Where are the Incas and the Aztecs today?

The answer is - in same places where they used to be.

In countries like Peru - in general in places with high pop. density in Pre-Columbian era - descendants of natives are majority.

Also in Mexico majority of population are Mestizos - Natives who lived there in Pre-Columbian times with some admixture of European ancestry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizos_in_Mexico

Mestizo Mexicans are Mexican people who are of mixed European and indigenous ancestry. Mestizos are the majority in Mexico, accounting for 60% of the country's population. An additional 9% of the population is White and 30% are of unmixed indigenous descent.[1]

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So today 60% of Mexicans are of mixed Indigenous-European ancestry, 30% have unmixed Indigenous ancestry and only 9% are Whites.

And this is despite the fact that vast majority of Natives died due to European diseases and guns during and after the conquest.

Despite such massive death toll (over 90%), still enough native Mexicans survived to outnumber the European newcomers.

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In Peru also vast majority of the population are either partially or fully descended from Native Americans.

Just like in Mexico, about 60% are Mestizos, and majority of the remaining 40% are unmixed Natives of the Inca Empire:



And this is also despite the fact that European diseases took an extremely heavy toll among natives of the Inca Empire.

Shocker.

Wow. I just assumed that Latin American-morenos all have tanning beds in their homes.

Hey, I'd still same its fairly interesting regardless if its seemingly obvious or not. I mean, although you see this heavy mixing in areas colonized by the Spanish (and based on their colonial policy, it makes sense), you don't really see it in places like North America where the English colonized. It makes sense to think that maybe people would think it ended up like it did in the United States, where you see mixed people in the minority.

Is this not common knowledge? I figured this was pretty common knowledge.

Certainly, it's pretty central to the self-identity of most Peruvians and Mexicans. "Mestizo nationalism" and all that.

Joecoolyo said:

Hey, I'd still same its fairly interesting regardless if its seemingly obvious or not. I mean, although you see this heavy mixing in areas colonized by the Spanish (and based on their colonial policy, it makes sense), you don't really see it in places like North America where the English colonized. It makes sense to think that maybe people would think it ended up like it did in the United States, where you see mixed people in the minority.

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This.

Traitorfish said:

Is this not common knowledge? I figured this was pretty common knowledge.

Certainly, it's pretty central to the self-identity of most Peruvians and Mexicans. "Mestizo nationalism" and all that.

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Most Mexicans are Catholics and religious beliefs based on Aztec and Maya creeds are very rare, so it's quite easy to fall for it, along with the reasons Joecoolyo explained.

Besides, you might want to readjust your definition of common knowledge: A lot of people have a hard time find the USA on the map, let alone Mexico and Peru.

Latin American Catholicism is itself essentially mestizo. Our Lady of Guadalupe, perhaps the most beloved symbol of Mexico, is herself a syncretic combination of the Cult of Mary and the Aztec mother-goddess, Tonantzin. In Guatemala, Mayan religion is very strong under a surface veneer of Catholic imagery - see Maximon for the most well-known example. I'm not familiar with Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru, but I don't doubt that many indigenous beliefs are alive and well in ostensibly Catholic guise.

Of course, as far as a lot of Protestants are concerned, "polytheism with a Christian gloss" is fair definition of Catholicism on any continent, so that may contribute to the uncertainty Kaiserguard describes...

Also, it's kind of presumptuous that Europeans have a more Enlightened form of Catholicism that allows them to see that the Catholics of Latin America are only a thin veneer.

Traitorfish said:

I figured this was pretty common knowledge.

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To give a personal perspective, I only found out a few months ago, while specifically searching for this information.

I suspect that, outside of the categories of people with a particular reason to be more aware (people who live there, or visited the place, or have relatives there, or are history/geography buffs), the majority doesn't know.

I was quite surprised when I found out, considering that the usual narrative is about how much the locals lost their struggle against the Spanish and against disease. It's also probably true that most foreigners assume the situation is similar to what we see in North America.

A found this little book fairly illuminating regarding some of the most common "facts" of the "usual narrative":

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Observation: native americans are few in North America. In Central and South America they're far more numerous.

Why is that?
Did the old world diseases do less damage to the South than the North?


The fact that Spanish/portugease colonists were something like 3:1 in favour of men might suggest the differences in population too. They had to go native.

Other reasons?

