Pachacuti and Moctazuma I lived and ruled in overlapping time periods. Did they know of each other? If not, did the Aztecs and the Inca know of each other's empires? To what extent (culture, trade, etc) were they connected, if at all?

by kurttheflirt

Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui ruled roughly 1438–1471/1472. Moteuczomatzin Ilhuicamina ruled 1440-1469. Basically I'm wondering if during their reigns, did they at least know of each others existence and how much interaction did the two empires have?

Roogovelt

Probably not. Absence of evidence shouldn't necessarily be taken as evidence of absence, but in this case, it might be.

There are a few ways archaeologists of the Precolonial New World might find evidence for this kind of inter-regional connection. I'll go through each line of evidence I would check and talk about how it falls short in this case.

  1. Historical documentation of connection between the regions. The Maya loved to erect monuments that celebrated warfare, diplomatic travel, and marriages between ruling families at different cities. Neither the Aztecs or Inca did that as clearly. Aztec writing isn't nearly as well understood as Maya writing, and the Inca used quipus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu) instead of written language, and we really don't understand those at all. That means that we don't really have the means to reconstruct the social relationships that we have with the Maya area. (The best example from the Maya area comes from Martin and Grube and is depicted on page 21 of their book, which you can see here: http://projectavalon.net/Chronicle_of_the_Maya_Kings_and_Queens_Deciphering_The_Dynasties_of_the_Ancient_Maya_Simon_Martin_Nikolai_Grube_2008.pdf). All that said, it's worth noting that the Maya didn't really document these sorts of connections outside of the Maya area, which is between the Aztec and Inca empires, so it's unlikely we'd get an Aztec inscription talking about a connection as far south as South America.

  2. Evidence of trade. We've got some great examples of complex trade networks in the Precolumbian New World, but nothing linking Central Mexico to South America as far as I'm aware. We see chocolate and chocolate pots making their way from Central America into the American Southwest (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/3/110329-chocolate-turquoise-trade-prehistoric-peoples-archaeology/), and obsidian making its way from Central Mexico south to Central America (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/article/ancient-maya-trading-ports-and-the-integration-of-longdistance-and-regional-economies-wild-cane-cay-in-southcoastal-belize/E0284CA4A20D74D495C6B4FDB27A3A80), but there don't seem to be intercontinental networks that might link Central Mexico to South America.

  3. Cultural similarities. There are lots of examples at a city like Chichen Itza of Central Mexican cultural influence -- the importance of Kukulkan (the Maya version of Quetzalcoatl), temples with staircases on all four sides, and colonnaded walkways are also cultural imports that originated in or around Teotihuacan. While New World civilizations do have some common traits, there isn't much in the way of specific practices that link the Aztec and Inca civilizations.

It's also worth noting, as a final thought, that the Aztec and Inca had *very* brief periods in which they existed. They were both part of a new wave of expansionist polities in the New World, so it's possible that it wouldn't have been long before they had sustained contact with each other.

sacchoris

Most of the putative claims of contact between Meso and South American civilization are mediated through the Pacific Coast of Central America and the nebulous region of West Mexico, which either is or isn’t considered a part of the same culture area depending on who you talk to and which time period you discuss. There is some evidence of gross material and cultural interaction (trade in spondylus shells, the introduction of metallurgy north, similar ceramic styles in naturalistic, fine slipped vessels, doubled spouts, et c) moving from Ecuador to Panama to the Balsas and Lerma River basins in Guerrero and Nayarit/Jalisco/Colima into Michoacan and Guanajuanto, and before the Postclassic Period (~900/1250-1521 CE) there is the minuscule, theoretical chance of a Moche person talking to someone from Teotihuacan. I must stress that the slim and circumstantial evidence points to Central American go-betweens trading with local coastal peoples in N & S America for making these transfers, however, and not polity to polity contact for whatever that might mean in this context.(As an aside, we do have some glyphic, ceramic, and skeletal evidence of Maya and Zapotec people residing at Teotihuacan).

After the Postclassic begins,Central Mexican polities stretching west from the Valley of Mexico and Toluca found a formidable frontier in the Purépecha(Tarascan) empire of Michoaocan. Although some Pacific regions were occasionally integrated into the Aztec sphere of influence, notably Acapulco and Soconusco during the reign of Ahuitzotl (1486-1502), the Tarascans seem to have inherited whatever dubious connections might have existed with the South American Pacific and a legacy of preeminent metallurgy - after the last Tarascan ruler peacefully submitted to the Spanish (and was later murdered anyway), clans of metal working specialists would draw on this history in the colonial courts to lay claim to ore sources e.g. the Lienzo de Jucutacato.

So in short, no, slightly more likely that his contemporary in Michoacan, Tzitzipandaquare, would have but still no. West Mexican archaeology is still very under-studied, and whatever interaction these two regions had was likely mediated through this area in the North. I’m not a specialist in South American arch so I can’t give you their likely side of the story.

Source: a decade misspent as an archaeological doctoral student and consultant, the Relacion de Michoacan, the collected works of Peter Weigand and Eduardo Williams on West Mexico and special thanks to Prof. Chris Beekman