Mesoamerican Mysteries: Understanding Ancient Aztec, Toltec, Teotihuacan and Zapotec Cultures

[Music] join me in a look at the ancient civilizations of central Mexico the Aztec the Olmec the tota Aachen the Toltec the totanac the zapotec and other advanced civilizations much of this information is derived from a two-week archeological tour of central Mexico with lectures and guided site visits with well-known archaeology professor William Saturno bill is a Harvard ph.d and discoverer of the murals and Maya scripts at San Bartolo in Northeast Guatemala this video is an attempt to show what we have learned during this fascinating show-and-tell evidence shows that people have lived in central and southern Mexico for more than 3,000 years central Mexico is considered to be one of the six cradles of civilization in the entire world there have been hundreds of small tribal groups or kingdoms and even today there are 69 recognized languages in Mexico alone not to mention 56 different ethnic groups the country is the 13th largest in the world with a population of around 126 million the landscape varies from its many resort beaches to the mountains high altitude plains barren deserts fertile farmlands and jungles travel from one area of Mexico to another is often difficult because of the rocky terrain and vegetation occasionally before contact with the Spanish in 1519 organizes two civilizations would arise uniting many more smaller tribes the evidence of their large public buildings remains all over the country this tour focuses on these large civilizations especially the Aztecs since they were in power when the Spanish arrived this means that there is written evidence of what these groups looked like what they believed and how they lived not so much information is available about the much older cultures except through the work of archaeologists the indigenous people of the various tribes shared many common religious ideas foods calendars the base 20 mathematical system and the city-state political system that had leaders that ruled by divine right nearly all of the ruins found today are large public buildings meant to show the grandeur of the rulers and to pay respect to the gods nearly all that is left of the original construction is the rock foundation layers these temples were originally covered with smooth lime plaster and then beautifully painted with colorful designs traces of that decoration does remain the people of Mesoamerica mostly originated from Northwest Asia they domesticated the three sisters corn squash and beans for their basic food source other seasonal foods that originated from this area include tomatoes bananas avocados green peppers vanilla pumpkin and of course chocolate of course it hasn't always been this way thousands of years ago when populations were small people were able to survive as hunter-gatherers when climate changed and/or game was no longer available they often just moved to new areas when populations grew larger and fertile land was available plant sources of food were developed to add or to replace the missing game people began living in one place to take care of the crops that they had planted necessitating shelter and government to ensure the peace and survival this led to the rise of city-states and occasionally empires some raised their own food while others were craftsmen and they traded for what they needed occasionally groups just stole from others using violent means to get food clothes weapons and power religion is an important part of Mesoamerican life they believed in an orderly universe of time and space for the time part a calendar was developed based on every twenty days instead of our every thirty days their math was base twenty not base ten as is ours in the u.s. they used the calendars to measure time but also to schedule religious rituals and to predict the future the Mesoamericans organized physical space according to the active powers in the world the Sun and the moon above as well as the Stars on earth there are the wind lightning Springs rivers and rain there are powerful animals such as the snakes Eagles and jaguars then there is below the earth the live forest that is in the plants among them there is God energy and all these visible things as well as some that are not the sky people and those who have died among them human sacrifice was an important part of ancient religions in the Americas as they believed several of the gods required a near constant flow of blood to keep the Sun coming up every day to ensure enough rain for the crops and to prevent the end of the world sometimes thousands of prisoners young people and children would be killed a high place in the afterlife was promised and it was considered an honor even though the victims were usually drugged during an otherwise painful death in any case human sacrifice was very common throughout the ancient world until modern religions banned the practice another common feature of most Mesoamerican cultures were the ball courts this toltec ball court in Tula is one of the best-preserved in central Mexico these are found in most of the sites being excavated from Arizona to Nicaragua these I shaped fields were where two teams hit a hard rubber ball about the size and weight of a small bowling ball it is theorized that the teams scored points by hitting the ball back and forth with their hips until one team couldn't return it there are many variations in the size of the ball and how you were allowed to hit the ball it is sometimes associated with human sacrifice and as a substitute for or much of the artwork that survives from the many many archaeological sites shows the might of their soldiers and the superiority of their gods not unlike many other statues