Explorers : Natives

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Natives

Incans

http://www.crystalinks.com/incan.html

The Incas had an incredible system of roads. One road ran almost the entire length of the South American Pacific coast. The Incas paved their highland roads with flat stones and built stone walls to prevent travelers from falling off cliffs. Referred to as an 'all-weather highway system', the over 14,000 miles of Inca roads were an astonishing and reliable precursor to the advent of the automobile. This central nervous system of Inca transport and communication rivaled that of Rome. The Incas did not discover the wheel, so all travel was done on foot. At its peak, Ican society had more than six million people. Not many people lived in the Incan cities. People lived in the nearby villages and traveled into town for festivals or business. The city was mainly used for the government. The Incas are famous for their gold. They mined extensive deposits of gold and silver, but this wealth ultimately brought disaster in the 16th century, when Spanish soldiers came seeking riches for themselves and their king. Cuzco, which emerged as the richest city in the New World, was the center of Inca life, the home of its leaders.

Aztecs

http://www.indians.org/welker/aztec.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/azteculture.html

The Aztecs/Mexicas were the native American people who dominated northern México at the time of the Spanish conquest led by Hernan CORTES in the early 16th century. Fearless warriors and pragmatic builders, the Aztecs created an empire during the 15th century that was surpassed in size in the Americas only by that of the Incas in Peru.

The Aztecs wrote using symbols similar to the characters used by the Chinese and Japanese. All the symbols were pictures of one kind or another. These symbols were not placed in sequence, one after the other like the letters and words in a book, but formed part of a larger composition which often took the form of a scene in which many things may be happening at once. An Aztec manuscript is not read in the normal sense of the word, but is deciphered like a puzzle picture in which the glyphs provide. labels and clues to what is going on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%E1n_Cort%E9s

Cortés learned that he was suspected of being Quetzalcoatl or an emissary of Quetzalcoatl, a legendary man-god who was predicted to one day return to reclaim his city in a One-Reed year on the cyclical calendar. (One-Reed was, in this particular 52-year "century", 1519, adding to the extraordinary luck of this conquistador.) Aided by the advice of his native translator, La Malinche, he took full advantage of the Quetzalcoatl myth, inflicting Moctezuma with what writer Octavio Paz described as "sacred vertigo".

Mayans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization

In the 8th and 9th centuries AD Classic Maya culture went into decline, with most of the cities of the central lowlands abandoned. The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatan continued to flourish for centuries more; some of the important sites in this era were Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Etzna, and Coba. After the decline of the ruling dynasties of Chichen and Uxmal, Mayapan ruled all of Yucatan until a revolt in 1450; the area then devolved to city states until the Spanish Conquest. The Spanish started their conquest of the Maya lands in the 1520s. Some Maya states offered long fierce resistance; the last Maya state, the Itza kingdom, was not subdued by Spanish authorities until 1697.

More ancient civilizations

Other indigineous peoples in the region who might have left ruins are ripe for inclusion in the game. We would include ruins and treasures and other artifacts for the players to find during their exploration.

Olmec

http://www.crystalinks.com/olmec.html

Those three major Olmec centers are spaced from east to west across the domain so that each center could exploit, control, and provide a distinct set of natural resources valuable to the overall Olmec economy. La Venta, the eastern center, is near the rich estuaries of the coast, and also could have provided cacao, rubber, and salt.

At La Venta, Stirling and Philip Drucker, began excavations in a plaza area, Complex A, on the north side of La Venta's 32 meter-tall (106 ft.) earthen pyramid mound. They soon made astonishing discoveries. Their trenches uncovered caches of polished jade celts, colored clay floors, and several royal burials. One burial was in a large sandstone sarcophagus carved to depict a supernatural caiman. Two other burials occurred in a tomb chamber constructed from basalt columns. All the burials included offerings of beautiful greenstone figures, jewelry, and celts.

Brainstorming

• We should put as much true historical names and references as possible in the game
• Sometimes it is not as black and white as the natives attacking or accepting the explorers. Natives could simply warn off the explorers and attack only if the player ignores their demands.
• Native tribes/civilizations:
  • Totonacs (under Aztecs)
  • Tlaxcalans (under Aztecs)
  • Incans
  • Aztecs
  • Mayans (in decline)
  • Olmec (ancient)
• A good example of native influence and differences between natives: The Totanacs welcome the explorer and repeatedly mention a great city beyond the snowy range of mountains to the east. They tell him that they live under the empire of this city, and resent it.
• The Aztecs at the time of Cortes were an empire, true, but did not provide subject tribes with much but demands.
• We could toy with the pantheon of gods the natives worshipped. The Aztec gods were similar to the Greek, not omnipotent, but rather with emotions and reactions similar to humans, so understanding who might or might not be a god unknown to the Aztec pantheon might have been difficult and worrying at the time of Cortes to Montezuma (Motecuhozuma).
• Native kingdoms/cities:
  • Zempoala (k) (under Aztecs)
• When confronted with some native cities, we should impress upon the explorer how unimaginably beautiful and terrific these cities are. Art and architecture unlike anything seen in Europe, and the explorer is seeing these for the very first time. They are awe-inspiring.
• Although 7CoG used the villages as the sole means of communicating with natives, we should consider adding in the concept of simply running into natives during exploration outside of the villages. These natives could attack, trade (food for goods, information/maps for goods), offer themselves to help by becoming bearers (which in turn allows them to pass on information to the explorer), or run away.
• Some of the natives knew of agriculture, and thus stuck in one place. Some were nomadic. The latter we could put in more as a chance encounter instead of a normal encounter at a village/city.