Aztec vs. Zulu

Zulu used throwing spears, Shaka decided that was gay so they stopped

Aztecs for sheer organization and tactical variety. Their weapons might not be metal but they have fucking armor.

Also: history is on the Aztecs' side.

Zulus only rose to dominance because they were surrounded by literal spearchuckers due to the ceremonial warfare of what is now Natal-Zulu land and the Zulus- who were at the losing end of this skirmish-ceremonial warfare- decided to escalate the violence by melee combat and outright extermination. It's like you enter into a fight where everyone agrees to use their fists and then you started ignoring all the rules and pull out a machete.

Meanwhile the Aztecs emerged in an area where everyone wanted to kill them for being fucking assholes and they came out on top.

It's disembowling, not decapitating, at least if you mean Del Castillo. And the Macana was very high maintenence, the blades shatered like crazy.
But in a straight fight I would be in the Aztec side.

Zulus have Iron are significantly taller, and stronger.

Aztecs have obsidian, and have an abundance of wood to work with.

Zulu win, European diseases killed off the Aztecs in a century, African diseases would do it in a decade.

Aztec warfare wasn't nearly as brutal or stategic as Zulu. In a fair fight, Zulus stomp.

Aztecs were more brutal

Zulus just stabbed you to death or burned you if you were a huge cunt

The Zulus may have been a bit more systematic in warfare and had iron, but everything else counts against them. The entire way of life, settlement, economy of the zulus was far less developed. The had a 50 thousand warriors, at the most, spread throughout their areas, while tenochtitlan itself had about as much already. The Aztecs lived in fortified cities that took the spanish with all their knowledge about siegecraft two years to take, the zulus lived in literal grass huts.

Of course, this is all due to the climate and terrrain they lived in - had the aztecs been driven into a steppe at some point, they would have been inferior to the zulus just for lack of livestock animals and iron. Still, given a theoretical situation where these two with their respective terrains bordered each other, it would be a case of the aztecs undertaking occasional slave raids with the zulus being unable to do anything but fight them off as best they could.

The Aztec have a truly enormous numerical advantage, and iron spearheads aren't that big of an advantage when all armor would be soft armor anyway.

Aztecs had more warroirs tho

An atalatyl could peirce chain mail allegedly

Probably the Zulu because of sheer numbers.

Are there any other African warrior groups worth talking about? Things seem to begin and end with The Zulus, hence spear chuckers and the retardation that is The Black Panther movie.

The Ashanti, the Bini, the Ethiopians, the Dahomeans, the Mandinka, the Maasai, the Hausa, the Kanuri etc.

Imbangala get honorable mention for just being ferocious. I honestly never understood the Zulu-wank. Any of the former would have wiped the floor with them.

>A more interesting question would be Zulu unite with Aztecs against the conquistadors and see who would win.

lets see
>Aztecs lose a battle outnumbering their enemy 100:1
>Aztecs now fight a battle 125:1 except now 25% has weapons, less armor, and less tactical advantages
the result would be different?

They had stronger weapons.
Zulus were unarmored, Aztecs cut down lightly armored warriors, let alone unarmored warriors.

Zulu-wank, I'd argue stems from them having a mini series about Shaka. Remember your lay person gets his or her knowledge of history from pop culture. This mini was pretty big when it came out.
youtu.be/ylY_m-h4B-k

nigger, you what? Spanish had nowhere near that much of a numerical disadvantage, they had the help of almost all the Aztecs neighbors because everybody hated those cunts

Zulu's easily

Aztec warfare was based on taking people alive for sacrifice so was usually non-lethal, they also had poor command structures, no iron and didn't even organize their missile throwers to shoot in volleys.

The Zulu's on the other hand were like African Romans (minus the logistics) they could field enormous proportions of their population on the battlefield, had high mobility and fought wars of annihilation, with organized armies that had a more advanced officer corps than the Aztecs.

Zulus also had more firearms in 1879 than people realize they just didn't know how to deploy them properly and had poor quality black powder.

Zulus might lose a war of attrition to to Aztecs because they couldn't keep their armies in the field for long as they had no supply system, but they would fuck them up in the short term.

Anglos pretty much dominate English Lingo history for obv. and therefore have to ham up that one time they were embarassingly defeated by cunts wielding leather shields and short spears

>Aztec warfare was based on taking people alive for sacrifice so was usually non-lethal,
Meme.

1) That happened in flower-wars. Not in actual military campaigns where they fought over political aims.

The Aztecs practiced a violent (than usual) form of Nahuatl religion that shocked the other Nahuatl speaking states so bad, they wanted them all dead. The Aztecs triumphed over other city-states that were trying to exterminate them.
2) Even then: just consider the fact that they were capturing other people alive while their opponents were not returning the favor.

The Zande were also pretty vicious. There were some African groups with chain mail armour irc.

>

>Sandoval was appointed to the command of the third division, consisting of twenty-four horse, fourteen crossbow-men and musketeers, and one hundred and fifty foot armed with shields and swords. To this division were added 8000 Indians from the townships of Chalco, Huexotzinco, and other places in alliance with us.
(...)
>They had driven one of our brigantines between the stakes, killed two of the men, and wounded all the rest. (...) the Mexicans had already fastened many ropes to her, and were trying to tow her off into the town behind their canoes. Sandoval's encouraging words were not lost upon us, and we fought with such determination that at length we rescued the vessel. (...) when all in a moment the large drum of Huitzilopochtli again resounded from the summit of the temple, accompanied by all the hellish music of shell trumpets, horns, and other instruments. The sound was truly dismal and terrifying, but still more agonizing was all this to us when we looked up and beheld how the Mexicans were mercilessly sacrificing to their idols our unfortunate companions (...) On that terrible day the loss of the three divisions amounted to sixty men and seven horses.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo. True history of the Conquest of New Spain, Chapters CL, CLII

>They would let the two fight it out and take over the moment they're weak like they've done for dozens of peoples the last 500 years.
the spaniards were fighting each other the whole time too
only difference is that they had steel weapons/armor, horses, artillery and immunity to salmonella and smallpox
spaniards were also fighting to the death unlike the pyramid retards who tried to capture their enemies alive so they could sacrifice them in a ceremony

okay fair enough, my knowledge of the zulus is much better than of the Aztecs but i do still contend that the Zulu were more militarily organized.

