Comparing the Aztecs and the Incas

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The Aztecs and Incas were the two dominant new world societies which greeted and eventually succumbed to the Spanish conquistadors in the early 16th century. Since then, they have occupied some of the most curious comers of the western imagination. Purveyors of scholarly and popular culture render them in various disparate ways: as victims of European colonialism, incompetent militarists, heroic forbears, barbarians, or authentic practitioners of native utopias and cults. The Aztecs and Incas were two Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations that roamed the land of Latin America throughout 14th and 15th century. Aztec empire ruled much of what is now Mexico from 1428 till 1521, when the empire was conquered by Spaniards. Aztecs controlled a region stretching from the Valley of Mexico in central Mexico east to the Gulf of Mexico and south to Guatemala. Aztecs were great engineers and developed a multifarious social political and religious system with Tenochtitlan as their capital city. Inca Empire stretched it boundaries from Colombia to Chile and reached west to east from the Atacama to Amazonian rain forest. Incas lack the concepts of written language however they had an incredible system of roads. Casco as their capital Inca Empire only lasted a century before it was conquered by Spaniards in early 16th century. The two Mesoamerican civilizations burgeoned independently of each other with no cultural or religious swap. Aztecs and Incan societies were predominantly agricultural. Religions of both societies were shamanistic which were heavily influenced by preceding cultures. These complex polytheistic religions regardless of their chronological exclusivity have significant features in common.

The Incas and Aztecs both belie...

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.... The Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan was the head of the cult of Huitzilopochtli and thus of the state religion of the Aztec empire. He had special priestly duties in different rituals on the state level. Huitzilopochtli being the state religion required every single person of society to be practiced and revered. As Eduardo F. Elias and Robert Pring-Mill point out:

“The presence of past indigenous cultures servers as a subtext to denounce the oppressive and unjust situation of contemporary Latin America.”

The analysis of two Mesoamerican religions and study of their impact of societies illustrates that like many polytheistic religion the effect of causality is quite dominant. It will be therefore a great false statement call Aztecs and Incas barbarian people. Their religion shows that the phenomena of naturalist supernaturalism which was quite dominant in European.

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