Communication in The Americas and their Influence

It was once believed that to have civilization—a political state with a centralized government, ruling bureaucracy, complex division of labor, agricultural surplus, and monumental public works—writing had to be in use. The Americas have yielded a major exception to this rule: the empire of the Incas. Centered in Peru, this extended in a north-south direction from Ecuador to Chile, and eastward into part of the Amazon Basin. Keeping track of this enormous social experiment depended not on writing but on a communication medium capable of doing some of the same things. The Incas used the quipu, a series of woolen or cotton cords of different length, thickness, and color that could be braided and knotted in various ways. Each of these elements represented information. This enabled the quipu to be used for a variety of complex tasks, such as the recording of a census or the calculation of economic output, tribute obligations, and taxes. In conjunction with the Incan oral tradition, quipus were even used as mnemonic devices, to assist in recounting aspects of historical succession.

In contrast to the Incas, the two great Mesoamerican civilizations, the Aztecs and the Maya, developed writing. More specifically, they created a form of writing similar to, but not as elaborate as, Egyptian hieroglyphics. Numerous images and occasionally abstract signs (as opposed to the more streamlined and economical characters of an alphabet) were used to represent parts of speech rather than—as is the case with Chinese script, for example—objects and concepts. It could be argued that precursors of writing in the Americas can be found in rock art (petroglyphs) and in images (pictograms) drawn on animal skins; several buffalo hide inscriptions actually tell a story. However, the possibilities inherent in freeing writing from purely iconic representation allowed it to be used for much more elaborate forms of communication. Nowhere in the Americas has this been demonstrated more than in the case of the Maya.

Mayan history spans roughly the first millennium C.E. The Maya wrote on durable media—stone and parchment (animal skins). Although lacking metal tools, the wheel, or domestic draft animals, Mayan culture nonetheless developed ideas of considerable sophistication. Their mathematical and astronomical knowledge rivaled that of the Babylonians and surpassed that of the Egyptians. One result is a calendar of staggering complexity and accuracy. The lunar month was calculated at 29.53020 days, which compares favorably with our current reckoning of 29.53059 days. Mayans viewed world history in terms of cycles of creation and destruction. (The current cycle, or long count, places the next destruction of the world on 23 December 2012.)

For reasons that remain a source for much archaeological speculation, classic Mayan civilization collapsed dramatically in the ninth century, whereas the fall of the Incas and Aztecs did not occur until the Spanish conquest. Although this appears to have been a case of self-destruction—an environmental degradation hypothesis has gained increasing support—the Spanish did administer a coup de grace of sorts. Under the auspices of the Catholic Church, almost all the surviving Mayan codices (parchment books) were destroyed. The few that remain, such as the famous Dresden Codex, provide a revealing, if only partial, view of Mayan thought and culture.