Every time I read something about those cultures I become sad and angry because so much of them is just gone. Unique things lost forever because the damn Europeans destroyed everything and killed everybody, because of greed and religion.
Cortes and Pizarro belong into one category with ISIS, the Khmer Rouge, Hitler and other greatest enemies of human culture.
Such a shame.
Those cultures might have been savage in some things, with archaic and barbaric rites, and of course they were dictatorships.
But they were unique cultures of mankind that existed for hundreds of years and they become nothing but a few faded memories and artefacts.
I see your point. It definitely is a tragic and divisive issue throughout history.
I can't speak as much for the Aztecs or the Incas (other than that they were quite forcibly taken down by the Spanish and their native allies), but the height of the Mayan civilization in many ways had crumbled long before the Spanish came into the picture. Most of the pictures I have posted are from the heyday of the Mayan classical era (700-900 AD) or times immediately before or after. By the time the Spanish arrived, the Mayans were still around, and were still fighting amongst themselves in numerous petty kingdoms, but did not have the glorious "temple cities" we normally think about when viewing these cultures.
Map is the Mayan world ~1461 AD, showing the Mayan clans fighting constant wars against each other.
As much as this should have made them easier to conquer by the Spanish, the conquest of the Yucatan wound up being a very long process that never 100% finished, even up until the formation of Mexico.
But on the flip side, the Spanish, in particular one Bishop Diego de Landa, was both directly responsible for the destruction
and preservation of Mayan culture.
In his notes he rightly admits to burning the wood-bark books containing the mass of wealth of Mayan astrological studies and ceremonial practices, which were burned as works of the devil. Considering how abhorent the Europeans viewed human sacrifices, and viewed snakes, which factored very strongly in Mayan art, as animals directly controlled by evil powers, it makes a perverted sense why he and others came to this conclusion. At the same time, his research and notes on the Mayans themselves are to this day one of the few sources of actual Mayan history, especially how their language and complicated writing system worked.
Some of his notes:
Its a sad history, though at the time Diego de Landa showed up to burn the books and destroy the temples, most had been destroyed by time, the jungle, or angry Mayan armies centuries before.
The world is a crazy place, and I keep learning more as I continue to read about this fascinating ancient culture.
