The Americas and Time Keeping: Crash Course History of Science #5 

Mesoamericanist here (yes, that actually exists :). A few points: (I actually really liked the video by the way. Please don't see all these points as very negative. Most of them are just tiny things. On of the biggest problems indigenous peoples of the Americas face nowadays is that their history is being ignored. In schoolbooks, at universities, in Europe, but (more sad), in the Americas as well. So thank you for making this and keep up with the good work!). "Stone carvings mostly concern gods and wars" (1:35)...... Not entirely true. There is indeed a lot about wars, that's right. But the 4 books actually talk a lot more about gods than the stones, who mostly talk about human (or supposed human) history. The idea that they were mostly about gods is a bit outdated (= pre- 1990s/1980s). (2:26): besides the "art style", the others are not Olmec but (lookalike Maya), Maya, and Aztec (calendar system). (3:15): not only future dates, also for the past (3:29): we are very, very, very sure that didn't believe the world would end in our year 2012. They also didn't run out of anything and wrote about events that will happen in the far far future, well beyond our 2012 year. (3:48) again, the calendar shown here is NOT Mayan, but Aztec. And we see different calendars, they didn't . For them it was one system. (5:29) "symbolic" is a bit of a weird word. Pictographic, logographic & ideographic would be better. (7:31) ah, I was waiting for that one... the wheel and the horse... :). We don't really know if they used the wheel a lot or not. They surely had it (as was proven a long time ago). One of the fascinating lidar discoveries is that the roads (the so called "sac beho'ob", white roads) were a lot longer, bigger & wider., connecting not only palaces, but also cities. The horse wasn't there, that's true. But obviously you don't need those to build big cities. The idea that they didn't have wheels is a misunderstanding of 19-century research about the lack of chariots (which, of course, makes sense when there are no horses). (7:31) A common mistake... There was no Maya empire, neither hydraulic, nor otherwise. There were a lot of city states, some bigger than others, some, indeed, almost empire-like. But there never was 1 big Maya empire. That says of course nothing about how big the civilization was. (7:49): "under stress"... Hot research topic and well discussed nowadays! 1st of all, there was no such thing as a civilization collapse (thank you, mister Jared Diamond). It transformed a lot: old cities fell in disuse, new ones grew and became very powerful (like Mayapan for example). What seems to have collapsed was the ruling system of the Classic Period. About the Long Count. Another misconception I'm afraid. It was still used at the time of the Spaniards, as in evident from the remaining books (all written in the Post Classic Period, and mostly at the end of that period, between the 13th and the 16th century). (8:20): "Nah WHO ahs?". ooooww! That actually hurt my ears :) . It's pronounced something like (spelling for English language speakers): "Nah Wahs". And the Lake, in there language Nahuatl is pronounced "Tesh-Co-Co". The "x" was pronounced as "sh". It later changed in Spain to represent the "ks"-sound of today, but when the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century it was still a "sh"-sound. (9:14): The Aztecs (or better: "Mexicah", with a sh-sound!) didn't use the MAYA-calendar Round, the thing was Mesoamerican, not just Mayan. (10:35), yep. Not only Mesoamericanist, altough I'm not sure if the word "Andeanist" also exists :) Anyway, to answer a lot of the questions about the spelling: yes, Inka is as correct as Inca. Quechua (the language of the empire and still spoken in different forms from Colombia till Argentina) nowadays, has officially adopted the letter "k" in a lot of places although the "c" is also still wildly used. The same goes for the letter "w", versus the more Spanish looking "hua" (kay/cay = to be. Wasi/Huasi = house). By the way, the Inka/Inca-empire didn't start at CE 1100. The people were there, for sure, but the empire only started in the 15th century.

Mayans and aztecs are so amazing because they discovered some medicine, science and astronomy. The progression of science in america answered a lot of questions about the progression of science. But it so sad that everything lost. Spanish empire is truly a destroyer because if i'm not mistaken even here in the Philippines we lost our ancient knowledge becuase of them.

I always feel a little warm inside me when I read about Mayans because they were so smart and if you only knew how poorly their descendants are still treated you'd weep, anyways great video as always Hank you're a great guy

2:57 he's so enthusiastic about this Crash Course and I'm loving it

Hank, I hope you do an eventual episode on the fantastically fascinating number Zero like John promised long ago back during the World History course. I wanna see it, and this is just the right course for it!

