Aztec And Inca Similarities

Connections, Comparisons, and Changes in the Incan Empire In the fifteenth century, the Inca Empire stood at the prime of its existence. Encompassing nearly all the land of the Andes region of what is now South America, the Inca Empire was the largest civilization in Mesoamerica. Even more impressively, the Incas developed a decadent society without many of the staples of other civilizations. This made the “children of the sun” a unique society. The Incas stood apart from their contemporaries, the Aztecs, in several key ways. They did not have a written language, they built their society largely on bureaucracy, and they had little to no contact with other civilizations. Unlike the Aztecs, who had likely inherited their writing system from …show more content…
Comparatively, the Aztecs traded with other, smaller Mesoamerican groups and created a large military to conquer and defend against these outside groups. According to Ways of the World, “Because the gods had shed their blood ages ago in creating humankind, it was wholly proper for people to offer their own blood to nourish the gods in the present. The high calling of the Aztec state was to supply this blood, largely through its wars of expansion” (Strayer 525). This inclination for warefare led to the Aztecs’ downfall, which began “when the Aztecs were heavily defeated by the Tlaxcala and Huexotzingo in 1515 CE.” (Cartwright 2). The Incas had no such contact with other societies, not even the Aztecs themselves. Without the threat of war with other civilizations, the Inca were able to grow their empire uninhibited. There were several reasons for this lack of contact. Due to the mountainous terrain of the Andes, the Inca never developed wheeled carts or ocean-going vessels which made long-distance travel a challenge. The two civilizations were also separated by the narrow bottle neck of Central America which was largely covered by dense rainforest (Strayer 306-7). For these reasons, the Inca and the Aztecs never made contact with each other, despite their proximity. Additionally, neither society developed …show more content…
Despite building an awe-inspiring empire, there comparatively little information available about the Inca because they had no written records and much of the records they did have were destroyed with the fall of the empire at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors. Ironically, the empire that was made special by its lack of contact and trade with other civilizations was also destroyed it. The Inca had no defense against the oncoming conquistadors or the diseases that ultimately decimated the Incan population because of their isolation from European weapons and