>Aztecs
>effeminate manlet empire armed with sticks and stone knives
Zulus would obliterate them.

The Aztecs fielded hundreds of thousands of warriors they’d outnumber the zulus.

well the retards went full flower war against the spanish

>but i do still contend that the Zulu were more militarily organized.

The Aztecs were a settled feudal state with a standing officer corps and a levy system capable of summoning hundreds of thousands of men.

On top of that, they were in a state of near constant warfare, while also practicing a culture that emphasised martial skill as the ONLY (not one of many, but the only) route to serious authority. Even the sons of nobles (who received the highest level of formal education) were educated in only two major disciplines: religion and warfare. Many of their sports were played with the goal of killing the opponant (not only the ball game, but also practices such as tying captives to posts, giving them blunt clubs, and setting them against fully armed young warriors). Their religion revolved around mass slaughter and glorying in the spillage of blood. The wealth of their society was maintained by continuous conquest and tribute extraction, not to mention flower wars.

All of this and more, from a settled civilisation, that built magnificent cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, constructed some of the largest and most impressive pre-modern structures anywhere on earth, and sustained and administered an empire with a population larger than the HRE.

They were the most extreme 'warrior culture' ever to have existed, and they were the only one (with the possible exception of the Assyrians) that became settled and built great things, without abandoning the dedication to total carnage that inspired their ancestors and was at the heart of their power.

By comparison, the Zulus were a largely illiterate tribal society of pastoral and subsistence farmers (who none the less, innovated in their area of unarmoured spear based infantry warfare) with a tiny fraction of the population (the entire Zulu Kingdom c.1830 had a smaller population than Tenochtitlan ALONE in 1500), wealth, and resources, and none of the institutions of a settled, civilised empire.

The conquistadors never won against the aztecs to begin with.

I'd say Aztecs simply because they actually wore armor. Basic cloth armor, but still armor.

Would they perform all the pre-battle rituals as well or just straight up head on?
I recall reading that the Aztecs would first inform their opponent that they are going to be attacked. Hilariously enough the Aztecs were surprised when the Spaniards instantly attacked and killed them after finding it out instead of performing the ritual in return

Even with iron advantage there's no way zulu would ever win a full blown war. Aztecs vastly outnumber them, have way more variety and tactical organization; zulus with zero Armour would get utterly raped by massed aztec missile fire and obsidian weapons

>were educated in only two major disciplines: religion and warfare.
I thought the schools taught agriculture and warfare? Or was that for non-noble folk?

The same reason why Afghanistan is known as "graveyard of empires" (it isn't) and why Erwin Rommel gets hyped so hard. Because Anglos love to portray people who kicked their ass as some kind of unbeatable monsters.

I thought Rommel was hyped because of "le clean innocent general dindu nuffin" thing rather than his competence?

Germans portray him like that, it was the British who made him out to be some unbeatable commander.

they still have the unstoppable disease advantage, Ebola would wreck havock on those cities, worse the any small pox would.

in a war of attrition the zulu would always win.

>I thought the schools taught agriculture and warfare? Or was that for non-noble folk?

There were two kinds of schools; one for commoners and lowly noblemen (telpochcalli), and another for higher noblemen (calmecac).

Both of them placed a primary emphasis on warfare and readiness for warfare. In the telpochcalli duty to the community and manual skills (including farming). While in the calmecac, emphasis was given first (obviously) to warfare, then to religion, literacy, and other cultural aspects (mostly tied to either religion or warfare).

The Aztecs placed an incredibly pronounced emphasis on education as a tool for maintaining a good society. And the core of Aztec society was death and killing (either in warfare or in service to the Gods), thus warfare, and the traits that make good warriors (self discipline, selflessness, group loyalty), were emphasised to a ridiculous degree, with conditions being, ironically, spartan, in a way that exceeded anything the Spartan myth would make them out to be (even 300's fanciful depiction of Spartan life doesn't quite compare to the level of severity the Aztecs took in training their people).

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tēlpochcalli

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calmecac

Interesting, I recently read that they had this sort of ritual to celebrate the god of Tezcatlipoca or something by dressing up an Aztec to be the impersonator (ixiptla) of the God, he would then proceed to be sacrificed in the end by having his heart taken out. But before that he'd be basically respected by everyone and would have like a harem or something. I was wondering did they choose the ixiptla by random or was it voluntary?

Don't forget the epic war movie "Zulu".

I want to congatulate OP on the first vs thread I see that is actually a real debate, mostly is always who would win a tank vs 3 horses and stuff like that. In my opinion if the aztec full triple alliance force faced the zulu the aztecs would win, it is important to remember the spanish did not conquer them alone, for example to take Tlatelolco they send 50 spanish and 13,000 tlaxcallan and cempoal warriors. So even starved, and with 50% wiped by plagues they resisted in a stoic way.

Stop calling them Aztecs. They are Mexicans

>people who have built their capital on a fucking lake, obsidian weapons and atlatls
>vs some niggas with short ass melee spears, some inaccurate ass muskets, grass huts, and a standard flanking manuever
Gee, OP, you tell me.