50 Fun Facts About Pre-Columbian Civilizations

Which modern metropolis covers the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital founded on an island in Lake Texcoco?

Mexico City was founded by the Spanish directly on top of the conquered island, and Aztec temple ruins still lie in its historic center.

Which Inca citadel, high in the Andes of Peru, did Hiram Bingham bring to international attention in 1911?

Machu Picchu was no secret locally: a Peruvian explorer had written his surname and the year 1902 in charcoal on one of its temples.

What did Aztec shoppers use as small change for everyday market purchases, with cotton cloth serving for larger ones?

Cacao beans had to be imported from the lowlands, and a standard length of cotton cloth was worth anywhere from 65 to 300 of them.

What did Olmec sculptors carve from basalt boulders of up to 50 tons, some hauled more than 150 km?

Colossal heads number just seventeen confirmed examples, each with its own distinctive headdress, and are thought to portray individual rulers.

Which number did Maya scribes write as a shell, alongside the dots and bars used for other values?

Zero let Maya scribes write any number with just three symbols, the other two being a dot for one and a bar for five.

Which Spanish conquistador scuttled his own ships off Veracruz before marching inland against the Aztec Empire?

Hernán Cortés sank the fleet to rule out retreat, having already sailed from Cuba in open mutiny after the governor revoked his commission.

Which ancient culture of southern Peru scraped giant hummingbird, monkey and spider figures into the desert floor?

Nazca people made the figures by clearing reddish surface pebbles to expose paler soil, and the dry, windless climate has preserved them ever since.

At which Maya city does the El Castillo pyramid cast a serpent-like shadow down its staircase around each equinox?

Chichén Itzá draws equinox crowds for the effect, yet the shadow shows for several weeks, so it could never have fixed the date on its own.

Which crop did Inca farmers freeze-dry on cold Andean nights to make chuño, a long-lasting staple?

Potato was the Inca staple and had been domesticated in the Andes 7,000 to 10,000 years ago; about 3,000 varieties still grow in the region.

Without a writing system, on what did Inca officials called quipucamayocs record census counts and tax obligations?

Knotted cords called quipus stored numbers in a decimal system, and colonial courts later accepted them as valid records of past payments.

Which Spanish conquistador, who never learned to read, seized the Inca emperor at Cajamarca in 1532 with under 200 men?

Francisco Pizarro went on to found Lima on Peru's coast in 1535, which he counted among the most important things he ever created.

Which Inca emperor offered a room filled with gold as his ransom, only to be garroted by the Spanish?

Atahualpa had just won a three-year civil war against his half-brother Huáscar, whose execution he arranged while he was himself a prisoner.

Which Aztec emperor was ruling when the Spanish entered Tenochtitlan in 1519, only to die during an uprising there?

Moctezuma II died in June 1520, and accounts still differ on whether the Spaniards or his own people killed him.

Which Aztec god of wind and learning, linked to the planet Venus, has a name meaning 'feathered serpent'?

Quetzalcoatl had a Maya counterpart named Kukulkan, and both names describe the same plumed snake deity found across Mesoamerica.

Which Andean animal did the Inca rely on to carry loads, having no horses, oxen or wheeled carts?

Llama herds roughly marked the empire's limits: the Inca realm at its height coincided with the range of llamas and alpacas.

Which bird, perched on a cactus on Mexico's flag, marks where Aztec legend says Tenochtitlan was founded?

An eagle devouring a rattlesnake appears on the national emblem, but older Aztec manuscripts vary, and some show the bird alone on its cactus.

Which disease, carried from Europe, struck Tenochtitlan in 1520 and left the Aztecs weakened before the final siege?

Smallpox swept the city in the autumn of 1520, after the Spanish had been driven out, and the new emperor Cuitláhuac was perhaps among its victims.

What name is given to the artificial farming islands the Aztecs built up from mud and reeds in shallow lakes?

Chinampas are often called floating gardens, but they never floated: farmers fenced off patches of lake bed and piled on sediment until the plot stood above the water.

Which ruined city, home to the Pyramid of the Sun, did the Aztecs name 'birthplace of the gods'?

Teotihuacan was once the largest city in the Americas, with perhaps 100,000 people, yet it fell around 550 CE, centuries before the Aztecs named it.

Which language of the Aztecs gave English the words tomato, avocado, coyote and chili?

Nahuatl is far from a dead language: well over a million people speak its modern varieties, most of them in central Mexico.

Which language did the Inca Empire promote as its official tongue, one still spoken by millions across the Andes?

Quechua had spread across the central Andes long before the Inca rose, so the empire was adopting a language many of its subjects already spoke.

In the Popol Vuh, the creation story of the K'iche' Maya, the gods finally make lasting humans from which crop?

Maize succeeded in the story where mud and then wood had failed, and the real plant was bred in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago.

Which material formed the solid balls of the Mesoamerican ballgame, which players struck with their hips?

Rubber was made by mixing tree latex with the juice of a morning glory vine, and the balls could weigh as much as 9 pounds.

Which stone edged the Aztec macuahuitl, a wooden sword whose blades could be sharper than a steel razor?

Obsidian was so useful for tools and weapons that its wide use may help explain why Mesoamerica did so little metalworking.

Which stone was pieced into the funerary mask of Pakal, king of Palenque, and set into the teeth of Maya lords?

Jade of an apple-green shade was the kind the Maya valued most highly, and they associated the stone with their sun god.

Which Maya city, among the largest ever built, stands in a rainforest national park in northern Guatemala?

