Hello everyone! Today I come before you to ask for help on a little project: the AskHistorians Showcase!
What is the Showcase you ask? Well I'm so glad you asked! The showcase will be a page of some of Askhistorians greatest answers presented under 10 general categories.
The purpose of this showcase is to show our readers, other historians, and interested people what exactly it is that we do here! Furthermore we will be linking it to a greater community page for interested parties to learn even more!
In order to do this however, we need your help in selecting and nominating some of your saved, favorite, or top quality answers from this subreddit!
How will we proceed? Well, I will make 10 separate nomination threads over the coming weeks for you to nominate your favorite answers in the ten categories below. Today's thread is for Middle and South America! So please give us your favorite Middle and South America answers past and present!
Future Categories: Europe, North America, Ancient World, Medieval World, Middle East, Cultural History
Past Categories: Military History, Asia, Africa, Middle and South America
This whole AMA was phenomenal.
Well we got the man, the legend /u/400-Rabbits dealing with the cheery topic of child sacrifice among the Aztecs.
Then we have /u/CommodoreCoCo talking about the Moche and the Recuay, ancient Andean cultures
/u/mictlantecuhtli with a nice answer on what happened to the great Mayan cities
It's a bit outside the box, but the podcast episodes on the Tarascan Empire (Part 1 and Part 2) definitely deserves mention. AskHistorians basically has the market cornered on readily accessible, easily digestible English-language information about the Tarascans; certainly something we should celebrate.
Has there ever been a particularly memorable (even if not quite showcase level) comment focused on Teotihuacan (whether it be its civilization, language, relations with Copan or other vassals, the pyramid complex)?
Time to love on my favorite scholars of the Americas!
/u/400-Rabbits on why the Tlaxcalans allowed Cortes to stay in Tenochtitlan with a little extra followup discussion to debunk the whole Cortes=Quetzalcoatl silliness. He also had a great post on how the conquistadores went from conquering to ruling in Mexico. Bonus points for combating the myth that Native Americans thought the Spaniards were centaurs.
/u/CommodoreCoCo on writing in the Precolumbian Americas.
Very recent, but /u/mictlantecuhtli just answered in depth about the possible locations of Aztlan.
/u/Qhapaqocha tells us what life is like in Machu Picchu and another post discussing Tiwanaku in a Monday Mysteries thread.
Edit: Because I have more love to give!
/u/pseudogentry on how conquistadors and their native allies fought together.
/u/Legendarytubahero on the persistence of the Guarani language in Paraguay as well as the discussion of how the Paraguayan War affected Paraguay and Uruguay.
I really enjoyed /u/Cozijo's responses to How PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) managed to control every state of Mexico from 1929 untill 1989? and During Leon Trotsky's exile, "the Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed Trotsky and arranged for a special train to bring him to Mexico City." Stalin managed to have him assassinated in Mexico. What is the history behind Russian Socialists having influence in Mexico?