History Main / Mayincatec

* VirginSacrifice

* The "Death Volley" chapter of ''TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'' is an adventure set in a classic {{Mayincatec}} trap-filled temple.

* ''[[TheAdventuresOfTintin The Adventures of Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls]]'' ''Prisoners of the Sun.'' The Incas are portrayed rather sympathetically, as even though they try to sacrifice the heroes, they interactions with outsiders have rarely been positive. Oh, and they suck at astronomy, as a plot point.

* One ''[[{{Subnormality}} Subnormality!]]'' strip features The Pink-Haired Girl being sent a drink at a bar by "the merciless Teoxhl...something something", who turns out to be a giant Mayincatec-style stone idol. The drink is jaguar blood.

* ''[[SoldierOfFortune Soldier Of Fortune II]]'' has a level in Colombia set in Mayincatec temple ruins. Are there actually such ruins in Colombia?

** ''Age Of Empires'' does largely avert the trope, but [[NecessaryWeasel has to use it to a certain extent to make the game function properly]], such as using Eagle Warriors as a common Mayincatec unit rather than just Aztec. Also, while they have the archeology look exactly the same for both civilisations, this is due to putting its societies into aesthetic groups, for example Chinese/Japanese, British/Celts/Franks/Spanish and Saracens/Persians/Turks all look the same.

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* CannibalTribe: The Mexica, the tribe that founded the Aztec Empire are perhaps the most widely studied of the ancient Mesoamerican people. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they do not support Harris's thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet. Noted scholar Michael D. Coe states that while "it is incontrovertible that some of these victims ended up by being eaten ritually […], the practice was more like a form of communion than a cannibal feast".

There have been some documentation of Aztec cannibalism, mainly accounts from the date of the conquest of New Spain, which we now call Mexico:

** Hernán Cortés wrote in one of his letters that his soldiers had captured an indigenous man who had a roasted baby ready for breakfast.
** Francisco López de Gómara reported that, during the siege of Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards asked the Aztecs to surrender since they had no food. The Aztecs angrily challenged the Spaniards to attack so they could be taken as prisoners, sacrificed and served with "molli" sauce.
** In the book of Bernardino de Sahagún, the first Mesoamerican ethnographer according to Miguel León-Portilla, there is an illustration of an Aztec being cooked by an unknown tribe. This was reported as one of the dangers that Aztec traders faced.
** The Ramírez codex, written by an Aztec using the Latin alphabet after the Conquest of Mexico, reports that after the sacrifices the flesh from the hands of the victim were given as a gift to the warrior who made the human capture. According to the codex, this was supposedly eaten, but in fact discarded and replaced with turkey.
** In his book Relación Juan Bautista de Pomar states that after the sacrifice the body of the victim was given to the warrior responsible for the capture. He would boil the body and cut it to pieces to be offered as gifts to important people in exchange for presents and slaves; but it was rarely eaten, since they considered it of no value. However, Bernal Díaz reports that some of these parts of human flesh made their way to the Tlatelolco market near Tenochtitlan.

*** Bernal Díaz’s The Conquest of New Spain contains several instances of cannibalism among the people the conquistadors encountered during their warring expedition to Tenochtitlan:

*** About the city of Cholula, Díaz wrote he was shocked to see young men in cages ready to be sacrificed and eaten.
*** About the Quetzalcoatl temple of Tenochtitlan Díaz wrote that inside it was full of large pots, where human flesh of the sacrificed Indians was boiled and cooked to feed the priests.
*** About the Mesoamerican towns in general Díaz wrote that some of the indigenous people he saw were—:

“ eating human meat, just like we take cows from the butcher’s shops, and they have in all towns thick wooden jail-houses, like cages, and in them they put many Indian men, women and boys to fatten, and being fattened they sacrificed and ate them.”

*** Díaz's testimony is corroborated by other Spanish historians who wrote about the conquest. In History of Tlaxcala, Diego Muñoz Camargo states that:

“ Thus there were public butcher's shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep.

**** In 2005 the INAH reported that some of the bodies found under Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral, i.e. the basement of Aztec temples, showed cut marks indicating the removal of muscles from the bones, though not all the bodies show this treatment.

**** In August 2006, Reuters reported that an analysis of the skeletons of 550 victims killed after the conquest and found near Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, indicate that some of the victims were dismembered, and that many bones showed knife, teeth marks and evidence of boiling.

* Why did ''CrashBandicoot'' go unmentioned so far, [[HowDidWeMissThisOne we'll never know]]. True, the series is based on Oceanic places such as - and most preminently - New Zealand, but in many games there's plenty of Maya-esque imagery, especially in the first game of the series.

