Most of what modern historians know about the ancient Mesoamerican people called the Chichimeca came from the records of the Aztecs (Mixeca) who acknowledged them as their ancestors, as well as the accounts of the early Spanish settlers of northern Mexico, particularly those of Gonzalo de las Casas. The Chichimeca were also associated by the […]
Kat Cendana
Toltec’s Capital in Tula Overthrown
A mysterious Mesoamerican people called the Toltec rose from their obscure origin to prominence after the fall of the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan around 650 AD. It is possible that the Toltecs descended from the Chichimecas, a nomadic Nahua people who came from the north, as well as the Nonoalcas who were remnants of […]
Hohokam in Arizona Build Platform Mounds
The Hohokams (the “vanished ones” in O’odham language) were Native Americans who lived in the southern parts of Arizona to the northern portions of the Mexican state of Sonora. The culture flourished between 100 BC and 1500 AD. They were the ancestors of modern day Pima people or Akimel O’odham who spoke a variant of […]
End of Hopewell Culture in North America
The Prehistoric Indian culture called the Hopewell (or Hopewellian) flourished in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys during the Formative period of North America. Just like the Poverty Point, Adena, and Mississippian cultures, the Hopewell culture was known for the great mounds their people built in Ohio and some portions of Illinois. Some of the […]
Chimu Culture at Chan Chan, Peru, Height of the
The ancient capital of the Chimu Empire called the Chan Chan is located hundreds of miles from the Inca capital of Cuzco. It seemed that over the years, the Inca had eclipsed their distant neighbors. Although the Chimu Empire was relatively smaller than what the Inca people built in their heyday, it remains as one […]
Anasazi (Ancestral Pueblo) Cliff Dwellings in Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelly
The Ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi in Navajo language) were masters of shaping the landscape to make it habitable and the unique houses they built on the Four Corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado). Which the most recognizable hallmark of their culture. Their first recorded houses were shallow pit-houses that they built during the Basketmaker […]
Incas in Peru, Rise of
Inca Origin Myth The Inca people had as much as forty stories of origin, but two of the most prominent were the Pacariqtambo Legend and the Lake Titicaca Legend. According to the Pacariqtambo Legend, the creator Viracocha and the sun god, Inti decided to create the first man called Manco Capac. He and his siblings […]
Almoravids Driven from Zaragoza by King Alfonso I of Aragon
Muslim-Dominated Spain Between the Tenth and Twelfth Centuries In 711, a mix of Arab and Berber warriors landed in Spain to remove its Visigoth rulers and proceeded to fold it into the Umayyad realm. They changed its name from Hispania to al-Andalus. The Umayyads’ hold on the caliphate remained strong even after three hundred years […]
Turkic Muslims Take India
The Foundation of the Turkic Ghaznavid Dynasty The Muslim world had split by the time the first half of the tenth century rolled in. The Abbasid caliphs under Buyid control continued to rule in Baghdad; the Samanids ruled Khorasan in the east. The Saffarids’ ruled directly to the south; the Umayyad Caliph in Cordoba; the […]
Sultan Becomes Muslim
The Oghuz Turks The Turkic groups of people that emerged from Central Asia during the Medieval Period were a force to be reckoned with wherever they went. These hardy nomads streamed out of their homelands in Central Asia and Southern Siberia and initially lived in the frontiers of major empires of the medieval period, such […]