Throughout the Middle Ages, the European man's conception of the world pushed him to isolation and the reinforcement of religious thought. Influenced by the stability of Christian values and the instability of the barbarian invasions of the High Middle Ages, men lived in seclusion inside the manors. The unknown and the unusual would be words that would cause the discomfort of a reality supported by the harmony of the clerical, noble and servile orders.
With the rise of the mercantile bourgeoisie and the great navigations, many of these medieval values were revised and abandoned. However, many mythical narratives that spoke of heavenly lands surrounded by exoticism and abundance were built over many years in the ideology of European societies. In addition, several mythical accounts also made mention of wild beasts inhabiting the seas and lands hitherto unknown to European peoples.
This mixture of fascination and terror found in iconographic narratives and representations made modern man still keep many of these values in his imagination. With the advent of the discovery of America, European colonists found themselves in a world where many of those imagined situations did not translate the situation of the so-called civilizations pre-Columbian At the same time, this preconception of the other ended up making the Native American something to be repudiated and civilized by the European.
However, all this condition of estrangement, admiration and rejection left behind a whole rich range of cultural values developed by the peoples who already existed here. At the end of the 15th century, the period that marks the arrival of the Spaniards on the continent, the continent had three great civilizations: Maya, Aztec and Incas. Many of the cities created by these civilizations faced any 16th-century European urban center. Even with a wide range of characteristics and knowledge, the contact of the natives with the Europeans marked one of the greatest genocides on record.
Even though several traces of this culture were lost with the colonization process, we see in the study of pre-Columbian societies a rich field of reflection on the issue of relativity cultural. Knowing a little more about these peoples, we can rethink the old value that Europe imposes on us as the cradle of the most complex and advanced civilizations in history.
By Rainer Sousa
Graduated in History
See more:
Aztecs
Incas
Mayans
mochicas
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historia-da-america/povos-precolombianos.htm