Tikal may have held as many as 90,000 people before it was abandoned by the end of the 10th century, and its ruins went unexplored until 1848.

What are the water-filled sinkholes of Yucatán called, which the Maya used for drinking water and sacrificial offerings?

Cenotes number an estimated 10,000 across the peninsula, and the word comes from a Yucatec Maya term for any place with reachable groundwater.

Which farming structures, called andenes, covered about a million hectares of the Inca Empire and cut frost damage?

Terraces cut like stairs into the mountainside also caught more sunshine and held back erosion, and they helped feed roughly ten million Inca subjects.

What did the Inca weave into cables for bridges over Andean gorges, as Peruvian villagers still do every June?

Grass of a tough highland kind called ichu was woven into large bundles, and the last such bridge is rebuilt across the Apurímac River every year.

Which Inca ruler, renamed after beating the Chanka, began turning the kingdom of Cusco into an empire?

Pachacuti was a prince called Cusi Yupanqui when he rallied the army to defend Cusco, after its ruler had fled the Chanka attack.

Which state, never conquered by the Aztec Empire, allied with the Spanish to strike back at Tenochtitlan?

Tlaxcala had endured years of 'flower wars' and an Aztec trade embargo, so its people were eager for revenge and became loyal allies of the invaders.

Which small rodent, now a popular pet, did Andean peoples domesticate for meat as early as 5000 BC?

Guinea pigs, known in the Andes as cuy, were also sacrificed by the Inca, and highland households still raise them for the table.

Which culture of Peru's north coast buried the Lord of Sipán, whose intact gold-filled tomb was found in 1987?

Moche jewellers gave him necklaces of gold and silver beads shaped like peanuts, an important food crop that stood for the earth.

Which city of earthen mounds in Illinois was the largest settlement of the Mississippian culture around 1100?

Cahokia is a borrowed name: the city's original name is unknown, and the mounds were named after a tribe living nearby when French explorers arrived centuries later.

Which Colorado national park protects some 600 cliff dwellings built by the Ancestral Puebloans, including Cliff Palace?

Mesa Verde's builders had left by 1285, moving south to Arizona and New Mexico after a series of severe and prolonged droughts.

Which lake high on the border of Peru and Bolivia holds Isla del Sol, where Inca belief placed the sun god's birth?

Titicaca's sacred island has more than 80 ruins, most dating from the Inca period, and it has no motor vehicles or paved roads.

Which big cat did the Olmec and Maya adopt as a symbol of authority and war, said to cross between worlds?

Jaguar gods featured in every major Mesoamerican civilization, and Maya kings were enthroned on a cushion of the animal's skin.

Which Indigenous woman, given to the Spanish as a slave in 1519, became their interpreter in the conquest of the Aztecs?

La Malinche began as one link in a chain: a Spaniard put the commander's words into Maya, and she turned the Maya into the language of the Aztecs.

Which Mesoamerican calendar, tracking days from a creation date in 3114 BCE, completed a great cycle in December 2012?

Long Count dates never spelled doom: scholars note that no classic Maya account forecast an ending, and 2012 simply closed a cycle of about 5,126 years.

Which organ did Aztec priests most often remove in human sacrifice, believing it held a fragment of the Sun's heat?

Heart extraction was the most common form of Aztec sacrifice, and the organ was placed in a bowl held by a statue of the honored god.

How did the Inca carry messages more than 200 km a day along their roads, with stations every 2.5 km?

Relay runners called chasquis handed each message on to a fresh colleague waiting at the next post, and gifts travelled the same way.

Which walled Maya port stands on 12-meter cliffs above the Caribbean Sea on the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula?

Tulum served as a major port for the inland city of Cobá, and it may once have been called Zama, 'City of Dawn', because it faces the sunrise.

Which people of the Greater Antilles, encountered by Columbus, gave the world the words hammock, barbecue and hurricane?

Taíno was probably never the islanders' own name for themselves: the label was first applied to them by a scholar in 1836.

Which city in Peru's Supe Valley, about 5,000 years old, is considered the oldest city in the Americas?

Caral thrived at roughly the same time as Egypt's great pyramids were going up, some 1,500 years before the Olmec emerged in Mexico.

Which city near Trujillo in Peru was capital of the Chimor kingdom until the Inca conquered it around 1470?

Chan Chan covers about 20 square kilometres and is considered the largest adobe city in the Americas, which leaves its mud walls at the mercy of rain.

Mesoamericans never used the wheel for transport, yet wheels appear on which small objects found at Mexican sites?

Children's toys with wheels turn up at Mexican sites from about 1500 BCE, and one theory is that the idea went no further for want of large animals to pull a cart.

In what form were dead Inca emperors displayed at festivals in Cusco's great square, surrounded by their kin groups?

Mummies of past rulers kept real influence: each one's descendants held his palaces and estates and meddled in imperial politics in his name.

Which leaf did the Inca value so highly as a mild stimulant that they colonized new lands to grow it?

Coca chewing goes back at least 8,000 years in Peru, and the leaf releases its stimulant far more slowly than the purified drug made from it.

Which natural hazard have the inward-leaning, tightly fitted Inca walls of Sacsayhuamán survived at Cusco?

Earthquakes at their strongest have been seen to set the mortarless blocks 'dancing', after which they settle back into their original positions.

Which bird, now a holiday roast, did ancient Mesoamericans domesticate long before the Spanish shipped it to Europe?

Turkey meat and eggs were a staple protein in ancient Mexico, and the Aztecs linked the bird with their trickster god Tezcatlipoca.