More like most estimates for population in regards to Pre-Colombian populations in South America and Mesoamerica have been historically far too low. Death rates were equally massive following contact in various sites. IE Bernando Sahagun noted when writing the Florentine Codex with his scribes that the majority of the students at the school he basically established were wiped out by a succession of three plagues - but despite the mass losses, there were still enough scribes [due to sheer prior population] to complete the codex. If you examine the Florentine Codex IE you can see various scribes and artists worked on it, with transitions in some of the scribes being due to mortality rates. At one point the codex even turns into a primarily black and white piece of work - which concurred with a period of time when the population that collected specific Pre-Colombian pigments for texts was being wiped out by disease. The Florentine Codex is a good example of despite all the death, the sheer number of native peoples prior is the reason why many areas are still so heavily dominated by mixed or indigenous blood.

In truth most estimates about Mesoamerican population or Andean populations are revised upwards every so often. Population densities were comparable to China in many locations.

Quackers said:

Observation: native americans are few in North America. In Central and South America they're far more numerous.

Why is that?
Did the old world diseases do less damage to the South than the North?

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The population in central and south America was much larger to begin with, and in many parts the Spanish were pretty much only replacing the top tiers of the society, very much interested in keeping a productive labour force alive.

In contrast, the North American colonies and the US were very much commited to displacing the original inhabitants of any halfway valuable land, or simply killing them off, whatever was more opportune.

What might also have been a factor is that the time since the inititial depopulation was longer in the south, allowing more time for a population rebound, as well as entering the "modern era" with its high relative population growth from a much higher absolute base.

Quackers said:

Observation: native americans are few in North America. In Central and South America they're far more numerous.

Why is that?
Did the old world diseases do less damage to the South than the North?


The fact that Spanish/portugease colonists were something like 3:1 in favour of men might suggest the differences in population too. They had to go native.

Other reasons?

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Indeed, I believe the biggest reason is just that there were far more people in Pre-Columbian South and Central America than there were in the North.

tokala said:

The population in central and south America was much larger to begin with[.]

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History_Buff said:

Indeed, I believe the biggest reason is just that there were far more people in Pre-Columbian South and Central America than there were in the North.

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That, and the European population in North America ended up so high. South America never really saw the sort of mass-immigration that you get in North America, so its European population never had a chance to outpace indigenous or mestizo populations (or, for that matter, African populations) in the same way they did in British North America. It's worth remembering that French Canada was even less densely settled than the British colonies, but in that case the European population remained outnumbered until the 19th century because European immigration was always so limited.

Traitorfish said:

"Mestizo nationalism" and all that.

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Jesus Christ, you Westerners mention nationalism or nationalists in every single post.

Only not in posts describing your own countries and your own nations.

It gives you a raging erection to call everybody from foreign cultures nationalists, am I right?

I have a task for you Traitorfish - do not mention nationalism and nationalists for 30 days since this moment.

You will become a gentleman if you do this (even if you know everything about nationalism).

Good info in the first post, but you kinda forgot to mention that there are still some 1.5 speakers of Nahautl (the language of the Aztecs) in Mexico & Central America, as well as 8.9 million speakers of Quechuan (Incan) languages in South America.

Domen said:

Jesus Christ, you Westerners mention nationalism or nationalists in every single post.

Only not in posts describing your own countries and your own nations.

It gives you a raging erection to call everybody from foreign cultures nationalists, am I right?

I have a task for you Traitorfish - do not mention nationalism and nationalists for 30 days since this moment.

You will become a gentleman if you do this (even if you know everything about nationalism).

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I live in a country governed by an explicitly nationalist party. I know plenty of people who identify themselves as "nationalists", and more who sympathise with the nationalist program. It's not a "them crazy furrners" things, I assure you, it's just the appropriate word to use in certain contexts.

ParkCungHee said:

Also, it's kind of presumptuous that Europeans have a more Enlightened form of Catholicism that allows them to see that the Catholics of Latin America are only a thin veneer.

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Not meant to be presumptuous as I side entirely with the Maya - and any and all other folk Catholicisms - over the official Catholicism of Rome. Folk Catholicism, be it Mexican, Peruvian, Irish, Spanish, Haitian, Louisianan, Ghanaian, what-have-you, is a "thin veneer" almost by definition as their beliefs and practices are decidedly not dictated from the Vatican. And where in my post do I suggest that "official" Catholicism is more "Enlightened?"

Also, it's kind of presumptuous that you assume I'm European...