See Also: HollywoodHistory and VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, DidNotDoTheResearch. Compare {{Spexico}} and BananaRepublic, for when this happens to modern hispanic countries. Also compare InjunCountry for composite versions of Native American cultures from North America. Also compare AncientGrome.

* ''TheFountain'' by DarrenAronofsky. Xibalba, the Mayan underworld is present in the form of a golden nebula. The historically-based section [[hottip:*:a fictional novel-within-novel written by one of the characters]] features Conquistadors, Mayan warriors, priest and the inevitable step pyramid temple [[spoiler:wherein lies the TreeOfLife]]. Within the work the Mayas are a collapsed civilization (which they were when the Conquistadors arrived.) The hidden pyramid is their last, secret hiding place, clearly already decrepid and neglected, with only a few dozen devoted guardians.

* MAR Barker wrote five novels based in the world of Tekumel, a world that's a conglomerate of aspects of virtually all Pre-Columbian Meso-American cultures. He created Tekumel for the same reason that Tolkien built Middle Earth: so that he could have a world to use as a linguistic playground. In Barker's case the languages he created were based on Indo-Asian and Meso-American languages.

* The Lizardmen in ''{{Warhammer}}'', FantasyCounterpartCulture of the {{Mayincatec}}. Culturally they're closer to the Mayans, with the interest in astronomy and prophecies and the like; However one of their major gods is based on Quetzalcoatl, and the jewelry they often carry is more Aztec-inspired, as is their focus on blood sacrifice. To complete the hat-trick, they have a habit of mummifying dead rulers and displaying them as relics, which is taken from the Inca.

* The Lizardmen in ''{{Warhammer}}'', FantasyCounterpartCulture of the {{Mayincatec}}. Culturally they're closer to the Mayans, with the interest in astronomy and prophecies and the like (although one of their gods is based off Quatzalcoatl), but the jewelry they often carry is more Aztec-inspired, as is their focus on human sacrifice, though they take it farther than even Hollywood Aztecs.

* ''AgeOfEmpires''
** ''Age Of Empires'' does largely avert the trope, but has to use it to a certain extant to make the game function properly, such as using Eagle Warriors as a common Mayincatec unit rather than just Aztec. Also, they have the archeology look exactly the same for both civilisations, but this is due to putting its societies into aesthetic groups, for example Chinese/Japanese, British/Celts/Franks/Spanish and Saracens/Persians/Turks all look the same.
** ''Age of Empires II: The Conquerors'' deals with the conquest of America. Since the Aztecs are the protagonists in the campaign, there's the little historical break of them ''winning'' against the Conquistadors...though at such a great cost in lives and infrastructure that the Aztec empire is basically finished. The Mayas, in turn, have an entirely different feel, with bonuses to trade and building - AgeOfEmpires have always ShownTheirWork.

* ''[[DonkeyKong Donkey Kong 64]]'' had a Mayincatec level with a llama in the middle of a tropical jungle in an island with no mountain high enough to match the Andes.
** The level is itself desertic... While Peru and Chile have desertic coasts llamas resides in the mountains that are nothing like the aztec themed desert of the work at hand. Its the most stupid mistake ever..... THE. MOST. STUPID. EVER.

* ''TheSimpsons'' receive an Olmec head of Xtapolapocetl in one episode. It frequently reappears as a FreezeFrameBonus. In an aversion of this trope, when Maggie sees the head, she points to a card saying Aztec, and Lisa corrects her, saying "Not Aztec. Olmec. Ol-mec."

* ''Taiyō no Shinden Asteka II'' [[hottip:*:a.k.a. ''Tombs and Treasure'']] is a first-person graphical adventure game that has the ruins of Mayan city Chichén Itzá as a setting.

In RealLife, the Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs were all different; their actual history is interesting and diverges from the trope quite a bit. Please see '''[[{{UsefulNotes/Pre-ColumbianCivilizations}} Useful Notes On Pre-Columbian Civilizations]]''', NativeAmericanMythology and AztecMythology.

* ''{{Superjail!}}'' had an episode where they uncover the ancient city of [[PunnyName Pummel-onia]], a Mayincatec shrine to war and fighting. They even have a god of war in ceremonial dress that was trapped in animal form.

* The Long Count Calendar, which is set to run out of days December 20, 2012.

* On QI, the resident idiot Alan Davies makes this mistake. StephenFry [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU4mOCLdkw calls him on it.]]

** The Exxilons in ''Death To The Daleks'' have elements of this as well; they're the AncientAstronauts who visited the Incas, and their Great City looks a lot like a step pyramid. In the novel ''The Left Handed Hummingbird'' they also accidentally left some technology where the Aztecs could find it.

* The SealedEvilInACan in Shivers originated from an unspecified ancient Central American civilization.