.
I decided to look more into the Chimu civilization that the Incas wiped out in order to maintain their deterring control over much of the Andeon Region. According to this website, the Chimu existed from 1100 to 1400 CE. Interestingly enough, the Chimu at the end of their era (around the time their conflict with the Inca began) had a greedy and corrupt ruler intent on expanding, even though their zone of jurisdiction was shrinking (much like the situation the Inca were in).
After reading the pages, i decided to research more about Cuzco. In the reading, it says that Cuzco became its largest city and is now situated in Peru. From Wikipedia, it says that Cuzco was originally planned to be in the shape of a puma. The city had two sectors, urin and hanan. Each had two provinces. In the west, there were the provinces of Chinchasuyu and Qontisuyu, and in the east was Antisuyu and Collasuyu. Cuzco was built by Pachacuti and his decendants would each get a portion of the empire every generation in a process called split inheritance.
I wanted to do a little more research about the Codex Mendoza. First off, I didn't really understand what "codex" meant. I found out that it is a type of ancient manuscript. Here is a picture of what it looked like. The main point of the codex is that it contains the history of the Aztecs rulers and their conquests and also has a description of the Aztec life. It has Spanish explanations and commentary since they wanted Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of Spain to see it (so he would be able to understand it.) It was created in Mexico City around 1541. Personally, I thought the different symbols were very confusing so here is a picture of what each symbol represents.
Even though the Codex Mendoza was to reach Charles V, it never reached him. It started in Santo Domingo and then when it was on its way to Spain, the French pirates took it and then it got to Andre Thevet who worked for King Henri II. Later on, Richard Haklyut bought it and when he died, passed it on to a writer (Samuel Purchas.) Then when he died, it got to John Selden. When he died, it was passed on to where it's at today, which is the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Since the majority of the works of the Mexica got destroyed in the temples, the Mendoza Codex is a very valuable text which survived like few. To read more about the journey and the path the Codex took, you can go to this site.
When I knew that the reading was about the Inca Empire, I immediately thought of Machu Picchu. So I decided to look into Machu Picchu a bit more.
On here I found out that Machu Picchu was named one of the "new" 7 wonders of the world, because the majority of the 7 wonders of the ancient world had been destroyed or no longer in existence (Pyramids in Egypt being the only still standing). Machu Picchu joins Chichen Itza and Petra as the other wonders of the world that are located in the Americas.
Here is an image that I found.
One thing mentioned in the reading was "cacao", an ingredient in a drink used in Aztec sacrifices. In fact, cacao is the same as the cocoa plant, from which chocolate is made. Cacao was important to Aztec rituals because the Aztec believed that their god, Quetzalcoatl, discovered cacao in a mountain. The Aztecs believed that the cacao drinks were poisonous for women and children, and as such only men used them in ritual.
As I was doing the reading tonight, I came across a mention of Cacao, and how it was used in an Aztec drink. I already knew this. What caught me eye was how it was described as "addictive". I looked into this drink. I found this website. I learned that Cocoa powder itself is actually addicitive. I also learned how they made the drink and that, in its natural form, cocoa is far less fattening than in the rocessed form we see in the grocery store or in candy bars.
i was really interested in the Aztecs. I was especially interested in the Machu Picchu. I went and found a couple of images on google because i was really interested in how it looked. picture 1
picture 2
map
In picture 1 that is showing you a very common picture of Machu Picchu.
In picture 2 it is showing you an overhead picture of all of machu picchu.
and on the map it is showing you the layout of Machu Picchu.
One thing that first interested me was Chan Chan. I wanted to know what it looked like so I could get a sense of the type of architecture they had, where it was, what it was built with, and the layout of the land. I came across an image that showed the type of adobe (building bricks) that they used to build Chan Chan and the layout of the land. I also wanted to find more pictures of what it actually looked like and here is one that I thought really showed a lot of detail. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site which means that it is being preserved currently. Another thing that I immediately noticed as soon as I saw and read about it (but mainly because of the picture) was that the people were surrounded by incredibly environmental diversity. Their environment provided them with everything they really need in their house like jewels, feathers, materials for making clothing, writing resources, and even luxuries for the elite such as chocolate. In the reading, I also saw a picture of the Incan Machu Picchu. It was built in the high Andes mountains. Machu Picchu is an incredible piece of architecture and hereis another picture of it. I was curious to know why it was so important to the Incan's, like why did they build it? What it was made of? Also, what was it's function?
While looking for Aztec artifacts, I came across a huge stone Aztec calendar found in Mexico City. It is almost 12 feet wide and weighs about 25 tons. It was carved in 1479. Apparently the days and length of a year in an Aztec calendar was similar to the Mayan calendar, but less accurate. It had a 365 day year, with a 260 ritual cycle. A "century" was 52 years, and this is sometimes called a "calendar cycle". The Aztec year started with the first appearance of the Pleiades, a cluster of stars, in the east.
I wanted to find out a little bit more about Macchu Piccu.
On the Machu Picchu wiki it states that it is also referenced to as the The Lost City of the Incas. It is also one of the seven wonders of the world. It is a city of the Inca that is located on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. It was constructed in 1450 and abandoned 100 years later. The Inca Emperor Pachacuti was thought to have lived there.
Sorry this is late, tried to post earlier but I think I accidentally previewed it instead.
I was interested in looking into Cuzco.
This Link helped me discover more about this capital of Peru. It also has some cool pictures in it to help bring Cuzco to life.
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