Have you ever had a thought come to you out of the blue? That is what has happened here. I have seemingly always known all of the disparate facts that I am going to lay out here. Not always but for over fifty years, certainly. The difference is that I have never made a tie-in between them. I must admit, there probably is no tie-in. No reputable scientists or researchers have ever made this supposition. In fact, I have not found anyone coming up with the same conclusion. That does not keep me from making the suppositions anyway. After all, it is my web site, and I set the standards.
MAYAN EMPIRE
The Mayan Empire was an empire on the Yucatan Peninsula that stretched down through Central America. It started in 2000 B.C, and reached its nexus in about 250 A.D. Then, inexplicably it collapsed in the 9th Century, apparently in about a 50 year period.
This was a complex, empire. This is the empire of pyramids that actually exceeded the size and scope of the pyramids of Egypt. This is the empire of that created one of the most accurate calendars in the world. It consisted of several large cities, some of which still have not been fully investigated, possibly some still left to be discovered. In short, a big deal. Then, for no known reason, it completely collapsed and disappeared in a short time, a real short time. And, even with a written language, no documented reason ever found.
PRE-COLUMBIAN LEGENDS
When Cortez encountered the Aztec’s their way was supposed to be made easier because they were accepted as Gods. This is because there was a legend of a Bearded White God from the East that had visited from the past that was supposed to return at some day in the future. Thus, when Cortez arrived, this was the fulfillment of the prophecy. Being treated as a God, Cortez and his men were able to get away with a lot and dominate the Aztec people before all hell broke loose.
In recent years, I have read that this was story of the Bearded White God was a revisionist story to explain away the actions of the Aztecs. No proof from what I can discern but this story is out there. For the sake of this analysis, I am going to believe the legend.
It seems that many legends of the Aztecs actually precede the Aztec dynasty and actually come from prior empires and dynasties. That is quite possible, as all civilizations seem to build on prior civilizations. Based upon this premise, it is not outside of the realm of likelihood that this legend could have existed from the Mayan Empire. It also makes some sense in the fact that the Aztec Dynasty was in the middle of the land mass and Bearded White God would be more of a legend of a people in Coastal Regions, which the Mayans had.
EUROPEAN CONTACT
Anyone who has read about the contact of Native Americans (aka; First Nations, indigenous, etc.) know that the Europeans decimated them. Slavery and slaughter were definitely on the plate, and that was used with vigor from the very beginning. This was not the big bad boy in wiping out the Native Americans though. It was disease. Western diseases killed more than anything else, in big numbers. The diseases run the gamut. We have bubonic plague, chicken pox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, measles, typhoid, and typhus to name just a few. But the worst was smallpox. This did the most to completely wipe out whole villages, whole tribes, whole civilizations, and whole regions. Sometimes in a matter of days.
MY CONCLUSION
All too frequently, we dismiss the legends. We know that quite often that legends are actually based on fact. Look at Heinrich Schliemann. It is hard to believe that before his excavation; almost everyone thought that the city of Troy was a complete legend fabricated for the apocryphal texts.
We also know that Christopher Columbus was not the first European to “discover” America. We have definitive proof of Viking incursions on the North American continent that come centuries before Columbus. Occasionally, there are artifacts that show up in places as disparate as Minnesota and Texas showing pre-Columbian visits from Europeans. Although dismissed, one has to ask is it because they are hoaxes or are they because of the preconceptions of the researchers? In any case, to think that it was impossible for explorers prior to Columbus to have come to the American continents is ridiculous and, I think, somewhat arrogant.
Keep in mind, one of the reasons we may not know anything about the existence of these earlier expeditions may be as simple as the situation whereby they never returned from their voyage. By death or assimilation, their return were neither guaranteed nor historically necessary for these expeditions (one or many) to have existed. In addition, for strategic reasons, these expeditions may have been kept secret.
Given the fact that we did not definitively know of Viking excursions to the American continent from around the 11th or 12th Centuries, it is highly possible that there could have been other excursions in the 10th Century. If one or more ships made contact with the Mayan Empire, they need not have been hostile to literally wipe out the Empire in very short order by the very situation of existing in their environment.
It could be just that easy to solve:
The Mayan Empire could have been wiped out by exposure to Europeans.
