Episode 14

Aztecs are not Inca are not Maya

It’s Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month here in the United States! This week, we attempt to help you (and ourselves) be less wrong about the most famous early Latin American cultures. Amber provides a crash course on Aztec, Inca, and Maya history and the thorny issues of contemporary indigenous cultural identity, while Anna chimes in with fun facts and Very Cool Things about each group!

To learn more, check out:

I’m Latino. I’m Hispanic. And they’re different, so I drew a comic to explain. (Terry Blas, via Vox)

Why Does Jared Diamond Make Anthropologists So Mad? (NPR)

Spanish and Nahuatl Views on Smallpox and Demographic Catastrophe in Mexico (The Journal of Interdisciplinary History)

From Náhuatl to Guaraní: 5 Apps to Help You Learn Indigenous Languages (Remezcla)

Chicueyaco: Daily Life in a Nahua Village (Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine)

Náhuatl: A fond farewell? (Unravel)

Top 5 Ancient Aztec Inventions (How Stuff Works)

Badianus Manuscript: An Aztec Herbal, 1552 (University of Virginia)

The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire (Museum of the American Indian)

The College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots (Atlas Obscura)

Domenici, Viviano; Domenici, Davide (1996). "Talking Knots of the Inka" Archaeology. 49 (6)

Jacobsen, Lyle E. "Use of Knotted String Accounting Records in Old Hawaii and Ancient China". Accounting Historians Journal

‘Home Made’ Ancient Inca Instruments Replicas Perfectly Mimic Different Animals Using Nothing But Water (Get Lost to Be Found)

Poqomchi’ conversation: importancia del idioama poqomchi' en nuestro medio (Endangered Languages Project)

Mayan Scientific Achievements (History.com)

El Caracol (Exploratorium)

Cross-Legged Woman's Tomb Reveals Ancient Maya Kept Jaguars in Cages (Live Science)

NOTE: 09/16/18: An earlier version of the show description referred to the Aztecs, the Inca, and the Maya as Mesoamerican cultures, which is incorrect. Mesoamerica does not extend into South America, and so the Inca are not a Mesoamerican society. We apologize for the mistake, and thank you to listener Laura Heath-Stout for pointing it out to us!

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.