Mesoamerican Civilization: "Kings, Temples, and Pyramids: Chronicles of Mesoamerica"

Mesoamerican

    Mesoamerican civilization is the complex of indigenous cultures that developed in parts of Mexico and Central America before Spanish exploration and conquest in the 16th century. In the organization of its kingdoms and empires, the sophistication of its monuments and cities, and the extent and refinement of its intellectual accomplishments, the Mesoamerican civilization, along with the comparable Andean civilization farther south, constitutes a New World counterpart to those of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China.

    A brief treatment of Mesoamerican civilization follows. For full treatment, see pre-Columbian civilizations.

    Archaeologists have dated human presence in Mesoamerica to possibly as early as 21,000 BCE (though the dating of the Valsequillo finds on which that early date is based remains controversial). By 11,000 BCE, hunting-and-gathering peoples occupied most of the New World south of the glacial ice cap covering northern North America. The cooler climate of this period as compared with that of the present day supported a grassland vegetation, especially in the highland valleys, that was ideal for large herds of grazing animals. The shift toward sedentary agriculture apparently began after about 7000 BCE, when dramatic global warming caused the glaciers to retreat and tropical forests to overtake the Mesoamerican grasslands.

    The gradual domestication of successful food plants—most notably a mutant corn (maize) with husks, dating to c. 5300 BCE—over succeeding millennia gave rise to more or less permanent village farming life by about 1500 BCE. In addition to corn, crops included beans, squashes, chili peppers, and cotton. As agricultural productivity improved, the rudiments of civilization emerged during the period designated by archaeologists as the Early Formative (1500–900 BCE). Pottery, which had appeared in some areas of the region as early as 2300 BCE, perhaps introduced from Andean cultures to the south, took on varied and sophisticated forms. The idea of the temple pyramid seems to have taken root during this period.

    Corn cultivation in one area—the humid and fertile lowlands of southern Veracruz and Tabasco, in Mexico—was sufficiently productive to permit a major diversion of human energy into other activities, such as the arts and commerce. Struggles for control of this rich but limited farmland resulted in a dominant landowning class that shaped the first great Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmec.

    San Lorenzo, the oldest known Olmec center, dates to about 1150 BCE, a time when the rest of Mesoamerica was at best on a Neolithic level. The site is most noted for its extraordinary stone monuments, especially the “colossal heads” measuring up to 9 feet (nearly 3 meters) in height and possibly representing players in a ritual ball game (see tlachtli).

    The period known as the Middle Formative (900–300 BCE), during which the La Venta urban complex rose and flourished, was one of increased cultural regionalism. The Zapotec people, for example, attained a high level of development at Monte Albán, producing the first writing and written calendar in Mesoamerica. However, at this site, as well as in the Valley of Mexico, the Olmec presence can be widely detected.

    In the subsequent Late Formative and Classic periods, lasting until about 700–900 CE, the well-known Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Teotihuacán civilizations developed distinctive variations on their shared Olmec heritage. The Maya, for example, brought astronomy, mathematics, calendar making, and hieroglyphic writing, as well as monumental architecture, to their highest expression in the New World. At the same time, Teotihuacán, in the Valley of Mexico, became the capital of a political and commercial empire encompassing much of Mesoamerica.

    Teotihuacán's power diminished after about 600, and for the next several centuries numerous states vied for supremacy. The Toltecs of Tula, in central Mexico, prevailed from about 900 to 1200 (the Early Postclassic Period). Following the Toltec decline, a further period of unrest in the Late Postclassic Period lasted until 1428, when the Aztecs defeated the rival city of Azcapotzalco and became the dominant force in central Mexico. This last native Mesoamerican empire fell to the Spaniards, led by Hernán Cortés, in 1521.

Mesoamerican Indian

    Mesoamerican Indian, member of any of the indigenous peoples inhabiting Mexico and Central America (roughly between latitudes 14° N and 22° N).

