In his book The Great History of the New Worlds, Journalist Franசois Reinert tries to tell the story of Polynesia and the United States from local historical sources rather than from European immigrants. Guest from Wednesday Media culture, He explains what historians have been able to discover in this way, and he has compiled it in his new book. The first part of his book is devoted to the United States, where there is a strong distinction between North America and Latin America.
Franசois Reinert describes the civilizations that followed each other, especially around what became of Mexico. Civilizations with common cultural characteristics such as step pyramid, human sacrifices, cocoa cultivation or basic 20 calculus.
In a game like football, the losing team is sometimes sacrificed
Even more surprisingly, these civilizations played the most ritualized ball game, a kind of football long before its time. “This is unusual, because even today, when we visit sites called Meso-America, we always find something that looks like a stadium,” he says. “That means there was a lawn around the stands, we see them in a few more places. There we play a ball game. Two teams face each other, there is a ball. We push with the hips and forearms, otherwise we are not allowed to touch.”
Historians know this game because it was practiced by the conquerors even after colonization. “It was an act common to all communities in this cultural field: the Olmecs, the Aztecs, the Mayas,” the journalist notes. Sometimes even the losing team was sacrificed. Instead of sanctifying these communities, Franுவாois Reinert actually describes human sacrifices, at times, when tens of thousands of prisoners were presented to God one after another. But
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Among the things that caught his attention, we also discovered the 20,000 km long route that connects present-day Chile to Colombia from the south to the north of the Inca Empire. Citing an expert in this society, he describes this path as “the most remarkable work of the 15th century”. “This road network of the Inca Empire went in all four directions. We are in the Andes, so there are a lot of places where this is a road, they are made with suspension bridges and are extraordinary,” he said. This creation is so unbelievable because the Incas did not know the wheel or the draft animals. They have no cows or horses.
“On this route, there were ambassadors who traveled through the Inca Empire. When the emperor gave an order, the ambassadors immediately set out on this road,” he adds. The ambassadors took turns and warned their arrival with a whistle. In conclusion, and despite the very rough terrain of the continent, “ambassadors went much faster at once than Europe,” compares Franசois Reinert.