Inca And Aztec Compare And Contrast

The Incas and the Aztecs often are paired together, as they were part of the same period of time, the 1300s to the 1500s, and similar places, as they lived in regions of South America and Mesoamerica. These two civilizations are different in an economic way, as the Incas were self-sufficient because of agriculture and the Aztecs were more trade based. I argue that the economical differences between the two civilizations were caused by their environment and their technological advancements. Aztecs traded because they needed a way to gain land and in turn, induce beliefs. But first, how did they travel to get goods to other places? Well, the merchants, called pochteca, carried goods with sacks on their backs. An example of a priceless good

Though they had many difficulties farming in the Inca Empire, like how they had “arable land with little water and a lot of water where there was little arable land. ” To combat this, they used terrace farming. The ground is made into steps to allow water to flow from the top areas to the bottom and irrigate the soil. The large area of millions of hectares made the terrace farming able to support at least six million people. This is a photo of terrace farming, which is how the Incas farmed. In addition to this, they planted resilient crops like potatoes, quinoa, and corn, while using techniques such as cisterns, a tank that holds water, and aqueducts to help the Incas through periods of hardship. Because the land was arable but had little water, it means that because of these techniques, the arable land had access to water from the surrounding mountains and “allowed the Incas to reliably produce long-term food supplies at an extremely efficient rate.” This means that the Incas didn’t need to trade much because they had all the materials needed for surviving, as they held fresh water for drinking and agricultural

This is shown by the fact that the Incas didn’t have a currency. This is because they didn’t need it as “their economy was so efficiently planned that every citizen had their basic needs met,” showing that they didn’t need outside help from other civilizations in the area, as they had what they needed to live, like agriculture from the terrace farming and the water from the nearby mountains that they brought using the aqueducts. The Aztecs were different in the way that they had a “defined” method of paying for things. The Aztecs used cocoa beans to pay for things, like trade, as they used the conversion: “1 cacao bean = 5 green peppers.” They also used it as a “tax” for a tribute to Tenochtitlan, through cocoa sacs.This is from the Codex Mendoza, which demonstrates the tribute system. Based on this knowledge, this means that the Aztecs had a system of paying for things, which would be hard to implement over a large area, but was extended by trade. The Incas didn’t need to do this as the trading didn’t happen as often as the Aztecs. They also had differences in travel, where they developed technologies based on their environment, but the Aztecs had more complicated systems. For example, the Aztecs had their main city, Tenochtitlan, on an island, so they invented water-based