Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/269

 THE NEW WORLD; MEXICO AND PERU 257 as they had been in occupation of America, they were some thousands of years behind the inhabitants of the other hemi- sphere in civilisation. In the year 1500 of our era American the most advanced nations were at a stage compar- civilisation, able to that of Egyptians or Babylonians three or four thousand years earlier ; of the rest none were more advanced than Celts or Teutons when we meet them in history for the first time, and many were in a far more primitive state. The civilised peoples whose dominions are dignified with the name of empires were all to be found in what we now call Mexico, Central America, and Tropical South America west of the seventieth degree of longitude. Even in these regions it is hardly pro- bable that anything deserving the name of civilisation had been in existence for so much as a thousand years. It does not appear that what can be called records hitherto discovered go back beyond the tenth century of our era. About that time there existed a dynasty in Central central America called the Toltecs. Somewhat less America. shadowy than the Toltecs are the Mayas, who certainly built large towns and great temples covered with elaborate carvings, which carry with them suggestions of early Egypt more than of anything else in the other hemisphere. The Spaniards found the Maya civilisation still in existence in Central America, but the advancing power was that of the Mexican Aztecs. In the middle of the fifteenth century a great Mexican kingdom was established by Montezuma 1. It was this Mexican kingdom which was overthrown by Cortes in 1520. To the south beyond the Isthmus were the kingdoms of the Chibchas, whose civilisation was still extremely primitive and barbarous. The Chibcha region corresponds roughly to the modern state of Colombia. It was in Peru, however, further to the south, that the greatest advance had been made in the direction of civilisation. Here the Incas had ruled probably for three or four hundred years. Starting from Cuzco the Incas gradually extended a dominion by methods extraordinary for their humanity among primitive peoples. They came in arms, R