Humanities-II

INTRODUCTION
 2

Meso-American Civilizations
Origin and Immigration: 3

Movement of the human race into the American

continent.
Ancient America: 4

 Civilizations were established around 1500-1200 BCE.

 Temples and palaces were the most prominent buildings.

 Temples were vertical and pyramidical in form with square plans and the interiors
consisted of narrow and dark rooms.

 Olmec Civilization was the first to establish a civilization.

 Major civilizations: Olmec, Mayan, Zapotec, Toltec, Incan and Aztec.

A common thread to all Meso- American 5

cultures:
 Each established city had a citadel.

 Domestication of animals was to a much lesser extent.

 King as the high-preist.

 Did not have a well developed written language.

 Iconography - Precursors of Writing 6

Used befre being refined to

glyphs.

Many icons must have surely

become glyphs in later
writing systems, but so far
only a few have been
studied.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/humboldt_celt.gif

http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/chalcatzingo.jpg
Written language: 7

 Highly intricate and

pictorial form of signs;
Known as GLYPH
  Mesoamerican glyphs
are more like paintings
than Western alphabetic
scripts

http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/ma_ws_cmp.gif
 8

http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/maya_text_amnh.jpg
Numerals: 9

 At the basic level, all scripts employ the bar-and-dot notation, where a dot represented a
value of "one" and a bar represented "five".
 The bar-and-dot notation is used to write numbers less than twenty. For quantities larger
than twenty, different methods are used by different systems.

 he Aztecs, for example, used special symbols such as a flag to represent 20, a feather to
represent 400, and an incense bag for 8000.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/ma_ws_bar_dot.gif

http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/aztec_numbers.gif
Calendar: 10

 The Mesoamerican Calendar was a method of tracking time

used with some variations by the Aztecs, Zapotecs, Maya.
 The mechanisms of this shared calendar had the Sacred and
Solar rounds, two parts that worked together to make a 52-
year cycle, during which each day had a unique name.
 One cycle lasted 260 days, and the other 365 days.
 The two calendars together were used to keep chronologies
and king lists, mark historical events, date legends, and define
the beginning of the world.

http://f.tqn.com/y/archaeology/1/W/q/E/1/Aztec_calendar_stone.jpg
Religion 11

 Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually

assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses.

 Sun and moon were the primary gods with huge temples dedicated to them.

 Deities representation rain god; deity of water, fertility, rain, and storms
were also worshipped.

 Sacrificial practice to appease gods including human sacrifice.

 Jaguar and feathered snake as primary icons.

Important contributions: 12

 Corn: through selective agriculture

 Rubber: the plant is indigenous to the region and hence its manufacturing.
 Football & basketball

http://www.nuttyhistory.com/uploads/1/2/1/5/12150034/8622775.jpg?346 https://anth2589.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/cropped-ball-game-picture.jpg
Olmecs 13

 While the Olmecs created the first major Mesoamerican society off the Gulf of
Mexico in 1200 BC, their disappearance by 400 BC established a rise-and-fall
pattern for future empires.
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Tikal Burial chamber

http://research.famsi.org/uploads/schele/hires/04/IMG0087.jpg
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 16

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Tikal.html
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http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Tikal.html
Chichen Itza 18
19
Ball Game 20
The Myans 21

 The Mayans, which flourished from 200-800 AD on the Yucatán Peninsula,

developed the most advanced civilization of the New World. They produced
fine arts, a calendar of 365¼ days, and pyramid-shaped temples. The Mayan
Empire fell to the Spanish around 1600 AD.
22
 The nunnery at Uxmal 23

  The Nunnery Quadrangle, consisting of four rectangular

buildings with 74 individual rooms.
 All are long low one-story buildings with emphatic horizontality,
made even more obvious by the use of Puuc ornament: along with
plain lower walls with stone mosaic friezes carved in the upper
register. 
 It might have been a palace or a residence for students, priests, or
soldiers. Each of the four temple-sides of the quadrangle is
decorated with Chac figures.
 The central courtyard there measures 79 by 65 metres.
North Building:
 This building is raised up on a high platform and is entered by a wide
staircase in the center. There are thirteen entrances into the building 24
(one at each end and eleven along the south facade). It has 26 rooms
and is topped by an elaborate roof comb. The frieze motifs are
similar to those on the other facades of the Nunnery Quadrangle.

