While vilified as conquerors and enslavers, the 1st European explorers deserve praise

They’ve been replaying the new world series on nat geo and it’s painful to watch. 59 minutes about the advanced Mayan civilization and then whisper in the final minute Cortes with a couple hundred men and fifty horses conquered 200k native warriors. …maybe I have a different idea about which of the civilizations was more advanced.

They had invented the wheel, but largely didn’t use it for transportation. They didn’t have carts as they had no draft animals with which to pull them. The Inca had only recently discovered how to smelt Bronze. While medieval meso-American civilizations were quite sophisticated in some areas like irrigation and astronomy, they were clearly lacking in a lot of key areas that made them easy pickings for the Spanish.

The Spanish had armored horses and iron lances. The Spanish had cannons that could destroy any wall, gate, or fortifications. The Aztecs had zero answers for those. The muskets of the time didn’t have huge advantages over the native bows due to reloading times, but the shock cavalry charges might as well have been dragons. The Aztecs with their obsidian weapons were too brittle to be effective against them. As soon as the Aztec allies noticed that they had no answer, they all switched sides because they hated the Aztecs.

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While vilified as conquerors and enslavers, the 1st European explorers deserve praise

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Francisco de Orellana was right!

500 years later and LiDAR has proven it so.

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Cortes with a couple hundred men and fifty horses conquered

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Cortes was the Aztecs, and all the conquistadors recruited local tribes to fight against the Mayans and Aztecs. Another huge factor was disease. Small pox did far more damage than disparities in advancement.

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The Spanish had armored horses and iron lances. The Spanish had cannons that could destroy any wall, gate, or fortifications. The Aztecs had zero answers for those. The muskets of the time didn’t have huge advantages over the native bows due to reloading times, but the shock cavalry charges might as well have been dragons. The Aztecs with their obsidian weapons were too brittle to be effective against them. As soon as the Aztec allies noticed that they had no answer, they all switched sides because they hated the Aztecs.

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Steel was the game changer; swords, pikes, and lances. Horses were armored but not so much that they were invulnerable. The Aztec used their macuahuitl (obsidian edged wooden sword) to attack vulnerable part of the horse (chest and neck). The Mayans used spiked pits.

Firearms became unreliable after a few weeks in the equatorial climate, but crossbows were still viable.

Disease the most debilitating weapon carried by the Spanish. Small pox devastated them.

You're correct about their Allies and them hating the Aztecs.