Heavens Mystery Pathfinder
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The world’s creation story began with the gods creating heaven and earth. They created a paradise on Earth, but they were not satisfied. The first humans they made to live upon their new planet had been too passive; it was like raising children—a task for which the gods lacked patience.
So they decided to make more people in their image. And so the gods set about remaking humanity, giving them bodies that could be used as tools of war, intellects capable of making complex tools and machines, and finally souls capable of abstract thought. In other words: they gave men the means to create themselves.
In this way, the gods hoped to make better soldiers than the humans who had previously served them so well, but from the start there were problems. For one thing, all the gods’ servants had been strong and brave, but this time around they were also smart.
Many of the gods feared what would happen if these new humans ever realized that they could rise above their servitude. So the gods decided that they must educate their human creations to keep them in line. Over the long course of history, they made sure that men learned to read and write, and invented mathematics and science.
The gods taught them how to build houses and cities, how to farm crops, and how to develop many other skills useful to the ruling classes. Eventually, they even developed new technologies such as the steam engine, electricity, and the printing press.
All of these things had the effect of increasing social inequality, the gap between rich and poor, because those at the top used their knowledge to enrich themselves while others who lagged behind felt they needed to work harder just to stay where they were.
But the gods did not stop there. They continued to encourage the development of new technology by using their divine powers to manipulate the natural world. At first, they manipulated the weather to create floods and droughts to ensure that certain crops would grow in favorable conditions.
But after thousands of years of doing this, the gods became bored. They found the weather patterns boring, as did most people. It seemed that nothing exciting happened anymore. The gods decided to intervene directly, for the last time, in nature itself, to bring about a dramatic change.
They created an ice age. They flooded the oceans, turning much of them into arctic seas, and they covered large parts of land with snow. They brought down a curtain of cold air across the northern reaches of the globe. In the south, the climate grew warmer and drier, but still, it was no good.
Nothing very interesting was happening, either. There were no earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, nor any great beasts roaming the plains. So the gods turned again to science. They looked at the natural world and discovered that everything was connected. Everything depended on everything else.
If the Earth was cold, then the sun would have less energy, which meant plants would need less water, which in turn meant less rain, which meant fewer rivers and lakes, which meant a greater risk of drought, which meant fewer harvests, which meant famine. This was why the gods had to flood the oceans.
The ocean waters played an important part in regulating the temperature of the Earth. When they froze, they held back the heat of the sun, which caused the temperatures to drop. No matter how clever you might be, you couldn’t engineer life-giving rains out of thin air. Only the gods could do that.
Still, some things were beyond anyone’s control. The gods could not freeze the oceans forever, although they tried. They could only keep it frozen for tens of thousands of years, during which time the entire northern hemisphere went into a deep freeze. The ice sheets expanded over North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The skies darkened as massive glaciers blocked out the sunlight, and the world plunged into darkness. As the ice spread, the sea levels dropped by up to 160 meters, drowning many coastal areas. The gods lost interest in the world after that and turned their attention elsewhere. They left the humans to fend for themselves.
This is the beginning of our story, and we are all of us witnesses to its unfolding. We have watched the world change and adapt since the ice age ended, and now we stand at a crossroads. Our story begins in the early Middle Ages when the first explorers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to discover the Americas. It ends in the twenty-first century as humanity faces the greatest threat of extinction yet.
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The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed on the shores of Mexico in 1519 and founded a settlement at Zacatecas. He named the place Villa de la Rosa y el Águila (Villa de la Rose and the Eagle), and he stayed there until 1521. Then he moved his base of operations to Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec Empire.
After that, he led a series of campaigns across Mesoamerica, taking control of vast swathes of territory. By the time he reached Florida in 1525, the Spaniards controlled almost all of the Caribbean coastlines.
They also conquered the Inca Empire in Peru and the Chichimecas in Chile. They were now in a position to take advantage of the newly discovered riches in Mexico and Central America, especially gold.
The Spanish quickly set about exploiting these new sources of wealth. They built new towns along the coasts, where they mined for gold and silver. They established agricultural settlements inland, where they grew maize and other staple foods.
They sent ships to the New World to buy goods from Indians in exchange for gold and precious metals. They also bought slaves, who they forced to work the mines and fields. The trade-in human beings was becoming more lucrative than the trade-in commodities.
In 1527, a group of Spanish soldiers captured one of the last independent Indian cities in Mexico, Tenochtitlán. They destroyed the temples and palaces of the Aztecs, looted the royal palace, and took the emperor prisoner. Juan de Zumárraga was appointed governor of the province and ordered to build a new capital.
