>just give up and die without attempting colonization (leading to overextension and later death, but still)why? Mississippians also had this issue.>no boats dude how were they supp...taino conquered/colonized the entire Caribbean in canoes thousands of years earlier
>>18005365What do you mean by "colonization" and "give up"? Are you talking about the Aztecs in particular, Mesoamericans as a whole, or Maya-speaking populations (half of which are missing in that pretty bad map)?>The Aztecs If by "colonization" you meant just building an empire then, they did obviously do that, and never "gave up" on it, they were conquered at their peak, as you know. They didn't send ships overseas because the entire point of Aztec expansionism was to turn city-states into tributaries for economic benefits, something that was entirely absent from the caribbean, a place whose existence they were only vaguely aware of if at all.>The MayaThey weren't one monolithic group, but they did "colonize" insofar as individual Maya polities routinely conquered each other and other groups. Most notably for your question, the Classic Maya City-state of Copan and other settlements around Honduras were established in areas whose populations were majority Lenca, not Maya, and were therefore arguably "colonies". They did also "colonize" (as in, settle when there was nobody there) many of the islands near the yucatec coast, most notably the isle of Cozumel, which was an important religious site in the yucatec maya religion. They didn't go all the way to the main Caribbean isles for reasons I'll get to later.>Mesoamerica as a wholeAgain, if what you meant by "colonization" was just expand, then they obviously did that. Mesoamerican civilization begun on the Gulf Coast, and by the time of the Spanish conquest, stretched from what is now much of northwestern Mexico all the way to parts of Central America. Sites like La Quemada are examples of Mesoamerican towns all the way up north, and like i said, the Maya founded city-states in places like Honduras, likewise the Nahua peoples had city-states all the way down in El Salvador and Nicaragua....
>>18005365>>18006449As for why they didn't expand to the caribbean in particular, I reckon there were 2 main reasons:>1. Getting to the caribbean from North America for a society with only canoes is a whole lot more complicated than you seem to think. There are mean currents and winds and such and, believe it or not, the Taino did not colonize the Caribbean from the Yucatan peninsula or anywhere else in Mexico or Central America. They did it by island-hopping through the Lesser Antilles all the way down from Northern South America, as did all the other caribbean natives as far as we know.>2.There wasn't really any incentive, nor enough contact. It was a hard to reach place and nearly all the wealthy and important places of interest in Mesoamerica were located inland, and they didn't exactly have the technology to settle thousads of people in far away islands, so they never tried. There was likely mostly only limited and indirect trade between the Caribbeab and Mesoamerica, so few idead spread directly either way. Quite simply, there was never any Mesoamerican king who thought of founding a city in the Caribbean, because why would he, and there was never enough direct contact between mesoamericans and caribbean people for the Taino and others to willingly adopt Mesoamerican civilization.
>>18005365>taino conquered/colonized the entire Caribbean in canoes thousands of years earlierBASED AF