...It's always so sad to know a part of history was lost :/

@CrashCourse, Thank you so much for the final lines. The knowledge lost because of the Spanish genocide was invaluable, and people of Mesoamerican descent lost this heritage due to European colonization. You sort of talked about this, but I think the most valuable knowledge that the Aztecs had that we could all benefit from today was how to run a 300,000 ppl city while producing essentially no human waste. How? They used human waste to fertilize their polycultures! (human waste--> detritus feeders (worms, insects) --> native fish and axolotls (edible and producers of fertilizer) --> crops on floating gardens). Anybody interested in learning more about this should pick up Lane Simonian's "Defending the Land of the Jaguar". Btw, it's pronounced na-WAH, not nah-who-ah :)

Thank you Crash Coarse Team, for continuing to give us what we love about getting smarter. From the bottom of my heart, you have my utmost appreciation.

Y'all should backtrack and do a segment on Polynesian navigational sciences and supporting knowledge bases.

As a Mexican, I truly appreciate the use of the term "Spanish Genocide". When they teach History in our schools, they're never that brave to call it for its real name.

I wish something was mentioned about pre-Incan societies who are often forgotten. Archaeology has shown many of the Inca feats of engineering were done by previous cultures. The Inca stood on the shoulders of giants like the Nazca and Moche who built many road systems or agricultural terraces of pre-Chavin societies. Otherwise, solid video. There are some interesting books and articles by mathematicians and archaeologists about why the khipu could be an undeciphered language system, and I lean toward it being a language system. The khipu date back far: Chimor (900 CE), Wari (650 CE), Moche (500 CE), w/ earliest being dated to 3000 BCE at the inland site of Caral. Addendum: Evidence of bread baskets from the Pacific being found in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Contact dated from 700 CE and 1300 w/ thoughts of an established trade route. So the Pacific islander did not just show up and leave. Also, Mississippians also had complex science and engineering influenced by Mesoamerica. Also to whomever called Olmec furries, the word "furry" did not exist, Olmec did not call themselves that, and the hybrid animals exist in a religious context. This also applies to ancient Egypt.

What is thyme and how do we measure it Thyme is a vegetable. Quantities of thyme are mostly measured in cups, kilos, pounds, and grams

Mayans, Aztects, and Inac contributes a lot in Science especially in the fields of Astonomy and Medicine. What an admirable cultures.

Funny thing. I just started researching the Maya and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica a couple days ago, so this video is an extreme coincidence to me, lol. Learned a lot of interesting things from this video, anyways. Good to know!

And everything is lost... So sad, all of this is so interesting

The amount of knowledge lost for futile reasons is so sad... I'd love to see what a non destroyed Mesoamerican modern world would look like.

Thank you for making a video on the Americas and their Native Inhabitants!

NAWAS! IT'S PRONOUNCED NAWAS! INCA GOES WITH A "C"!

Couldn’t help but noticing the inaccuracy at 3:46 since that Calendar Face is Aztec, not Maya. Such a common misconception :/

The thought that records about mesoamerican civilizations themselves we’re destroyed makes me wince as much as the thought that the library of alexandria burnt down.

Finally the acknowledgement of Mesoamerican culture in this channel!!!!!!!

When I was growing up and going to school, American history classes always began with Columbus. Everything that happened in the Americas prior to the Columbian Exchange has always been something of a mystery to me. I’m glad you’ve dedicated at least a little slice of this course to the cultures who were on the continents before 1492. Two books on my To Read list are "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" and "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created," both by Charles C. Mann. Has anyone here read them? If so, what did you think? I’ve heard rumors that the Oxford History of the United States series will eventually include a book on Pre-Columbian America, but I have not heard anything definite about it.

Just noticing that at 10:30 in the video he spells the Inca "Inka", all though i really love the video

Suppose to be studying for my ethics class... 6 episodes deep into this crash course playlist.

I like your speech sir!!!!

The Culture being discussed in this episode is about the Americas before Vasco de Gama came in.

Thank you!!

I love corn. Thank you, Meso and South America!

"You're welcome for all the best foods" - Mexico

i don’t usually comment on crash course videos, but Hank and Nickelodeon just blew my damn mind! 🤯

The map shown @2:36 is wrong. Honduras/El Salvador messed up

this series is taking a really interesting approach, as always exceeds my expectations

Inca with a k?

Is Inka an actual variant of Inca?? Its used twice in the video but I've never seen it spelled that way before.

I really hope you guys will cover the European medieval educational systems in an episode. From the Carolingian monastic schools to the early Italian universities, there was a wealth of educational creation and sharing that many people today are ignorant of as they consider "The Dark Ages," which some people (cough, cough, Petrarch) lengthen to the entire Middle Ages.

