>the mayans were a maritime trading empire with links to north africaHow did they lose to the Spanish? Why couldn't they just use their own ships to defend the gulf of america against a handful of explorers eating dried rations and drinking saltwater?
>>18539179I don't think there was a cultural exchange, or really any sort of link between Central America and North Africa, at least at the time of the Mayans. I think there are indicators of a common source for a lot of concepts however.Also from what I understand they didn't really utilise boats on the open water (outside of small fishing boats) but I might be wrong.
>>18539179>>the mayans were a maritime trading empire with links to north africaThey were not. They were a bunch of city-states, some of which were merchantile and had ties to the rest of Mesoamerica, Central America and the Caribbean. There was no pre-columbian contact between them and North Africa.>How did they lose to the Spanish?The Spanish had superior technology and thousands of native allies from Central Mexico, and several Maya city-states decided to become their allies themselves.>Why couldn't they just use their own ships to defend the gulf of america against a handful of explorers eating dried rations and drinking saltwater?Because they did not have "ships", only very large trading canoes with no sails.>>18539186>the white "atlanteans" who originally founded and ruled their civilization were long goneNot a thing. The Classic Maya are known for their naturalistic statues and colorful representations of their kings and they were all clearly native american.>the natives welcomed the return of their white godsThe Maya enslaved the first two europeans they came across and were immediately hostile to all subsequent Spanish expeditions, the first few of which they successfully destroyed.
>>18539186>>18539188WE
>>18539179>maritimeTo an extent, but not really. They had a relatively sizable coastal trading network that stretched from Veracruz down to Honduras, and which in turn linked into some river networks that went far inland, but emphasis on "coastal". They did not do open ocean sailing or have especially complicated naval and boating technology. Some Maya boats had awnings IIRC and sort of a separate compartment or sectioning, to be honest I forget the details, but for the most part they were still basically glorified, giant canoes. To put things in perspective, the Mesoamericans never invented the sail, let alone things like vessels which had proper separate rooms, masts. Even something like Triremes were probably significantly more complicated then the most complex Maya boats. The Mesoamericans were not primitive and did rival contemporary Europeans in some ways, but naval technology and boating was not their forte. >empireDepends on how you define "Empire", but again not really. If you define "Empire" just as any political network where one king rulers over other kings, then sure, the larger Maya dynasties and their home/capital cities could arguably constitute empires, and depending on how you define what their territories covered, some of them got pretty big (the Mayapan League for example covered a significant proportion of the northern Yucatan Peninsula, though not nearly the whole Peninsula + Chiapas like some online maps show), but the term "empire" suggests a level of centralization and structural stability that really was not in place. It was really more separate dynasties forming situational alliances, rivalries, subservient/dominant relationships, installing rulers from their own line onto other cities and individual kings/queens splintering off from their original dynasty to form their own line, etc, see pic 1/2
>>18540291Cont:As it applies to conflicts against the Spanish, Maya states, rulers, and dynastic lines were as or more likely to ally with the Spanish against their existing rivals and capitals as they were to ally together against the Spanish.That's why the Spanish "won", combined with diseases decimating (in the literal sense of the term) their population and the fact that the Spanish had sizable amounts of local Mesoamerican subject/allied armies from Central Mexico, which the Spanish got from felling the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, with the Aztec Empire ALSO not really being a true imperial empire either and having some of the same structural dynamics and interactions with the Spanish that I just described with the Maya (EX: states inside the empire allying with Cortes against the capital or staying neutral instead of banding together), even if the Aztec Empire was somewhat more centralized then most/all Maya kingdoms and "empires" were and their politics was more based on states then dynasties >links to north africaNo such links exist. >>18539186No Mesoamerican gods are depicted with Caucasian skin. The only "White gods" in Mesoamerican are shit like Mixcoatl, and I'm pretty sure by "white" you don't mean "literally white as a cloud with candy cane red stripes", see pic2/2 for now