and artwork celebrating our own leaders military heroes and religious icons we flew into Mexico City to see to note tit lon the site of the Aztec capital the Aztec who called themselves the mesh Iike built the largest empire and civilization ever in Mesoamerica the mashiki originated in what is now the US Southwest or the northwestern part of Mexico they eventually migrated south eventually settling in the Lake Texcoco area of what is now Mexico City they were aggressive foreigners and were not welcomed at first they settled in an inhospitable swamp area around 1300 ad and gradually built it into two Noach tatlin this is what the area looked like in about 1500 according to paintings by Spanish monks and Native artists Lake Texcoco was created and fed by runoff from the surrounding mountains they built the city using the chinampas system setting posts into plots then filling the plots with dirt hauled from nearby dry lands it gradually expanded into a city of an estimated 400,000 people at the time of first Spanish contact this is all that is left of the very center of Tenochtitlan gone are the huge temples with their thousands of blood sacrifices the Aztec military tactics built this city and they continually expanded by threatening other city-states with death unless they paid tribute of whatever the Aztec needed the famous skull racks in the city both honored the Warriors and scared the other tribes into paying up lest they wind up on those racks it was lucrative to the Aztec who acquired a lot of stuff but only under duress not all tribes complied if which was a major factor when the Spanish came and needed allies to defeat the powerful warriors of the Aztec [Music] the Spanish conquistadors did all they could to dismantle what they considered a horrific pagan culture they used the rubble from Tenochtitlan to build the National Cathedral in the zocalo and other buildings we visited the other major to note dead long temple to let the local and also known as the plaza of three cultures it is the site of a mass grave dating back to the conquest time in the 1500s Philip the local is just a few miles from the temple oh my or and served the Aztec as the main commercial center there was a vast and well-organized market with an estimated 20,000 people coming each day to buy food hides handmade cloth clothing pots implements weapons furniture and even slaves fluffle local is also the site of a massacre of hundreds of the University and high school students in 1968 protesting the government treatment of farmers and labor unions in the ten days before the opening ceremonies of the Mexico City Olympics hundreds were killed and thousands were injured civilizations came and went throughout Mesoamerican history the earliest known major civilization worthy Olmec in the tropical areas of the Veracruz state near the Gulf of Mexico they date from 1500 BC and are known for their huge stone heads their artwork is one of their hallmarks the Olmec civilization declined precipitously around 400 BC these photos were from the National Museum in Colaba the Olmec were the first known Mesoamerican civilization to practice ritual bloodletting and the Mesoamerican ballgame their stylized art and the many types of media characterized omec art the name Olmec comes from an Aztec no wattle word for rubber people as rubber trees are grown in the jungles there perhaps Mexico's best-known site is Tod Hakan northeast of Mexico City tota pecan started out as a religious center in the central part of Mexico Highlands growing to perhaps as many as 250,000 people making it one of the largest cities on earth at the time the name de agua con means city where people become gods the priests and warriors ran a multi-ethnic city with distinct districts for the mystic the Naha the zapotec and totanac indigenous groups the aztec would not arrive for around 600 years long after Teotihuacan was gone however after seeing these magnificent ruins the Aztec claimed a common ancestry Teotihuacan covers around 32 square miles and only a small part of it is excavated this is an elite residential area near the Avenue of the Dead that has been excavated to show off some of the wall art to be found inside [Applause] [Music] what itself is often not preserved but the holes the beam holes are preserved in terms of what dimension [Music] this section is called the patio de los belarius near the plaza in front of the Pyramid of the moon in a nice tent or doghouse now the one thing that's missing from this lady sees these wonderful bother these sculpture on our site right those Barbour leaves sculptures which you're looking at the stone in antiquity were covered in plaster and paint so that that thin coat of plaster yes or it just comes right over the surface so that it's still held at three-dimensional quality to the art but was then highlighted in different color paint other [Music] or to a sand into that celestial realm is it the tops of mountains in the natural and the way that you descend into the realm of the dead to the watery place where the dead and the gods of the underworld reside in the natural world you just said hey pond it la is a high-status residential compound with brightly painted original murals of the great goddess of Teotihuacan [Applause] nearby is the new murals museum that shows other murals and exhibits that were found at the Ottawa con [Music] this is the Palacio de titla one of many upscale apartment complexes built around the healthy walk on that are being excavated at this time [Music] as teotihuacán was declining the Toltec were beginning in Tula Hidalgo stayed in Mexico not very far away not much is known about the Toltecs from their own history but only from the later Aztec who tended to