¿Qué diferencia a los aztecas de los mayas?

Sometimes while watching movies, cartoons or reading comic books made outside of Latin America we realize they show a pre-Hispanic culture and they depict it with elements from other cultures, just like if it were the same being Inca as being Olmec, for example. And even charlatan astrologers use the Aztec sun stone to speak about Mayan calendar. Of course!

the Maya and the Aztec are cultures that developed in Mexico before the arrival of Europeans, but mistaking them is like saying Spaniards and Germans are the same just because they live in Europe and both like sausages. What is the difference between the Maya and the Aztecs? First of all: The location.

While Mayas settled in what is now South East Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the Aztec Empire extended from the Gulf to Central Mexico; certainly, with an overlapping zone of both cultures. Also, when Aztecs got to their highest extension, around the year 1300, the Mayan civilization had already passed through their classical period four hundred years prior. The first Mayan cities were founded in the year 750 BC, at the same time Rome was founded, and the last cities were abandoned around year 950 AD, while Europe was in thorough its Middle Ages.

The Aztecs, properly known as Mexicas, founded their empire in the 14th century, while the House of Medici grew as one of the most powerful in Europe, and lasted up to 1521, with the arrival of the Spaniards. Mayan language is related to those of Central and South America. Among their gods were Chaac, god of rain, and Kukulcan, the feathered serpent.

The Mexicas, on the other hand, were the descendants of the tribes from Northern Mexico and Southern U. S. A.

When they arrived to th Valley of Mexico, they took and adapted many elements of the local cultures. Although the great Mayan cities had already been abandoned, their people and culture remained. The Aztec equivalent of Chaac was Tlaloc, and of Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl, and they brought their own god of war, Huitzilopochtli, as their main god.

Because of their extremely different origins, the Mexica language, Nahuatl, and the Mayan have structures as different as Spanish and German. The Mexica settled in Lake Texcoco, which became the powerful city of Tenochtitlan around the year 1325. From here, the Huey Tlatoani demanded from the conquered towns tributes of fur, harvests, handicafts and young men for human sacrifices.

Gulp! Taxes were way worse back then! The Maya never had a consolidated empire, but rather were a group of city-states which were ruled by the priests, and engaged in commerce and frequent wars.

Mayan culture became very advanced; they were the American people with the most sophisticated system of writing. They used ideograms, symbols that represent ideas, and phonograms, symbols that translate into syllables. Also, they developed the concept of the number 0, which allowed them to do extremely complex calculations, which they used to predict the movement of the stars and build taller pyramids than the Aztecs, as well as domes and arches the Mexica didn't have, on top of building wider interior spaces.

The Mexica, in turn, developed important technology for agriculture, such as chinampas and water channels for irrigating their crops, or sewer systems that astonished the Spaniards as much as personal hygene, which allowed the Mexica to have a very well kept army for their conquests. When the Spaniards arrived, the Mayan culture resided in small kingdoms and scattered communities in the Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala, while the Mexica empire was at their highest expansion. With the help of people dominated by the Mexica and of illnesses they brought with them, the Europeans defeated the Aztec Empire within a few years, but it took them almost a hundred more to conquer the Mayan villages.

Even in 1761, the Mayan Jacinto Canek led an indigenous rebellion in Yucatan. In fact, the Mayan heritage is still alive: The Lacandons, Zoques, Tzotzils and Tzeltals, among many others, still speak a Mayan language and keep their traditions. About the Mexica, they have their heirs in Nahua villages than inhabit the center of Mexico, and their language, Nahuatl, is present in Spanish in hundreds of words, such as coyote, tomate and chocolate.

So, next time you see a movie that can't tell apart Mayans from Mexicas remember: Mexica, warrior people that ruled over central Mexico to the arrival of Spaniards. Maya, ancient civilization of Central America with an affinity for mathematics and astronomy. Both cultures are still alive in their culture and their people.

CuriosaMente The illustrations of this episode were made by Ruy Fernando Estrada. We invite you to read his comic at macoatl. com.

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