Suppose that:
-a very large earthquake occurs in Yucatan, expelling a lot of mayans, destroying infrastructure, and forcing such refugees to flee. They decide to flee west, and end up finding the aztecs. This one may be more detrimental to the mayans.
-or, some mayan city-state grows into too much power, unites the Yucatan peninsula, and goes on a mongol-esque random conquest spree. They end up going west, and meet up with the aztec civilization.
-or, the aztec empire grows very wanky in the 15th century, expands east, and meets with the mayan city states.
So, we know how the aztec conquest of neighboring peoples influenced their culture. From conquered peoples came their own concepts of sacrifice, art, agriculture, sport and philosophy. It should be that such a connection between two large-sized-for-their-territorial-context civilizations should create some very interesting developments in culture and science.
The question is, how would a proposed mayan-aztec connection influence such sectors of culture and science in this "enlarged mesoamerican empire"? Would this empire develop enough technology in enough time to become more of a nuisance against the spaniard invaders that would come in the future?
-a very large earthquake occurs in Yucatan, expelling a lot of mayans, destroying infrastructure, and forcing such refugees to flee. They decide to flee west, and end up finding the aztecs. This one may be more detrimental to the mayans.
-or, some mayan city-state grows into too much power, unites the Yucatan peninsula, and goes on a mongol-esque random conquest spree. They end up going west, and meet up with the aztec civilization.
-or, the aztec empire grows very wanky in the 15th century, expands east, and meets with the mayan city states.
So, we know how the aztec conquest of neighboring peoples influenced their culture. From conquered peoples came their own concepts of sacrifice, art, agriculture, sport and philosophy. It should be that such a connection between two large-sized-for-their-territorial-context civilizations should create some very interesting developments in culture and science.
The question is, how would a proposed mayan-aztec connection influence such sectors of culture and science in this "enlarged mesoamerican empire"? Would this empire develop enough technology in enough time to become more of a nuisance against the spaniard invaders that would come in the future?