idolize them and used them to justify their conquering of the central mountain plains of Mexico nobody knows what the Toltec called themselves as the word toltec is Aztec no model for craftsmen the origin of the Toltecs is unclear as they left few records they apparently were traders and skilled warriors who were reputed to be ferocious and highly trained they inspired enough aw and respect in their neighbors and enemies to not have to build heavy defenses of Tula carvings are found on the monuments to honor warrior classes such as the coyote is the Jaguars and eagles artists craftsmen and farmers were also important Toltec groups [Music] the zapotec culture of the Central Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico is very old and Montel bong is one of the earliest cities in Mesoamerica from around 500 BC it interacted with Teotihuacan mountains separate this area from central city's central plateau the zapotec were and still are a very diverse group of people who speak at least 60 different language dialects we visited three sites including the well-preserved palaces and temples here at Montalban which is a toughie missile-like mountain overlooking many parts of the valley little is known about it because it was abandoned about 1,250 years ago it is very visible in Oaxaca and now a very popular tourist attraction the site may have been abandoned but as many as two and a half million people lived in the entire area and are still there in many enjoining valleys another Zapotec city-state not far from Oaxaca is the Mexican National Monument at Yahoo it is thought that after Monte albán was abandoned around 750 ad that residents relocated to smaller places such as Yahoo it has a ceremonial center as well as residential areas the third Zapotec site we visited is mitla which was still occupied when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s it lies within the village of San Pablo Vila and is famous for its elaborate and intricate fretwork designs that cover many of the walls and tombs [Music] it is an important religious site and has many underground tombs we were able to visit one of them [Music] we traveled to the eastern jungles of Veracruz to visit el tajin a major totanac site that was inhabited for 600 years from 660 to 1200 ad there are at least 20 ball courts on this one site el tajin the sacred city of the Thunder God was once one of the largest and most influential centers the totin acts were known for their elaborately carved reliefs and freezes especially impressive is the pyramid of the niches a masterpiece of Mesoamerican architecture with its 365 symmetrical square niches the totanac had a neighborhood in Teotihuacan and have a legend that they were the ones who built it interestingly the tochan acts were also one of several tribes that provided Cortes with troops to help defeat the Aztec in the 1500s there are around 90,000 totanac speakers today and they still perform the ancient flying man ritual of the danza de los voladores this flying pole dance is a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage the for dancers tie a rope to their ankle and then they jump off atop a 30 meter pole flying in circular motion to the ground it involves flute music and originally was a way to ask the gods to end the drought [Music] [Music] we visited Cantona a site that may have Olmec roots south of Puebla and howl Appa in eastern Mexico it was abandoned after 1050 ad this residential area walled and fortified was on a long trading route only about 10% of it has been excavated but it has over 500 cobblestone cosway's 3,000 individual patios residences 24 ball courts and an elaborate temple complex these guys were mainly farmers and traders and were contemporaries of the Teotihuacan [Music] another archaeological site in eastern Mexico settled by the Olmec or the Maya from the coastal areas is cachexia it is known especially for their murals of battle scenes and religious symbols from various contemporary cultures [Music] one of the best things about this tour beyond the informative lectures by a professor Saturno is that we stayed at great hotels and had very good food highlights included our hotels [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the Santo Domingo cultural center in Oaxaca since Wacha is a UNESCO designated City this museum features many of the artifacts from Zapotec and early colonial times a special treat for some of us was the Casa Azul in Mexico City the home of iconic painter Frida Kahlo the wife of mural painter Diego Rivera we have featured many of Diego's paintings throughout this video Freitas father called the couple the elephant and the Dove as Frida was short and petite Diego was over six feet tall and very overweight she was also 21 years younger than Diego most of her paintings were done from her bed or a wheelchair as she never fully recovered from polio as a child and a bus accident at age 18 that displaced three vertebra in her spine when an iron handrail impaled her pelvis her ribs and legs were also broken she was in pain the rest of her life and it affected most of her artwork most of her paintings were self-portraits and explored family and political ideas as well as death [Music] Casa Azul was Freitas home she was born and died here 1954 age 47 the museum is much like it was in the 1950s [Music] you you

Channel: Raymond Kresha

Views: 11,903

Rating: 4.6599998 out of 5

Keywords: Aztec, Templo Major, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Totonac, Voladares, Monte Alban, Cantona, Yagul, Olmec, Xalapa, Cacaxtla, Mitla, Tlatelolco, Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo

Id: RbfwneW-FiQ

Length: 32min 39sec (1959 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020