An Excerpt of the Glyph Stories From the Tower Inscriptions of Izapa
On this day, the 3rd day of the Moonset Year,
40 score and 8 years before the renewal of the K’atun cycle [1]
Tree Ocelot IV
The Lord of Izapa and hierophant of the Rain God [2]
Received a gift from the Water Walkers
Who brought tribute to his court to show their awe of him
And show what they had to please him
They brought him 2 dozen bronze axes [3] and a statue of goldsilver[4]
In the shape of the great Octopus Rain God [5]
The Lord of Izapa was pleased by these gifts
But most pleased when they brought the great beast
The hornless hairy sheep with a neck like a serpent
On this day, 12 years and 357 days
Before the first day of the next Moonrise Year
Was a great beast brought into the possession of Izapa
[1] The use of K’atun as a measurement of time in this inscription does not match up with descriptions of K’atun in later records or with descriptions in neighboring civilizations, indicating that this city’s specific calendar was abandoned.
[2] This indicates that Tree Ocelot, the noble who ordered this dedication written, held some religious as well as political power.
[3] The fact that the Mayans were already practicing bronze metallurgy at this time means that a tribute of bronze tools should not have appeared so great-either Tree Ocelot was being diplomatic, or something had happened in his kingdom which had disrupted the production of metal goods, making them scarce.
[4] Alloys of gold and silver were common in both the Andes and Mesoamerica during this time.
[5] Obviously a conflation of Ai Apec with the Mayan Rain God, despite these two deity’s somewhat different roles. One guarded the seas and the other was associated with fresh water.
Worlds Collide
800 AD: Mesoamerican civilizations begin to develop their own bronze work after bronze tools begin to filter to them through a daisy chain of trade along the Pacific coast. They built copies of what they received indirectly from the Andes: knives, bells, hoes and jewelry are all recreated by Mesoamerican metalsmiths.
The chain of trade which brought metal to Mesoamerica by this time also introduced the bleeding fever to South America. The Mochihicans were devastated by this epidemic-the settlement on the Galapagos was wiped out, and many of their mainland settlements were almost depopulated. Much more vulnerable to their neighbors, some Mochihicans packed up and went on their rafts searching for new, safer settlements, continuing their exploration even as their power waned and was ceded to land-based powers such as the Wari and Tiwanaku. They were still undisputed masters of the sea, but less the masters of the coastlines they needed for resupplying themselves.
850 AD: The further penetration of domestic sheep into Mesoamerica brings some unexpected boons. Among the highland Mayans, sheep proved to be a very useful domestic animal. Agriculture in their area suffered from droughts and overfarming but sheep could provide food while being efficiently fed by grass growing on otherwise useless land. Their dung provided another source of fertilizer for the corn fields of the highland Mayans, allowing them to increase agricultural productivity.
Sheep could only do so much to preserve their civilization, though. As more farmers abandoned their fields for pastures, they moved away from the urban centers. Others followed them, hoping to stay closer to a reliable food source. Ultimately, sheep saved the highland Mayan civilization from total collapse but resulted in their society becoming more diffuse, less centralized, and therefore less capable of producing great monuments and scads of artwork. Some historians see this era as a period of ‘barbarization’ of the highland culture, but few call this cultural change a total collapse.
A general period of ‘barbarity’ was descending on the Mesoamerican cultures. The growing populations of Nahua people was causing ethnic strife in the north, as these once lower-caste people fought to rise up and take a better place in their adopted societies. Other minority groups joined them against the powerful Tu’un Da’avi and Be’ena’a. This period of war contributed to the rapid spread of metallurgy, as bronze axes and knives were mass-forged for the battlefields. The Mesoamericans added their own innovations to metalcraft, building shields, helmets and armor for their generals.
900 AD: New cultivars of corn allow the development of the Muscogean civilizations in the North American southeast. In addition to maize, the Muscogean people combined beans, squash, peccaries and sheep into a powerful agricultural package. Their intensive agriculture led to the development of large, hierarchical societies which were based in large towns ruled by chiefs who led the warriors and organized public works such as irrigation and the construction of large mounds as monuments to the gods or themselves.
It was in this new center of civilization that the burning cough, a respiratory disease caused by virulent bacteria caught from sheep, first appeared. The disease was one of the rare bacterial infections to which one can become temporarily immune, but was nonetheless a major killer. The disease spread rapidly across North America, carried mostly by shepherds who had developed greater immunity towards bacterial diseases after years of exposure to the nasty germs their sheep carried. Although these shepherds were less affected by the epidemic, hunting people living near them who did not have much contact with sheep were often devastated. Diseases like this set the final stage for the transformation of most of North America from hunter-gatherer cultures to farming and pastoralist cultures.
A somewhat fanciful depiction of the early moundbuilding cultures
970 AD: The Mochihicans open a direct line of trade between the Andes and Mesoamerica. Originally sailing north to escape outbreaks of bleeding fever and the wars of conquest waged by their neighbors, they made contact with the highland Mayan civilization that had just barely escaped collapsed, and was struggling to reassert itself.
The Mochihicans introduced potato seeds and peanuts to the highland Mayans, which revolutionized their agriculture. They also attempted to trade llamas, although most of the llamas transported did not survive the ocean journey. Eventually, enough were brought in to form a stable herd, and the Mayans began to use llama wool in their day-to-day lives.
The Mayans provided the Mochihicans with gold and jade, looted from captured cities and from the crumbling palaces of elites discovering that precious metals could not replace food in a bad economy. They also provided the Mochihicans with sheep and the Simplified Glyph Script. The Mochihicans would create a simplified syllabary inspired from the Mayan hieroglyphs and spread this alphabet along their trade routes to South America, revolutionizing the Bronze Age civilizations there. With writing and their nautical skills, the Mochihicans rose up to become the wealthy middlemen between Meso and South America, reclaiming their power as lords of the sea. They would re-colonize the Galapagos Islands and create multiple new settlements in Central and South America to serve as rest stations for rafts sailing the Pacific voyage.
A petroglyph of a pregnant llama from Mesoamerica, carved using the somewhat stark artistic style of Mochihican sailors.
1000 AD: The final independent domestication of large mammals occurs on earth in North America, where multiple northern tribes domesticate reindeer. Although reindeer would never support the same large populations as sheep, they did allow the creation of larger, more stable societies in the sub-arctic forests. Peoples who took up reindeer herding included the Dene and their daughter tribes the Dine and Tine, the Huron, and the M’ikmaq, all tribes living on the northern edge of the pastoralist range.
Around this time, the last wave of Nahua migrants arrives in Mesoamerica, bringing the burning cough with them. A particularly nasty strain caused a minor epidemic which killed many people in the large cities of Mesoamerica, creating societal unrest and upheaval. It was in this chaos that Nahua chieftains stepped in, and the Nahua people began to dominate the Tu’un Da’avi and Be’ena’a peoples they referred to as “Mixtecs” and “Zapotecs” who had once made them outcasts. From this point, the Nahua shepherds would be the lords of much of Mesoamerica.
