Educational Part

And now for the educational part of the journey. When Hernan Cortez arrived on the shores of Mexico in 1519 he expected to be greeted by savages. Instead, he found two cultures thriving, the Aztec and the Myan cultures, both decended from the Olmetec. The Aztecs had created a thriving area on a lake which is now where Mexico City sits. We added photos of the pyrmid in an earlier blog. They taxed many people for hundreds of around Mexico City. Needless to say, those people resented the Aztecs because they didn't like to pay taxes. Another thing the Aztecs did was build a city on top of a lake without a fresh water supply. they built acquaducts to carry the water. When Cortez wanted to defeat the Aztecs, all he had to do was get the people who didn't like paying the Aztecs to join his army, then cut off the fresh water supply. Within 9 months his army defeated the Aztecs.

Defeating the Myans proved to be much more difficult because they had built city states. It took 20 years to defeat the Myans. The Myans had a complex system for counting time. In North America, we view time as a liner thing whereas the Myans viewed it as a cycle. They had two calendars that coincided every 52 years, the religious and seasonal calendars. They were also mathematicians and astronomers who knew about the Milky Way long before scientists in North America did. The Myan calendar runs out on December 21, 2012 but this does not mean the end of the world. It means we will start a new era in civilization. They also used a binary code for math and counted in units of 20. It really is facinating to learn about how complex this civilization was and how they thrived with knowledge, religion, and traditions that the Spanish thought barbaric. They had a written form of language and wrote on paper hundreds of years ago. The Spanish had a fire and destoryed all but 4 or their tablets.

Enjoy the photos. This was Chichen Itza  so we will add the Tulum pictures next.