Dammit, Hank. Mispronouncing things is John's thing.

I tend to think of it as Mayans were like the Greeks, stargazing philosophers, and the Aztec were conquerors like the Romans. Although that's oversimplifying a bit.

This may be a shot in the dark, but could you please make a video on inoculation/variolation and the origins of vaccination? Or at least one on the influences of traditional forms of ethnomedicine on biomedicine? I would love a video like that, and I hope other fans of the show would as well.

There were also North American civilizations, known today as the Mississippian culture. They constructed huge mound architecture and their largest city (Cahokia, across the river from modern St Louis) had 40 thousand people, fairly large on the world scale for the period. They had an elaborate religious system and class hierarchy and polities engaged in complex politics with one another. The staple crops of maize beans and squash spread to North America in 100 BCE about 4600 years after their origin in Mexico I believe (not especially familiar with the exact dates but it's about that time frame). Over the next thousand years, societies gradually developed into the Mississippian culture. We then had about 400 years of this civilization before it temporarily collapsed and then was colonized by Europeans. Because of the limited time frame, it doesn't look as impressive as Mesoamerica and is usually brushed to the side. Another part of the problem is that we don't know very much about their actual society beyond the very basics. They didn't have stone architecture or writing, which are both extremely important in piecing together the history of mesoamerica. There was also Oasisamerica (the Pueblo peoples) and a lot of cultures in the area in between Mesoamerica and the Andes (what is now Central America and Colombia), known as the Isthmo-Columbian area. From Wikipedia: this featured cities with "impressive platform mounds, plazas, paved roads, stone sculpture and artifacts made from jade, gold and ceramic". They also developed a very sophisticated metallurgy tradition. This area also had no writing tradition and apparently no giant polities like Aztec or Inca, so it tends to be overshadowed as well. Muisca, tairona, timoto cuica, diquis, and the so-called "ciudad blanca" of Honduras are the most noted here. Most of Ecuador was also more similar to this area before they were briefly conquered by the Inca Empire. They developed the city of Quito (Kitu) and had a tradition of maritime trade with the coast of western Mesoamerica. There were also cultures of the Caribbean that produced ceramics, stone carvings, petroglyphs. Agriculture was introduced at a similar time to North America. I have no doubt that if the conquest didn't happen, we would have seen the development over time of interesting and sophisticated civilizations in the Caribbean, in California and perhaps on the fringe some parts of the Pacific northwest, in the Paraná + Paraguay river area in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, in Venezuela, and perhaps also in northeastern and Central Brazil and in the Amazon (which by the way did develop the Marajoara culture, supporting 150,000 people and some amazing pottery, as well as a really sophisticated mode of life and ecological management that produced massive geoglyphs), and the real flourishing of civilization in North America, Colombia and Central America. It would have been fascinating.

My husband got a Masters in History by taking Duke University's then history of science curriculum back in the late 1980s/early 1990s and I got to doctoral candidacy (then we both went back to psych and got our PhDs in psych), anyhow we're big fans of history of science and you're doing a great job, and great to see a history of science that's really diversified since we were at Duke. How cool! By the way, what happened episode #4?

The future people will judge us by our movies just like how we judge the Olmecs by their giant head statues

I'm so hyped for this series

Glad to see this. I wish CC History devoted half as much time to pre European Americas.

7.7 million subs. Incredible content. Why do your most recent uploads have low views?

I like this *Green* lanterns channel.

3:48 that’s the Aztec calendar not the Mayan and I’m from Guatemala 🇬🇹 lol

waiting for thissssss thankss

3:23 Wait! Isn't when things started to be different? Somehow it did. lol

Great, though I was hoping to hear about family dynamics, personal development, etc. But again, great!

So glad you uses BCE/CE instead of BC/AD

Beautiful episode!!🙌👏

Love the videos! One little thing - at 2:38 the map of Central America has an area labeled El Salvador where Nicaragua and Honduras should be.

You should talk about Xochicalco. It is theorize that in that city took place one of the first astronomical conventions of Central America, gathering people from numerous tribes and places.

Thought Cafe’s brilliant animations disappear far too quickly to appreciate their depth of creativity!

Undergraduates, yes!

Thank you Crash course I love history And I love scince in same time

Time to ask the Doctor about time. Most people believe time to be a straight line of cause and event, but in reality, time is more like a big bulb of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff

this is like history

Fun fact: while Spaniards mixed with the natives since at least Cortés, giving way to "mestizos", interracial marriage was forbidden in the US till 1961. Ever wondered why there is so much people in central and south America and so few in the North? There is no denying of the brutality of history, but North Americans should be careful when accusing others of genocide. Also, strange that there is no mention to conflict and violence between American empires, which is what explains the conquest. Otherwise, cool program and wonderful channel!

