Mesoamerican civilizations compared to early Mesopotamia

[Valmy]

Not quite all, but very, very close.

If only they could have put down the Dutch with that sort of thoroughness.

[jimmy olsen]

It is my understanding that the Aztecs and Maya had plenty of written records, but the Spanish burned them all, leaving the impression that they just wrote in ceremonial stone.

Really?  They burned them all?  Not one single record of any sort survived?  That is some impressive efficiency by the Spanish.  Surely we have some.

A few do survive, but not many.

http://books.google.co.kr/books?id=ZseasJq3WzEC&dq=burnings&pg=PA265&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[alfred russel]

Mesoamerica didn't have any convenient animals to domesticate. One can hardly penalize them for that. Not surprising they didn't use the wheel for anything other than toys without draft animals.

Is this a competition with scoring adjusted for a handicap? I was assuming not, and mesoamerica lacked some very critical attributes that Mesopotamia had.

It is my understanding that the Aztecs and Maya had plenty of written records, but the Spanish burned them all, leaving the impression that they just wrote in ceremonial stone.

I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is correct. In Mesopotamia I understand that proto writing and early writing in business type settings are found everywhere because they were so commonly used.

[Malthus]

Not quite all, but very, very close.

If only they could have put down the Dutch with that sort of thoroughness.

It's a general problem with civilizations that write on perishable materials and live in a damp climate. Unless deliberate and continual attempts are made to preserve their writings, they get destroyed. The Sumerians wrote on clay, so much of what they wrote got preserved; The egyptians wrote on papyrus, but they lived in a desert.

Another unlucky civilization in this regard was the Indus Valley civilization - they most likely had writing (their seal-stones carved out of jemstones and rocks had what look like writing on them) but they mostly wrote (we assume) on persihable materals and no examples, seals aside, survived.

In the case of the Aztecs and Maya, not only did they live in a climate not condusive to survival, the authorities actively sought out and destroyed the writings. The examples that survived did so as ciuriousities in European collections.

[Malthus]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is correct. In Mesopotamia I understand that proto writing and early writing in business type settings are found everywhere because they were so commonly used.

They are found everywhere because they were written on clay tablets. When a city burns down, clay tablets tend to survive the process ... indeed they are remarkably resistant to decay.

[Viking]

Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztecs and the Maya seem to have been much more advanced to me than the Neolithic civilizations of the Fertile Crescent (I don't know anything about the neolithic civilizations of India or China). Mesopotamia didn't have a city as large as Tenochtitlan until Babylon well into the Bronze Age. Teotihuacan and Tikal were also larger (depending on the estimates perhaps significantly so) than any of the cities of Sumer.

Am I just being influenced by the fact that we have lot more information on the comparatively recent Mesoamerican civilizations, or was there a significant gap in technology and social complexity? If so, why? The Americas were lacking in a lot resources that the Old World had, which is why the neolithic civilizations of the Old World eventually transitioned to the Bronze Age and beyond. Why were the Mesoamericans able to build much larger polities? Alternately, why couldn't the Mesopotamian cities grow as large?

Show that you have dealt with the issues raised here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4008293090480628280

and we can talk about this.

and of course this...

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm

which has Memphis at 30k in 3100 BC and Ur at 65k in 2030 BC compared to Tikal with between 60k and 90k. Four and Three thousand years earlier it must be mentioned. The same source has Babylon reaching the size of Tenochtitlan 300 years after Ur was at 65k.

I think the real issue here is scope of power of the polity building the city both in catchment area and in bureaucratic efficiency. Egypt famously didn't voluntarily do technological innovation but managed to build monster cities with neolithic farming technology.

[alfred russel]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is correct. In Mesopotamia I understand that proto writing and early writing in business type settings are found everywhere because they were so commonly used.

They are found everywhere because they were written on clay tablets. When a city burns down, clay tablets tend to survive the process ... indeed they are remarkably resistant to decay.

I haven't read up on this stuff recently, but the writing systems are quite structurally different. There is a clear evolutionary path in Mesopotamia of business type transactions with a utilitarian proto writing system developing into a full writing system. The structure of mesoamerican systems seems to have been more symbolic from the start.

Also, the aztecs collapsed less than 500 years ago. Mesoamerican indian culture lived on much longer (arguably to the present day). For more than a century academics have been quite interested in this type of information. If this stuff was being produced to record day to day life, we should have lots of examples. The Indus Valley Civilization is thousands of years older.

[derspiess]

Not directly relatable to the Mesoamerican thing, but in an attempt to help kick-start my son's interest in history & whatnot, I took him to Serpent Mound this weekend.  It's a big serpent effigy ("largest serpent effigy in the world") containing large numbers of dead Indians.  I had mentioned it many times to Tommy, and thought I made it clear that it wasn't a *real* snake.  Apparently I failed to drive that point home.  Look how pissed he was:

[Viking]

Daddy Promised me a Snake

Now I'm voting Democrat

?

[jimmy olsen]

and we can talk about this.

and of course this...

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm

which has Memphis at 30k in 3100 BC and Ur at 65k in 2030 BC compared to Tikal with between 60k and 90k. Four and Three thousand years earlier it must be mentioned. The same source has Babylon reaching the size of Tenochtitlan 300 years after Ur was at 65k.

I think the real issue here is scope of power of the polity building the city both in catchment area and in bureaucratic efficiency. Egypt famously didn't voluntarily do technological innovation but managed to build monster cities with neolithic farming technology.

Memphis in 3100BC is comparable, but Ur in 2000BC was in the middle of the Bronze Age.

It took the Native Americans longer to get to that level of development, but their neolithic cities were substantially bigger than Mesopotamia's neolithic cities.

