LONELY EMPIRES OF THE INDIANS

Five advanced civilizations flourished in brilliant isolation in Middle America- the term many scholars use to describe the area of Central America stretching from Mexico to the northern edge of Nicaragua-over a period of 3,500 years. Theyr first contact with Europe in 1519 was decisive and disastrous. In  a few decades their societies were swamped by the invader. Not until 300 years  later did archeologists and scholars begin to uncover and appreciate the richness of the civilizations so carelessly swept aside.’

OLMEC

First of the great ancient Middle American cultures. They dominated the coastal plain along the Gulf of  Mexico from about 1200 B.C. to about 400 B.C. Their name comes from a Nahuatl Indian word meaning “inhabitant or rubber country,” because of the rubber trees that grew in the region. They began as subsistence farmers but became  accomplished pyramid builders, using clay and earth. Their pyramid at La Venta is 100 feet high. The Olmecs were also great sculptors. Giant stone heads, some 10feet tall, and figurines and animals of jade are  Olmec legacies.

MAYA

Most enduring of the Middle American civilizations. The Mayas were a recognizable political group as early as 2000 B.C. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and parts of Belize. Their golden age  lasted  from about  A.D. 250 to 900. Their hieroglyphic writing is only partly understood. The Mayas were superbastronomers with an advanced knowledge of mathematics and devised an accurate calendar.

TIAHUANACO

Named after the city of Tiahuanaco, founded in about 800 B.C. near LAke Titicaca in present -day Bolivia. The city was occupied by a series of five different cultures until about A.D. 1200. Then it was largely abandoned, for unknown reasons.

CHIBCHA

Civilization in the Colombian highlands destroyed by Spanish in 16th century. Accomplished goldsmiths, the Chibcha may have inspired the legends of EI Dorado.

MOCHICA

Flourished in northern Peru from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 800. Mochica farmers used irrigation systems, built fortifications, and developed distinctive crafts and sculpture.

CHIMU

Civilization established on northwest Peruvian coast in about A.D. 1000. Its capital  was the city of Chan chan, which at its peak had a population of 100,000. Expanded into the Andes under Nancen-pinco after 1370. Conquered in about 1470 by Incas.

INCA

Last and largest pre-Columbian civilization in South America. Created vast Andean empire between 1438 and 1532. Destroyed by Spanish conquistadores under Francisco Pizarro in 1530s.

MASS MARRIAGES

Marriage by decree was the norm for ordinary people within the Inca empire. Although nobles often had several wives, commoners were limited to one. Furthermore, the state dictated whom and when each commoner could marry. Each year local chiefs assembled all eligible inhabitants (all men over 24, all women over 18), separating them by sex into lines before calling them up to be paired off.

PRINCIPAL PRE-COLUMBIAN CIVILIZATIONS

The arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries brought to an abrupt end a series of cultures that dated back more than 2,000 years. These civilizations are known as pre-Columbian, from the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506).

CHAVIN

Earliest highly developed Peruvian culture, existing from about 850 to 200 B.C. The Chavins were a farming society composed of several different regional groups. Their capital was the city of Chavin de Huantar in central Peru.

NAZCA

Mysterious southern Peruvian culture about which little is known. Thought to have been founded about the time of Christ, but its people had  disappeared before the Spanish conquest. The major artifacts of Nazca culture are a series of enormous figures and designs  drawn with lines of pebbles across the coastal desert of southern Peru, which are best seen from the air. The largest design is of a bird; it is about 900 feet long.

FOOD FROM THE HILLS

Besides flooding Spain with looted wealth-nearly 200 tons of gold and 20,000 tons of silver by 1650- the conquistadores introduced  several new foods to Europe.These included maize, tomatoes, gourds, manioc (cassava), guavas, and potatoes. The potato had been cultivated by Andean farmers since at least  A.D.200. Its English name is derived from the Taino word for the sweet potato, batata.

The potato was so important to the Inca diet that they invented a method of freeze-drying to preserve it. Potatoes were  left out to freeze for several nights (they thawed by day). Softened by repeated freezing and thawing, the vegetables were then squeezed by hand to remove msot of their moisture and put out in the sun to dry completely. Finally, they reached a stage known as chuno, in which they could be kept indefinitely. Andean Indians still use this technique.

THE GOLDEN ROOM

The Inca ruler Atahualpa, backed by thousand of warriors, came face to face with Francisco Pizarro, backed by 180 men and 37 horses, for the first time at Cajamarca in Peru. The encounter was a disaster for the Indians. Pizarro kidnapped Atahualpa, and the demoralized  warriors were put to flight by their first experience of firearms and cavalry.