Do one about south America and Africa

1:34 that makes sense, cause why would you carve a picture of what you had for breakfast into a stone?

I'd love to see a crash course about mexican and latinamerican history, I think it would help to build more understanding among americans (and by americans I mean everyone that lives on the continent).

Crashcourse, thank you. You agree with salvadorian people that los bolsones are ours (also thanks for the rest of Honduras, we didn't even know they gave it to us).

Nuh-HOO-uh?! lmao, bro, it's "Na-wa" great episode love you guys

Why are there 2 deleted videos in the playlist?

Damn Hank. Button that collar!

I wish this series would started with tools, engineering and machinery of ancient since stone age Or would there be CrashCourse History of Enginerring in the future?

("Codices" is the plural form of "codex," which essentially means "book.")

This is awesome!

gotta get a better Central America map next time, you know, like one that includes Honduras instead of having El Salvador twice

Thought provoking videos

First of all, amazing videos, guys. I have been addicted to these for weeks. Animation, presentation, and humor are all great for understanding the complex stories or history! Question, though: So, ever since I watched the Kurzgesagt video on reprising our dating system to begin with Göbekli Tepi, I cringe when I hear "C.E.", "B.C.E", etc. It's so crazy that everything from 2000 years ago is turned backwards! Is there any chance you guys (and maybe even Science at large) will ever adopt the Human Era dating system? I mean, "The year 9000" is so much more intuitive than "1000 B.C.E". I mean, for goodness sake why is all of time roped into this one religion!? I have to do math every time I want to know how many years ago something happened, if it's over 2000 years ago! That's nuts.

Could khipu be a system of storing information like in computer programming?

If China hadn't discovered gunpowder by accident, we'd be living in a different world - possibly a world that has the Inca, Maya, and Aztec nations in it.

Amazing!

Cool video!

Awesome tc

Proud to be Chapin (Guatemalan)!

Khipu to "khip" records

I wonder what the Maya would have done if they knew what Venus was really like i.e. the closest thing we have to Hell in the Solar System (minus the surface of the Sun).

Thank you for calling it Spanish genocide instead of ‘discovery’ or ‘encounter’.

Two different calendars Aztecs and Maya.

So good!

Thank you for this video. Some corrections though (too much pronouncing. I had to watch the video bc I didn't see what you said and wasn't paying attention visually): It's pronounced codices (ko-de-ses). It's plural for codex. Olmecs (olmeca in nahuatl) was a name nahuas (prounced Na-wa. They are also known as aztecs) gave them. As for more info on calendar, just Google "tecpaocelotl calendar". Pronounced tzol-kin. Turkeys were also domesticated, not just pinned them. Texcoco prounced tesh-ko-ko.

Very good. One correction though: the Maya did not cultivate vanilla. It was exclusively grown by the Totonac peoples of west-central Mexico until the Spanish arrived.

I would like to say that it is spelled Inca it uses a c not a k

3:24 the prediction was December 21st, 2012 not December 23rd

Can u guys plz do a explanation video on worm hole /and The Rosen bridge love this channel thx for the content

43rd comment. Yes! I didn't know that you were going to make this episode today. So thank you.

After twelve minutes,I just forgot everything said at the video. It’s so many contents in Maya, Inca,Aztec culture

the "najuas" hahahha im dead lol………. "na-oo-as"

Even modern Veterinarians are rarely permitted to specialize as just Turkey doctors. A shame. ;P

This episode is great, although the monument you showcase at 3:47 is not Mayan, it is Aztec, and it is not a calendar it is a religious symbol, it is wrongly called the Aztec calendar, it's actual name can be roughly translated to the Solar stone.

2:31 on the map Honduras is labeled as El Salvador

Videos are really helpful but i request you to publish it with english subtitles that i can gain more effectively. Thank you

Why did Hank laugh in that early section? A blooper that wasn't caught? Lol

that noise every scene cut is slightly annoying

Mexican here. I need to point out a mistake. The "mayan calendar" is not the calendar the mayans used. The graphics here are from the "Piedra del sol" ("Sun's stone") a Mexica calendar (a civilization from the center of mesoamerica)

Wow I wanna go have a chat with a DayKeeper now

Why were the last two history of science videos deleted, Hank?! I watched the one about India and loved it, but I didn’t get to see the one after that! :(