He chose the site of what is now Mexico City and began construction of the cathedral, which was completed in 1542. It was the largest church in the world at that time, and it became known as La Catedral de Nuestra Señora del Pilar.
The next year, the king of Spain made Zumárraga the Lord of the Two Californias – the name given to the area comprising modern-day California and Arizona.
Although the Incas and the Aztecs were defeated, they did not disappear. Many of them fled south and joined other native peoples living in the mountains. Others found refuge in remote areas of Central America and South America.
The Spanish never managed to win over the indigenous people they encountered. In some places, they remained hostile to the conquistadors; in others, they simply refused to coexist with Europeans.
By the end of the 16th century, the Spanish Empire stretched from the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego in the north to the Amazon River in the south. Its influence extended from North Africa to the Caribbean Sea, and the Pacific Islands to the Andes Mountains of South America.
It controlled much of the western coast of what is now North and South America, including Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. It also ruled large parts of Mexico, Central America, and the southwestern United States.
During the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown had been expanding its power across the globe. However, this expansion was not without cost. Between the wars against the natives, the disease epidemics that swept through the colonies, and the constant battles between rival factions within the Spanish government, the Spanish economy collapsed.
By the middle of the 17th century, Spain was in danger of losing its hold on the New World. A new wave of conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, arrived in Peru in 1533 to conquer the Incan Empire. They marched westward, over the Andes Mountains and across the Amazon rainforest, finally reaching the Peruvian capital of Cuzco in 1532.
Pizarro appointed himself the king of Peru and named his country the Spanish Empire of the New World.
For the next few years, the Spanish Empire expanded. Pizarro seized control of the Inca Empire’s gold mines in northern Peru and sought out more territories to conquer. In 1537, he invaded the Kingdom of Guatemala, which was then part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada.
That same year, he besieged the Inca capital of Cuzco but was unable to capture it. He returned to Peru and began preparing for another invasion of the Inca empire. However, a rebellion broke out among the local tribesmen, who killed many of Pizarro’s men and drove the rest back into the jungle.
Pizarro died two years later during an attempt to retake the city of Quito, Ecuador. His body was thrown off a cliff, and his head was cut off and paraded through the streets of Lima.
When news of Pizarro’s death reached Spain, the imperial court declared that the conquest of the Americas should be abandoned. The Spanish were exhausted, and they no longer had the strength or the will to continue their crusade. Instead, they tried to consolidate their grip on the New World.
In 1548, the crown created the Viceroyalty of Peru, which would rule all of the conquered lands for the next half-century.
The Spanish did not give up completely on the conquest of the New World. There were still vast amounts of gold to be found in the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, and there were many tribes in the Amazon Basin that could be easily subjugated.
But they began to look for ways to protect their newly acquired territory from further incursions by rival European powers. They succeeded in creating the first permanent overseas colonies in the West Indies, where they settled with the help of African slaves. They also set up trading posts along the coast of Africa, but these were less successful.
Meanwhile, other European nations began to take interest in the riches of the New World. England, France, and the Netherlands established colonies around the eastern seaboard of North America.
After being expelled from the island of Hispaniola, the French took over neighboring Haiti, renamed it Saint-Domingue, and founded an independent colony.
Meanwhile, the Dutch explored the coasts of the present-day United States and Canada. Finally, in 1585, Portugal established the Portuguese Empire, which encompassed the countries of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea as well as Cape Verde, Brazil, and the entire east coast of South America.
The Spanish Empire continued to expand in the Americas until the late 18th century. In 1609, Francisco Pizarro and his men established the first settlement in what is now Peru. The city of Lima was founded in 1535, just after Pizarro became the first Spaniard to conquer the Inca Empire.
Another important port city, Cartagena de Indias, was built by the Spanish on the Caribbean coast of Colombia in 1529. This city, which served as a naval base, was destroyed by a hurricane in 1549. Another important city in the region is Paracas, located on Peru’s northern desert coast, where the Nazca Lines can be seen etched into the earth.
These are some of the oldest manmade structures on the planet, and they have baffled archaeologists for centuries. Some scholars believe that they may have been used by the ancient Peruvians in astronomy or astrology. Others claim that they were created by giant monsters. Their true origin remains unknown.
In the early 1600s, the Spanish Empire began to lose control of the western hemisphere. After the French Revolution, France annexed the province of Quebec. The Dutch and English fought each other for control of the American colonies, and the British won. In 1688, they seized Jamaica and established the English colony of Belize.
In 1763, the Treaty of Paris divided the North American colonies between Great Britain and France, but most of them remained under Spanish control. By the end of the 18th century, Spain lost its possessions in the Caribbean, much of Central America, and nearly all of South America. It now controlled only the small islands of the Atlantic Ocean near the African coast.
The End