After the kidnapping, Atahualpa offered to ransom himself by giving the Spaniards enough gold to fill his 23-by 16 -foot cell as high as he could reach. He was a tall man and standing on tiptoe could reach to 9 feet.Atahualpa also offered to fill a smaller toom twice over with silver. The Spaniards accepted, but then changed their minds, realizing that Atahualpa could become the focus of rebellion if he were released. Instead, they tried the king on several trumped-up charges -such as murdering a former Inca king, Huascar, and plotting against the Spanish forces – and sentenced  him to death. He was garrotted in 1533.

CEREMONIAL KNIFE

Gold inlaid with turquoise forms the image of a god sacred to the pre-Inca Chimu civilization of northwestern Peru. Knife handle probably dates from 12 th century.

INSTANT GALOSHES

Amazonian Indians invented rubber boots many centuries before they were known in Europe. The Indians dipped their  feet and  legs in latex, the raw liquid of the rubber tree. It formed a tough extra skin, or boot, that protected against insects and thorns

WRITING ON THE WALL

Rome marketplace

The writing and drawing of graffiti is by no means new. It was rife in Roman times. The word graffiti itself is derived from the Latin graphium, meaning”stylus,” a pointed instrument for scratching letters onto tablets. Walls in the coastal town of Pompeii, for instance, preserved by ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, are still daubed with inscriptions and scribblings of all kinds, from brief election addresses to offers of rewards for the return of stolen property. In addition, there are obscenities, rude drawings, and many complaints from lovers, such as: “what use to have a Venus, if she is made from marble?”

LEATHER BIKINI

The wearing of bikinis goes back at least to Roman times. Girls wearing similar two-piece costumes are  portrayed on a Roman mosaic that was found in the ruins of a villa near Piazza Armerina in Sicily. Apparently, the fashion spread as far north as Britain. A leather bikini made by the Romans in the late 1st century A.D. was found in a well in London.

BATHING BEAUTY A painted bikini adorns this statue of Venus from the town of Pompeii. Whether propriety or  fashion inspired the painter is not known.

A GIFT OF DEMOCRACY

The Greeks gave democracy to the world. The word itself comes from the Greek words demos, meaning “the people”, and kratos, meaning”rule.”  Begining in the 7th century B.C., democracy evolved from the mosaic of independent city-states that then covered Greece.

Not all the city-states were democratic. Sparta, for example, was ruled by landowning aristocrats. But some of the  city-states shared more power among more people than had any earlier civilizations. The leading democracy was Athens, which overthrew its aristocracy early in the 6th century and under the reformer Solon (c. 638-559 B.C.) established a constitution giving supreme power to a citizens’ assembly known as the ecclesia. The right to vote at the assembly’s meetings in the marketplace was by  no means universal, however. Only freeborn male citizens-about 40,000 people out of a total population of between 300,000 and 400,000 – had the vote. Women, slaves, freed slaves, and immigrants were all excluded.

BORN TO BE SOLDIERS

In the city-state of Sparta the elite male citizens, the Spartiates, were groomed for a life of military service. The Spartan existence beganat birth, when babies were inspected by the elders, and weak infants were put on a mountainside to die of exposure. From the time they were 7, boys were trained in the skills of a soldier. They  wore no clothes until they reached the age of 12; then they  were allowed one mantle a year. They lived in military barracks up to the age of 30 and moved into clubs until they were 60.

The men were encouraged to marry in order to produce storng and healthy children for  the state. But they were not allowed to spend the whole night with their wives. They had to slip out after dinner and then return to the barracks to sleep. Spartan girls also received physical training so that they would give birth to sturdy babies.

All the Spartiates’ work-including  farming and trading-was  done by  helots, serfs who were owned by the state.

BOUND FOR GLORY Success in athletic contests was a passport to fame for the ancient Greeks. Competition was  almost always between individuals rather than teams, and a champion could become a hero throughout the Greek world. Statues of him would  be made and songs composed about his exploits. Success in the Olympic Games-held every 4 years between 776 B.C. and A.D. 393 at Olympia in the western Peloponnesus- was particularly prestigious. Athens welcomed  its Olympic champions with  banquets. Some athletes were  exempted  from paying taxes. Theogenes of Thasos, a wrestler who competed in the Olympic Games for 22 years in the 4th century B.C., was  so revered that he was declared a descendant of the  legendary Heracles (Hercules). The chief events were running, wrestling, boxing, the  long jump, throwing the discus, throwing the javelin, and the pankration (a boxing and wrestling contest). Many Games also included horse and chariot races. This picture  of a footrace appears on a jar dating from about  350 B.C. Filled with oil from holy olives, the jar was one of the prizes at the Panathenaea, a religious and sporting festival held every year in Athens to celebrate the birth of the goddess Athena.

Athletes were traditionally portrayed naked, but many modern scholars believe that was an artistic convention , and Greek athletes may actually have stripped only for boxing and wrestling while remaining clothed for other events.

