Maya, Aztec, Toltec, Inca

[RingXero]

The page I linked wasn't the greatest and lacked the new information that was on the program and some other sites.

Basically, hard evidence for deboning and skinning has been found, soft evidence for canibalism exists, but hard evidence for drinking blood exists, but the drinking of blood was most likely limited to 'draining' their own fallen great warriors to 'share the power'. The massive killings were restricted and only done on certain occasions to stop the rain. Yep, to stop it. See, they lived on basically a flood plain area, that was only really a flood plain when El Nino rolled around, so to stop it they would throw 20-50 people off of a nearby small cliff. It is now assumed that the Moche were 'flooded' out, a period of heavy amounts of rain followed up by even more rain destroyed any hopes of growing food for multiple seasons. They were pyramid builders, and had two main pyramid structures, one dedicated to the sun/day and the other to the moon/night.

The Moche were also considerd master pottery makers. and their artwork/craftmanship is still in high demand. This is what I thought was the most interesting bit for a campaign. Putting in great artwork done by a civilization halfway around the world that is in high demand by all nobles and rich merchants, and the PCs finding out that this civilization(much later on in their careers) is an extremely evil society, and all those great works of art or masterwork equipment is created at a great cost to human life.


and as a personal aside, a thesis was ruined by my family. well, lets say postponed. My cousin's wife had her thesis on the tracking of the incan people via certain genetic markers, when the time came to run a baseline sample of non-incan DNA she chose her husband(my cousin) well you guessed it, turns out the family (grandmothers side) are rather direct decendants of the incan people. ok so maybe it's not as funny as I thought it was when I started typing it. oh well... it's funnier if you know her... yeah that's it.


anyway,

RX

 

[D.Shaffer]

Well, the Inca never performed human sacrifice on the level the Aztec did, nor did they make the famous arm&leg stew. The Inca had the llama which they could not only eat and milk, but they could use to transport the abundant fish to inland regions. The only animals the Aztec had were dogs and guinea pigs.
Aaron

Turkeys. The Aztecs also domesticated turkeys. They also ate almost anything animal that moved and they could catch. Mice, weasels, fish, deer...and of course the domestic dog and turkey.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The best stuff for the Central and Southern Americas is to be found in your local public or university libraries. I highly recommend anything by Michael D. Coe (especially Breaking the Maya Code).

I will strongly second this recommendation. Michael Coe is the man.

Random brush with greatness: in college, I took a history of art class taught by Mary E. Miller, a specialist in pre-Columbian art. She studied under Michael Coe. Therefor, by the transitive property, I studied under Coe. Q.E.D.

In all seriousness, if you're interested in Mesoamerican art, check out Miller's The Art of Mesoamerica: from Olmec to Aztec .

 

[fusangite]

Turkeys. The Aztecs also domesticated turkeys. They also ate almost anything animal that moved and they could catch. Mice, weasels, fish, deer...and of course the domestic dog and turkey.

These bits of information do not alter the fact that the Mexico Valley residents in the medieval period ate less meat than non-vegetarians anywhere else in the world.

 

[D.Shaffer]

These bits of information do not alter the fact that the Mexico Valley residents in the medieval period ate less meat than non-vegetarians anywhere else in the world.

...And? Unless you're trying to argue for that 'sacrifice as cause for ritual cannibalism' theory, it's not like this is a highly important bit of information for the topic at hand.

Anyways, to get back on topic...

Do you really need Good and Evil in the game? Everything I've read indicate that the Aztecs themselves didnt really have Good and Evil as actual concepts. Much like many Asian cultures, they had a distinction between Order and Chaos, but those can be considered seperate from good and evil. Replace any detect/protection from evil/good spells with law and chaos and you could do pretty well.

 

[fusangite]

D.Shaffer says

...And? Unless you're trying to argue for that 'sacrifice as cause for ritual cannibalism' theory, it's not like this is a highly important bit of information for the topic at hand.

Actually, I wasn't arguing for any theory. I just think it's a useful piece of information about the culture that the primary association for killing both animals and humans was a ritual one rather than a nutritive one.

This thread did not actually start as a fight about cannibalism; there was a discussion about Mexica/Mesoamerican ethics and their relationship to good and evil in D&D. I think it's important to credit that killing things was a special thing treated with reverence, rather than an everyday thing as it was in Europe.

People got their fat from avocadoes rather than turkeys, for the most part -- that's something that I think does bear on our understanding of the culture.

Do you really need Good and Evil in the game? Everything I've read indicate that the Aztecs themselves didnt really have Good and Evil as actual concepts.

Well, removing good and evil does alter the D&D rules -- in some cases and for some classes, quite a bit. While I would agree with you that they were not Mexica concepts, I think that some people would like to run D&D in mesoamerica without going through the considerable trouble of excising good and evil from the rules system.

 

[barsoomcore]

I think that some people would like to run D&D in mesoamerica without going through the considerable trouble of excising good and evil from the rules system.

Maybe we have different ideas of "considerable trouble". I just said, "There's no alignment in this campaign."

Worked out fine. The implications spill out in obvious fashion, there's nothing you really have to do. Protection from evil becomes a useless spell, for example. Clerics can choose if they turn or rebuke undead (or DM can choose for them).

Did I miss some big task I was supposed to do?

Course, while I was at it, I threw out the races, the magic system, nearly all the classes, the magic item creation feats, and just about everything else, so maybe removing alignment just looked easy in comparision.