| TEXTS |
CONTEXTS |
| |
1500
Pedro Álvares Cabral sights the coast of Brazil
and claims it for Portugal |
| |
1502
Montezuma II ascends the throne of Tenochtitlán
• Maya trading canoe contacted in Bay of Honduras
during fourth voyage of Columbus |
| 1508
Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadis of Gaul,
a chivalric romance that inspired the future conquistadors
of Mexico |
|
| 1519–1526
Hernán Cortés, six letters to Charles I
of Spain on the conquest of Mexico, with descriptions
of Aztec warfare, statecraft, and daily life |
1519–1522 Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan around the world
1521 Fall of Tenochtitlán, conquered
for Spain by Hernán Cortés
1524 Fall of Quiché, conquered
for Spain by Pedro de Alvarado
1525 Execution of Cuauhtémoc,
last Aztec emperor, hanged by order of Cortés
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1528 Annals of Tlatelolco, earliest Latin-script
chronicle in the Aztec language
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1528 Beginning of civil war between Huascar and Atahualpa,
rivals for the Inca throne
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1533 Fall of the Inca empire, conquered for Spain by Francisco
Pizarro
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1547–1579 Florentine Codex, the encyclopedic compilation of
Aztec lore and literature
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1550–1581 Cantares Mexicanos, principal source of Aztec poetry
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| 1554–1558
Popol Vuh, sacred book of the Quiché Maya
of Guatemala |
|
| 1556–
Books of Chilam Balam, native compilations of Maya lore,
including histories, prayers, and prophecies, still in
use in the Yucatán |
|
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1558 Legend of the Suns, history of the world according
to the Aztecs, written in the Aztec language by an anonymous scribe
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1572 Fall of Vilcabamba, last outpost of the Inca empire
|
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1588 England defeats the Spanish Armada
|
| 1590s?
Aesop's Fables translated into Aztec |
1598 Beginning of Spanish settlement in New Mexico
|
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1607 Founding of Jamestown, first permanent English settlement
in North America
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1609–1617 Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, Royal Commentaries
of the Incas, history of pre-Conquest Peru by an author who was
himself a son of the Incas
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1611 Shakespeare, The Tempest, inspired in part by
Silvester Jourdain's A Discovery of the Bermudas and thus the
first major European work of imaginative literature to touch on a New
World theme
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1619 Beginning of African slavery in North America
|
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1620 Arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth
(Massachusetts), bringing English Puritans
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1632 Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
True History of the Conquest of New Spain |
1630s League of the Iroquois, in existence since the 1400s,
enters recorded history
|
| 1640
Plays by Calderón de la Barca and Lope de Vega
translated into Aztec |
|
| 1649
Luis Lasso de la Vega, Huei Tlamahuiçoltica
. . . (By Means of a Great Miracle . . . ), legend of
the Virgin of Guadalupe, a cornerstone of Mexican nationalism,
published in the Aztec language, Mexico City |
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