South Building:
 The lowest of the four buildings, it is penetrated in the center by the
beautiful Mayan arch, which was probably the main entrance to the
Quadrangle.

East and West buildings:

 The building is on a low platform and has five doorways into a
complex of fourteen rooms.
 The Puuc frieze consists of triangular-shaped lattice patterns and
masks at the corners and middle of the frieze.
 The west building, facing the East Building, this structure is similar--
on a low platform but with seven doorways into the fourteen rooms.
http://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/mexico/uxmal/uxmal3.html
Some images of the complex:

25

http://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/mexico/uxmal/uxmal4.html
 26

http://www.reed.edu/uxmal/galleries/Mid/Uxmal/NunneryQuad/Uxmal-NunneryQuad-2.htm
https://s3.amazonaws.com/classconnection/700/flashcards/4675700/jpg/189-14CB96EAB8C0EABDC17.jpg
Temple of warriors at Chichen Itza 27

 the Temple of Warriors was constructed over an older temple. Today there are
three thick tiers stacked on top of a thinner stone base with a temple on top.
 All square columns are carved in low relief, with Toltec warriors; in some places they are cemented
together in sections, painted in brilliant colors and covered with plaster. 
 There are some 200 squared columns at the base of the temple's main stairway. Each side of each column 28
has a carved depiction of a Toltec warrior. These columns once were painted, and some of the pigment is
still faintly visible today. There are also several rows of columns that fill the colonnades on the south of the
temple, prompting the name Plaza of a Thousand Columns. The columns at one time supported what was
believed to be a thatched roof.
 A single, wide staircase climbs up the front face of the temple and at the top sits a Chac Mool. Behind
Chac Mool are two carved pillars representing Kukulcan— feathered serpent that formed the entrance to
what once was a covered structure.
 These twin carvings are typical of the Toltec influence on the Maya.
 The exterior wall of the Temple of Warriors is adorned with several stone carvings of Kukulkan emerging
from the mouth of a serpent. The long hooked noses of the rain god Chaac are also plainly visible on the
corners of this structure.
 29

http://research.famsi.org/schele_list.php?rowstart=660&search=125&num_pages=65&title=Schele%20Drawing%20Collection&tab=schele
 Ball Courts 30

 Courts were usually a part of a city’s sacred precinct, a fact which

suggests the ball game was more than just a game.
 Early playing courts were simple, flattened-earth rectangles but by the
Late Formative Period (300 BCE onwards) these evolved into more
imposing areas which consisted of a flat rectangular surface set
between two parallel stone walls.
 Each side could have a large vertical stone ring set high into the wall.
The walls could be perpendicular or sloping away from the players
and  the ends of the court could be left open but defined using markers
or, in other layouts, a wall closed off the playing space to create an I-
shaped court.
 The court at Monte Albán, Oaxaca is a typical example of the I-
shaped court. The length of the court could vary but the 60 m long
court at Epiclassic El Tajín (650-900 CE) represents a typical size.
  The flat court surface often has three large circular stone markers set in a
line down the length of the court. 31
 Some of these markers from Maya sites have a quatrefoil cartouche
indicating the underworld entrance which has led to speculation that the
game may have symbolised the movement of the sun (the ball) through the
underworld (the court) each night.
 Alternatively, the ball may have represented another heavenly body such as
the moon and the court was the world.
 Surviving courts abound and are spread across Mesoamerica.
 The city of Cantona has an incredible 24 courts with at least 18 being
contemporary. El Tajín also has a remarkable number of courts (at least 11)
and it may well have been a sacred centre for the sport, much
like Olympia for athletics in ancient Greece.
 The earliest known court is from the Olmec city of San Lorenzo whilst the
largest surviving stone playing court is at the Mayan-Tolteccity of Chichén
Itzá. With a length of 146 m and a width of 36 m, this court seems almost
too large to be actually played in, especially with the rings set at the
demanding height of 8 m.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mesoamerican_Ballcourt_cross-sections_3.svg
Machu Picchu 32

 Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel situated on a mountain ridge 2,430 metres above sea level.
 It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machu picchu District in Peru,above the Sacred Valley, which is 80
kilometres northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows.
 Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often
mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas”
 It is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time
of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained
unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.
 Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Inti Watana,
the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows.
The site layout: 33

 The site is roughly divided into an urban sector and an agricultural sector, and into an upper
town and a lower town. The temples are in the upper town, the warehouses in the lower.
 The architecture is adapted to the mountain slopes.
 Approximately 200 buildings are arranged on wide parallel terraces around an east-west
central square.
 The various compounds, called kanchas, are long and narrow in order to exploit the terrain.
 Sophisticated channeling systems provided irrigation for the fields.
 Stone stairways set in the walls allowed access to the different levels across the site.
 The eastern section of the city was probably residential.
 The western, separated by the square, was for religious and ceremonial purposes. This
section contains the Torreón, the massive tower which may have been used as an
observatory
The site layout: 34

The site , pic above; when it was discovered in 1912.

Below, after clearing the site and restoration.
Construction 35
 The central buildings use the Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape. The Incas were masters of this
technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar.
 The section of the mountain where Machu Picchu was built provided various challenges that the Incas solved with local materials.
 One issue was the seismic activity due to two fault lines. It made mortar and similar building methods nearly useless. Instead, the Inca
mined stones from the quarry at the site, lined them up and shaped them to fit together perfectly, stabilizing the structures. 
 Inca walls have many stabilizing features: doors and windows are trapezoidal, narrowing from bottom to top; corners usually are
rounded; inside corners often incline slightly into the rooms; and outside corners were often tied together by "L"-shaped blocks; walls
are offset slightly from row to row rather than rising straight from bottom to top.
 Heavy rainfall required terraces and stone chips to drain rain water and prevent mud slides, landslides, erosion and flooding. Terraces
were layered with stone chips, sand, dirt and top soil, to absorb water and prevent it from running down the mountain.
 Similar layering protected the large city center from flooding. Multiple canals and reserves provide water throughout the city that could
be supplied to the terraces for irrigation and to prevent erosion and flooding.
 The approach to moving and placing the enormous stones remains uncertain, probably involving hundreds of men to push the stones
up inclines. A few stones have knobs that could have been used to lever them into position; after which they were generally sanded
away, with a few overlooked.
INTI WATANA STONE:
 Inti Watana is believed to have been designed as an astronomic clock or calendar by the Incas 36
 The sculpture carved from the rock bottom of the sun temple is interpreted as "Water mirrors for observing the sky".
 These stones are arranged to point directly at the sun during the winter solstice. The name of the stone derives
from Quechua language: inti means "sun", and wata-, "to tie, hitch (up)". The suffix -na derives nouns for tools or places.
 Hence inti watana is literally an instrument or place to "tie up the sun", often expressed in English as "The Hitching Post of
the Sun". The Inca believed the stone held the sun in its place along its annual path in the sky.
 The stone is situated at 13°9'48" S. At midday on 11 November and 30 January, the sun stands almost exactly above the
pillar, casting no shadow. On 21 June, the stone casts the longest shadow on its southern side, and on 21 December a much
shorter shadow on its northern side.
 the Temple of the Sun
37
The Room of the Three Windows
38
 http://www.enjoy-machu-picchu.org/machu-picchu-history.php
 http://www.enjoy-machu-picchu.org/architecture.php
 http://www.discover-peru.org/machu-picchu-architecture/