Maya Vs Inca Essay

The Maya, Aztec, and Inca were all huge groups of peoples who lived until the 1500s at one point or another. The Maya lasted the longest out of all the groups, spanning from 400 BC to 1517 AD. The Maya were also the first of these groups to perish. The Inca lasted the second longest, starting in 1200 AD and living until 1572, when they lived solely in Machu Picchu. The Aztec lasted the shortest amount of time, only one year over three centuries and two decades. The Aztec empire started in 1200 along with the Inca empire. Unfortunately, they perished 51 years before the Inca in 1521, even before the Spanish Conquistadors found Cuzco, the Inca capital.

All three groups had a similar economy, they all were farmers. For farming, the Aztec used

The Aztec sacrificed humans to please the gods. For them, sacrifices were about the killing of the people. They once held a ceremony where they sacrificed over 20,000 people. The most important god to the Aztec was the sun god Huitzilopochtli. The Mayans did their religious items a bit differently, in fact they sacrificed both humans and animals to the gods. In certain ceremonies, the priest would cut him or herself as a part of the ceremony because blood was the thing that the Mayans actually sacrificed. Occasionally, they would sacrifice people or animals by throwing them down a well. If you survived being thrown down the well, you were considered to be sacred and they thought that the gods had picked for you to be spared. Enemy warriors were often sacrificed to the gods when the Maya got enemy warriors to sacrifice by playing Pok-A-Tok, a game where the winners are treated like kings and the losers were sacrificed to the gods by the winning team’s city-state. The Inca were quite different, in fact they didn’t sacrifice people often. The Emperor (Sapa Inca) was considered to be part god. The Inca did have human sacrifice, but they used children because they were considered to be the most pure. It was considered a supreme honor for your child to be