Greece: democracy’s birthplace

RISE AND FALL OF ALEXANDER’S EMPIRE

Alexander

Alexander the Great created the greatest empire the world had yet seen -and also the shortest-lived. He became king of Macedonia in 336 B.C. at the age of 20 and then subdued the Greek states. Two years later, in 334 he led a large army to conquer Persia. During the next 11 years Alexander conquered an area nearly as large as the United States. His empire extended from Greece and Egypt in the west to beyond the Indus River in the east. When his weary army refused to march farther eastward into India, Alexander retired to Babylon. He died there of a  fever in 323 B.C, at 33. The empire he had  built in13 years was broken up as quickly as it had been formed. Within13 years of his death, the countries Alexander had united were divided again, their territories carved up between his generals.

CONSULTING THE ORACLE

Delphi was the site of Greece’s  most important oracle, where the advice of the gods was sought. The answer was given by a Pythia, a priestess who went into a trance and shouted wildly. Her cries were “interpreted” by priests, who gave the answers, often very ambiguous, in doggerel verse.

It is said that Croesus, the king of Lydia, in Asia Minor, whose name has become a symbol of wealth,asked the oracle if he should attack the Persian Empire. He was  told  that if he did  he would destroy a great empire. Croesus duly attacked in 546 B.C. and did indeed destroy an  empire: his own. Cyrus the Great defeated his army, annexed his kingdom, and took Croesus hostage.

GUNSLINGERS

Portuguese traders took guns to Japan in 1543, but 100 years later the government banned them. The traditional sword became the sole weapon of the warrior, or samurai. Ordinary citizens were forbidden to carry any weapons at all. Only in 1853, when U.S. warships under Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open its ports to foreign traders, were guns allowed into the country again.

ATISHOO

Paper tissues have been used by the Japanese for more than 300 years. An English traveler in 1637 wrote,”The Japanese blow their noses with a certain soft and tough kind of paper which they carry about them in small pieces, which, having used, they fling away as a filthy thing.”

WINDS OF DEATH

World War II suicide pilots who crashed their bombladen planes into enemy ships named themselves kamikaze, meaning “divine wind”. The namehad been given first to sudden, providential typhoons that helped to destroy  the seaborne invading forces of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, in 1274 and again in 1281. The 1281 storm wrecked the enemy fleet after almost 2 months of fighting, and the stranded invaders were massacred. Not until 1945 did another invading army set foot on Japanese soil.

ROCKS OF AGES

One of the world’s oldest stone gardens was laid out at the Zen temple of Ryoanji in Kyoto in 1490. The garden contains just 15 large stones, set apparently at random in a walled area about 70 feet by 30 feet on fine gray-white  gravel.The garden is designed to represent nature in the abstract: the stones symbolize islands or mountains; the gravel stands for the sea or trees. The garden contains no plants at all, but the gravel is raked each day.

ANCIENT AND MODERN

The 220 sacred wooden buildings at Japan’s ancient Shinto shrine at Ise have been pulled down and replaced by identical buildings every 20 years since they were first put up in the 5th century A.D. Only unpainted cypress wood is used, and no nails- just dowels and joints. It is thought that the buildings are rebuilt every two decades to symbolize the coming of a new generations. The last rebuilding was in 1973.

DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR

Hara-kiri, or ritual suicide, was a custom of the feudal samurai warriors – and later, of officers in Japan’s imperial army- to avoid dishonour or capture by an enemy. Sometimes hara-kiri was committed to show loyalty to a dead or disgraced lord.

The term hara-kiri means, literally, “belly-cutting.” The victim first cut open his own stomach with a short sword or dagger and disemboweled himself. Then he was beheaded by a companion. The ceremony, known formally in Japan as seppuku, is still occasionally used as an extreme form of protest. The Japanese novelist and playwright Yukio Mishima committed hara-kiri in 1970 in protest against what he saw as the weakness of Japan as a nation.

Japan: people of the rising sun

CHARACTER REFERENCE

Japan’s oldest book, the Kojiki (completed in A.D. 712), describes the nation’s history from its mythic origins to about A.D. 600. The book was written to substantiate the imperial family’s claim to be descended from the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu, the source of Japan’s national symbol: the rising sun.

The Kojiki  marked a turning point in Japanese culture, because it was the first book to use Japanese charaters (the script known as kana). Before the 8th century Japan made use of Chinese characters.

TEA BREAK

Zen monks in Japan acquired the habit of drinking tea in the 12th century as a “cure ” for a variety of ailments and also to keep themselves awake while meditating. Actually the monks imported the custom from China. It later became a stylized ceremony  used to teach courtesy and tranquillity.

Guests enter the ceremonial room on their knees through a low door and sip green tea from bowls. The precisely defined protocol extends even to the room in which the ceremony takes place: by tradition, the room is square and only about 9 feet across.