A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain how and why states in the Americas developed and changed over time.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

K.C.-3.2.I.D.i.--In the Americas, as in Afro-Eurasia, state systems demonstrated continuity, innovation, and diversity, and expanded in scope and reach.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

State systems in the Americas:

§ Maya city-states

§ Mexica

§ Inca

§ Chaco

§ Mesa Verde

§ Cahokia

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

§ Maya city-states

§ Mexica

§ Inca

§ Chaco

§ Mesa Verde

§ Cahokia (Mound Builders)

Categories of Analysis with evidence:

• Similarities in States

  • • Using religion to govern

      • • Mexica (Aztec) use of human sacrifice

        • Inca sacrifice of upper class girls (Virgins of the Sun) to the Sun god

        • Maya had divine rulers or “state shamans” able to mediate between humankind and the supernatural.

          • • extensive capture and sacrifice of prisoners

        • Chaco -- Hundreds of miles of roads, up to forty feet wide, radiated out from Chaco and some scholars speculate, a “sacred landscape which gave order to the world,” joining its outlying communities to a “Middle Place,” an entrance perhaps to the underworld.

    • monumental ceremonial centers

      • • Maya -- El Mirador was home to tens of thousands of people, a pyramid/temple said by some to be the largest in the world, and a stone-carved frieze depicting the Maya creation story known as the Popul Vuh

        • Cahokia (Mound Builders) -- Its central mound, a terraced pyramid of four levels, measured 1,000 feet long by 700 feet wide, rose more than 100 feet above the ground, and occupied fifteen acres. It was the largest structure north of Mexico, the focal point of a community numbering 10,000 or more people, and the center of a widespread trading network

        • Chaco -- Pueblo Bonito, stood fve stories high and contained more than 600 rooms and many kivas (larger pit structures used for ceremonial purposes, which symbolized the widespread belief that humankind emerged into this world from another world below ).

        • Aztec -- Tenochtitlán boasted many temples included a pyramid almost 200 feet high

        • Mesa Verde -- Sun Temple is one of the largest exclusively ceremonial structures ever built by the Ancestral Puebloans and is thought to have been an astronomical observatory.

    • Social Hierarchies

      • • Maya --elite classes of nobles, priests, merchants, architects, and sculptors, as well as specialized artisans producing pottery, tools, and cotton textiles. And it was sufficiently productive to free a large labor force for work on the many public structures

        • Chaco-- Among the Chaco elite were highly skilled astronomers who constructed an observatory of three large rock slabs situated so as to throw a beam of light across a spiral rock carving behind it at the summer solstice. By the eleventh century, Chaco also had become a dominant center for the production of turquoise ornaments.

        • Cahokia -- Paramount chiefs, known as Great Suns, dressed in knee-length fur coats and lived luxuriously in deer-skin covered homes. An elite class of “principal men” or “honored peoples” clearly occupied a different status from commoners, sometimes referred to as “stinkards.” These sharp class distinctions were blunted by the requirement that upper-class people, including the Great Suns, had to marry “stinkards.” Also, a large military class with fleet of canoes.

        • Aztec --Nobles, a large bureaucracy, priest class, slaves and professional merchants, known as pochteca, were legally commoners, but their wealth, often exceeding that of the nobility, allowed them to rise in society and become “magnates of the land.”

• Differences in States

  • • Government rule over empire

      • • Maya--no central authority, a highly fragmented political system of city-states, local lords, and regional kingdoms

        • Inca -- more bureaucratic empire

          • • quipus -- Births, deaths, marriages, and other population data were carefully recorded on quipus, the knotted cords that served as an accounting device

        • Aztec -- Tribute State. The Aztec Empire was a loosely structured and unstable conquest state that witnessed frequent rebellions by its subject peoples. Conquered peoples and cities were required to regularly deliver to their Aztec rulers impressive quantities of textiles and clothing, military supplies, jewelry and other luxuries, various foodstuffs, animal products, building materials, rubber balls, paper, and more. The process was overseen by local imperial tribute collectors, who sent the required goods on to Tenochtitlán .

    • Infrastructure

      • • Incan road system

          • • 24,800 mile network that connected the empire

            • Chasquis -- trained runners who would deliver messages

            • Tambos --rest stations

            • used for: soldiers, tax/tribute collection, messages

    • Coerced Labor Systems

      • • Incan Mit'a system

          • • corvee labor built roads, terraces for farming, bridge building, etc

            • local -- took place around your community

            • Some labored on large state farms or on “sun farms,” which supported temples and religious institutions; others herded, mined, served in the military, or toiled on state-directed construction projects

        • Cahokia / Mississippi culture were stratifed societies with a clear elite and with rulers able to mobilize the labor required to build such enormous structures. One high-status male was buried on a platform of 20,000 shell beads, accompanied by 800 arrowheads, sheets of copper and mica, and a number of sacrifced men and women nearby

• Geographic Limitations and Barriers

  • • Inca--Andes Mountains and rainforests in South America

    • Chaco also had become a dominant center for the production of turquoise ornaments, which became a major item of regional commerce, extending as far south as Mesoamerica.

    • Maya were embedded in an “almost totally engineered landscape. " The Maya drained swamps, terraced hillsides, fattened ridgetops, and constructed an elaborate water management system.

    • Aztec -- Chinampas: “floating gardens,” artificial islands created from swamp-lands that supported a highly productive agriculture.

      • • Tenochtitlán -- featured numerous canals, dikes, causeways, and bridges

Write a thesis statement that answers the following prompt:

Develop an argument that evaluates how one or more states or empires in the Americas established their authority from 1200-1450.

Key Takeaways

A) States form for many of the same reasons and keep power in many of the same ways.

B) Many factors contribute to differences with how states address labor, infrastructure and governance.

• Geographic Limitations and Barriers is always a good starting point when exploring these differences.

• examining the CCoT of a region is another good factor to explore

Note: Thesis statements are the backbone of your essays. Make sure it is strong!

Remember, compare/contrast as much as you can in your studying.

Remember, write your thesis in the intro and as a conclusion.