I don't see how Diamond's thesis has anything to do with it. You'd think with all the advantages he posits the Old World as having their cities would be bigger. We don't know much about the disease burden of the time, many diseases likely hadn't evolved yet. IIRC we don't have evidence for small pox before 1500 BC. Measles had yet to evolve as well.

[derspiess]

Daddy Promised me a Snake

Now I'm voting Democrat

?

I got him the damned Indian whistle.  What else does he want from me??

[Barrister]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is correct. In Mesopotamia I understand that proto writing and early writing in business type settings are found everywhere because they were so commonly used.

They are found everywhere because they were written on clay tablets. When a city burns down, clay tablets tend to survive the process ... indeed they are remarkably resistant to decay.

I haven't read up on this stuff recently, but the writing systems are quite structurally different. There is a clear evolutionary path in Mesopotamia of business type transactions with a utilitarian proto writing system developing into a full writing system. The structure of mesoamerican systems seems to have been more symbolic from the start.

Also, the aztecs collapsed less than 500 years ago. Mesoamerican indian culture lived on much longer (arguably to the present day). For more than a century academics have been quite interested in this type of information. If this stuff was being produced to record day to day life, we should have lots of examples. The Indus Valley Civilization is thousands of years older.

Mesoamerican writing does seem entirely used by the priests to record religious and state records, true.

I don't know if that means that mesopotamian writing is "better" or "more advanced".

And it is true that the Spanish burned almost all of their books.  Since they were held only by the priests, and since they were written in very flamable materials, it was easy to destroy almost every single copy in existence.

[PDH]

He wanted a giant indian snake, dammit.

[Viking]

Daddy Promised me a Snake

Now I'm voting Democrat

?

I got him the damned Indian whistle.  What else does he want from me??

Universal Single Payer Health Care presumably.

[Malthus]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is correct. In Mesopotamia I understand that proto writing and early writing in business type settings are found everywhere because they were so commonly used.

They are found everywhere because they were written on clay tablets. When a city burns down, clay tablets tend to survive the process ... indeed they are remarkably resistant to decay.

I haven't read up on this stuff recently, but the writing systems are quite structurally different. There is a clear evolutionary path in Mesopotamia of business type transactions with a utilitarian proto writing system developing into a full writing system. The structure of mesoamerican systems seems to have been more symbolic from the start.

Also, the aztecs collapsed less than 500 years ago. Mesoamerican indian culture lived on much longer (arguably to the present day). For more than a century academics have been quite interested in this type of information. If this stuff was being produced to record day to day life, we should have lots of examples. The Indus Valley Civilization is thousands of years older.

The Indus Valley civilization is the same ase as Sumerian (they were in contact - Indus seals have been found in Sumerian sites). From one we have countless examples of writing; from the other, pretty well nothing. It is unlikely that we have found nothing because none were produced ...

What you are overlooking is that if stuff cannot survive neglect, and it is neglected, you will find none - not one. If neglected, or abandoned (in a trove or buried) it will simply rot. We know there *was* lots, because the Spanish in fact recorded in detail making bonfires of piles of the stuff. There are in fact a few isolated examples (exactly three), saved as curiousities, but clearly the Spanish had no interest in saving (say) the tax records (if there were any).

Of the Maya, which were still using writing in the 17th century (1697 to be exact), only three codexs survive from the whole civilization! (All named for the european cities in which they were preserved).

There were many such books in existence at the time of the Spanish conquest of Yucatán in the 16th century, but they were destroyed in bulk by the Conquistadors and priests soon after. In particular, all those in Yucatán were ordered destroyed by Bishop Diego de Landa in July of 1562. De Landa wrote: "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." Such codices were primary written records of Maya civilization, together with the many inscriptions on stone monuments and stelae that survived. However, their range of subject matter in all likelihood embraced more topics than those recorded in stone and buildings, and was more like what is found on painted ceramics (the so-called 'ceramic codex'). Alonso de Zorita wrote that in 1540 he saw numerous such books in the Guatemalan highlands that "...recorded their history for more than eight hundred years back, and that were interpreted for me by very ancient Indians." (Zorita 1963, 271-2). Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas lamented that when found, such books were destroyed: "These books were seen by our clergy, and even I saw part of those that were burned by the monks, apparently because they thought [they] might harm the Indians in matters concerning religion, since at that time they were at the beginning of their conversion." The last codices destroyed were those of Tayasal, Guatemala in 1697, the last city conquered in America.[3] With their destruction, the opportunity for insight into some key areas of Maya life has been greatly diminished.

The three survivals:

There are only three codices whose authenticity is beyond doubt. These are:

The Madrid Codex, also known as the Tro-Cortesianus Codex (112 pages, 6.82 metres (22.4 feet));
The Dresden Codex also known as the Codex Dresdensis (74 pages, 3.56 metres (11.7 feet));
The Paris Codex, also known as the Peresianus Codex (22 pages, 1.45 metres (4.8 feet)).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices

Again, with Babylonian, it is just luck that they recorded business-type transactions and historical documents in permanent form.

Now, it may be the case that the Maya and Aztecs never wrote business stuff. But proof either way lacks. Three surviving records simply isn't enough to base such a notion on.

This is a classic case where sweeping generalizions are made on the basis of survivals (another is the notion that prehistoric people generally lived in caves - "cave men" - because remains are found in caves. In fact, people only rarely lived in caves - caves are dank and not usually in the right places - but river-bank settlements, which were in fact much more common as we now know from more sophisticated achaeo;ogical analysis, are also less suceptible to survival. Hence, "cave-man".