Incas And Aztec Culture

In this class there has been numerous reoccurring themes. One of these themes was how religion has changed cultures completely and has also been pivotal reason why some wars were started. Throughout the class we have also discussed many different powerful leaders and how they shaped their culture for good and bad. These leaders also changed the way some military tactics were used back then to create more efficient ways of fighting. There have been some major empires that rose to power through their creative ways in building massive structures for their people like the Incas and Aztecs, but their empire fell because of other incredible military tactics. For those reasons is why I have chose to write about religion, powerful leaders, and the …show more content…
Throughout tis class we have talked about many different powerful empires, but the two I’m going to talk about is the Incas and Aztecs. The Aztecs was a coalition of conquered city states who allowed conquered tribes to keep their religion, culture, and language as long as they paid tributes to the empire. They did rule with fear but they didn’t have full control of conquered tribes. The Aztecs were polytheistic and made sacrifices to many different Gods each of whom ruled human activities or an aspect of nature. The Aztecs had many of agriculture gods because that was such a large part in their culture. One of their main Gods was Huitzilochtli who was the deity of war, sun, and human sacrifices. The Aztecs also created a calendar based of religious events to make sure they didn’t miss any important rituals. The Aztec empire was built on a lake that had an advanced irrigation system, which helped them produce a surplus of crops. The Aztecs had a feudal system, which gave people no incentive to work because the empire took all the crops and gave the people just enough to live off of. The Incas were an extremely strict government with harsh punishments for small crimes. The Incas unlike the Aztecs made conquered tribes take up Incan culture. They performed large animal sacrifices to get good harvests from Gods. The Incas only performed human sacrifices in times of disasters unlike the Aztecs. The Incas were extremely harsh towards their enemies, but felt responsible for their welfare. People worked land but also had designated jobs such as military, mining, and public service. They gave workers incentives to get better production from the workers. The Incas and Aztecs both were taken over by the Spaniards. The Aztecs were taken over because of technological disadvantages such as guns, horses, cannons, and disease. The Spanish caused civil uprisings and eventually took over the great Aztec empire.