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Summary CHAPTER 9 SAYRE DISCOVERING THE HUMANITIES
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Summary of Chapter 9, Sayre Discovering the Humanities. Arts Culture & Media, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
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Chapter 9 Sayre. Encounter and ConfrontationWhat cultures preceded that of the Aztecs in the Americas, and what was the Spanish reaction to
Aztec culture?
How did the Portuguese impact the cultural traditions of West Africa?
To what degree did contact with Europe affect Mogul India?
How do the arts reflect the values of the Chinese state, and how did Ming China react to contact with
the wider world?
How do tensions between Buddhism and military culture influence Japanese art?
In 1519–21, the Aztec empire of Mexico was conquered by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés
(1485–1547) and his army of 600 men. Anthropological evidence suggests that just before Cortés’s
birth, in about 1450, the Aztecs, in their thirst for blood sacrifice, had wiped out the entire
population of Casas Grandes, near present-day Chihuahua in northern Mexico, a trading center
containing over 2,000 pueblo apartments. Given such Aztec behavior, other tribes were willing to
cooperate with Cortés. One of the most important documents of the Spanish conquest, the 1581
History of the Indies of New Spain, by Diego de Durán, depicts this technological superiority. . It
represents a concerted effort to preserve Aztec culture, recounting Aztec history from its creation
story through the Spanish conquest. This chapter surveys the cultures of the Americas, Africa, India,
China, and Japan in this period, and considers how Europe transformed these cultures as it explored
the world and was itself transformed by contact with them. From the point of view of these cultures,
Europe represented the periphery, a cultural force invading their own centers of culture from the
outside.
There was an inclination to see a thriving civilization as uncivilized because it is unlike one’s own is
typical of the attitude of Westerners toward the peoples with whom they came into contact in the
Age of Encounter. Other peoples were exactly that—the “Other”— a separate category of being that
freed Western colonizers from any obligation to identify these peoples as equal, or even similar, to
themselves. Great cultures had, in fact, developed in the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish
(Maya culture). These cultures were themselves preceded by others. As early as 1300 bce, a
preliterate group known as the Olmec came to inhabit an area in the southern coast of the Gulf of
Mexico, where they built huge ceremonial precincts in the middle of their communities. Many of the
characteristic features of later Mesoamerican culture, such as pyramids, ball courts, mirror-making,
and the calendar system, probably originated with the Olmec. Certainly the sense of colossal scale is
found again and again throughout Pre-Columbian culture in Mesoamerica -> solar calendars echoed
in pyramids in Teotihuacán.
To the south, another culture, that of the Maya, both pre
dated and post dated that of Teotihuacán. They were never
unified into a single political entity, but rather consisted of
many small kingdoms that engaged in warfare with one
another over land and resources. An elaborate calendar
system enabled them to keep track of their history—and,
evidence suggests, predict the future. The Mayan calendar
was put to many uses. An example is the Madrid Codex,
one of the four surviving Mayan codices. The Mayans wrote
numbers in two ways: as a system of dots and bars, and in a
set of pictorial variants. Among the most important Mayan
cities is Palenque, one of the best-preserved of all Mayan
sites. The Temple of Inscriptions, facing into the main
courtyard of the so-called Palace, which may have been an
administrative center rather than a royal residence, rises in
nine steps, representing the nine levels of the Mayan
, Underworld. By 900 ce, the Mayan culture from which the Aztec eventually emerged had collapsed
as a result of a wide variety of events, including overpopulation and accompanying ecological
degradation, political competition, and war. Its peoples, who survive in large numbers to this day,
returned to simple farming around the ruins of their once-great cities. But, after contact, it seemed
paramount to the Spanish crown to begin to raise the native population from its “barbarous”
condition by bringing Christianity to it. The Spanish essentially obliterated the traditions of the Native
American cultures they encountered, burning all their books, destroying almost every record of their
history that they could lay their hands on. Churches were quickly built in Mexico City. And as the
Church sought to convert native populations to the Catholic faith, the musical liturgy became a
powerful tool. Throughout the sixteenth century missionaries used music, dance, and religious
dramas to attract and convert the indigenous population to Christianity. A syncretic culture quickly
developed, in which European styles were Indianized, and Indian culture was Christianized.
An interesting example of the Spanish Christianization of native culture is one of the most
elaborately decorated of all Inca sites, the Coricancha (literally, “the corral of gold”), the Inca Temple
of the Sun facing the main plaza of Cuzco, the traditional capital of the Inca Empire. Spain conquered
Peru in 1533 through the exploits of Francisco Pizarro (1474–1541) with an army of only 180 men.
The acquisition of gold, silver, and other treasure was a major motivation for their colonial
enterprise. The treasures of gold and silver that were brought back would be melted down for
currency, far more important than their artistic value to the warring Spanish monarchy. In fact,
almost no gold or silver objects survive from the conquest.
Portugal was as active as Spain in seeking trading opportunities through navigation, but focused on
Africa and the East instead of the Americas. In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias (ca. 1450–1500), investigating
the coast of West Africa, entered the Indian Ocean. When the Portuguese arrived, somewhat to their
surprise they discovered that thriving cultures had long since established themselves. Several large
kingdoms dominated the western African region known as the Sahel, the grasslands
that serve as a transition between the Sahara desert and the more temperate zones
to the west and south. Among the most important is the kingdom of Mali, which
shows the great influence Islam had come to have on much of northern Africa long
before the end of the first millennium ce. . Farther south, along the western coast of
central Africa, were the powerful Yoruba state of Ife and the kingdom of Benin. The
Ife culture is one of the oldest in West Africa. It developed beginning around the
eighth century along the Niger River, in what is now Nigeria. By 1100, it was
producing highly naturalistic, sculptural, commemorative portraits in clay and stone,
probably depicting its rulers, and not long after, elegant brass sculptures as well ->
Head of a King, the face represent decorative effects made by scarring—
scarification. The head was the home of the spirit, the symbol of the king’s capacity
to organize the world and to prosper. In the city-state Benin, of the kingdom of
Benin, were the beginnings of a massive system of walls and moats that would
become, by the fifteenth century, the world’s largest manmade earthwork. These
earthworks consist of moats, the dirt from which was piled alongside them to make walls
up to 60 feet high. Like the Ife to the north, the Benin rulers also created lifelike images
of their ancestor rulers. As in Ife culture, the oba’s (oba is a king) head was the home of
the spirit and the symbol of the oba’s capacity to organize the world and to prosper. This
power could be described and commemorated in an oral form known as a praise poem.
Praise poems are a major part of West African culture. By praising something—a king, a
god, a river—the poet was believed to gain influence over it. These poems often use a
poetic device known as anaphora, a repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of
successive sentences that, owing to the particularities of the West African languages, is
almost impossible to duplicate in translation. But the poems are intended to create a
powerful and insistent rhythm that rises to a crescendo.
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