    Mesoamerican Indian cultures have a common origin in the pre-Columbian civilizations of the area. The three largest linguistic groups are the Mayan, the Otomanguean, and the Uto-Aztecan. Mayan peoples, except a northeastern enclave, the Huastecs, live in southeastern Mesoamerica. Otomangueans are to be found in a wide area of Mesoamerica between Uto-Aztecan peoples to the north and east and Mayan and other peoples to the south. Some Otomanguean languages (now extinct) were spoken south of the Mayan area along the Pacific coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua, and Chichimeco and North Pame (once spoken in the central desert of highland Mexico) are outside Mesoamerica to the north. The main branches of Otomanguean languages are Oto-Pamean, Chinantecan, Tlapanec-Subtiaba, and Manguean, which constitute the Western group, and Popolocan, Zapotecan, Amuzgo, and Mixtecan, which constitute the Eastern group. As a result of the expansion of the Aztec empire centered in the Valley of Mexico, Uto-Aztecan enclaves are found throughout the area. Tarascan, a language isolate (i.e., a language having no known relatives), is spoken in the highlands of Michoacán, Mexico. (See also Mesoamerican Indian languages.)

Traditional culture patterns

Settlement patterns

    The territorial unit that has prime importance for most Mesoamerican peoples is the municipio, a unit roughly corresponding to a county in Great Britain or the United States. Each municipality has a municipal center where most civic, religious, and marketing activities take place. In the modern pattern, this center is the largest settlement in the area. The usual elements, which vary according to the size and importance of the community, are laid out according to the standard pattern imposed by early Spanish administrators throughout New Spain: a public plaza surrounded by public edifices (church or chapel, curacy, jail, perhaps a school, and a meeting place for civil authorities). Houses situated nearest the plaza are those of the community leaders. Larger communities are often divided into sociopolitical enclaves called barrios.

Social, political, and religious institutions

    The basic social and economic unit of Mesoamerica is the extended family of two to four generations. There is a strong tendency for the extended family to fragment into individual nuclear families, each consisting of one couple and their children. Kinship is usually reckoned bilaterally, with no distinction being made between kin related through males and those related through females. Such distinctions are made in a few Mayan and Zoque communities, and they are common immediately north of Mesoamerica. Those and other facts have led some anthropologists to suggest that small preconquest communities were patrilineal clans or lineages. Named clans and lineages have actually been reported in a few present-day Tzeltal Mayan communities.

Economic institutions

    The cultivation of corn (maize), as well as several secondary crops, provided basic subsistence for all of Mesoamerica. Secondary crops include beans, squash or pumpkins, chili peppers for seasoning, and tomatoes. Additional foods with a limited distribution because of differing climates and terrain are pineapple, sweet potato, cassava (manioc), chayote, vanilla, maguey, nopal (a type of cactus), mesquite, cherimoya, papaya, and avocado. Native commercial plants included cotton, tobacco, henequen for its fiber, and cocoa beans, which served as a medium of exchange. Important commercial crops that have been introduced since European contact include Old World cereals (wheat, barley, oats), bananas, coffee, sugarcane, sesame, and peanuts.

The life cycle

    Christian baptism is the first major event in the life of an individual. Indeed, among Chinantecs, a child is not considered fully human until the rite has been performed. If an unbaptized infant dies, the body is buried immediately without the usual ritual observances—ringing of the church bells, burning of incense, and reading and singing of prayers in the home, at the church, and at the graveside.

Modern developments

    In the latter half of the 20th century, Mesoamerican Indians experienced increased access to material goods and the global economy. They generally accepted technological changes that improved their economic position and resisted externally imposed changes that affected their traditional social life. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, political strife (up to and including civil war) in Mexico and several Central American countries severely disrupted life for many Mesoamerican people.

Mesoamerican architecture

    Mesoamerican architecture, building traditions of the indigenous cultures in parts of Mexico and Central America before the 16th-century Spanish conquest. For the later tradition, see Latin American architecture. The idea of constructing temple pyramids appears to have taken hold early. La Venta, the center of Olmec culture (c. 800–400 BCE), contains one of the earliest pyramidal structures, a mound of earth and clay 100 feet (30 meters) high. Mesoamerican pyramids were generally earth mounds faced with stone. Typically of stepped form, they were topped by a platform or temple that only privileged community members were allowed to approach. The best-known include the Pyramid of the Sun (rivaling the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Al-Jīzah) and Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán, the Castillo at Chichén Itzá, and largest of all, the 177-foot (54-metre) Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl at Cholula. The Classic period (100–900 CE) saw the flourishing of Mayan architecture, in which the corbeled vault made its first appearance in the Americas. Ceremonial centers in the Maya Lowlands proliferated, as did inscribed and dated stelae and monuments. Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Palenque, and Uxmal all attained their glory in these centuries. A common feature at these sites is a tlachtli, or ball court. The raised platforms of the tlachtli were often the architectural center of ancient cities. See also Monte Albán.

Nazca

    Nazca, culture located on the southern coast of present-day Peru during the Early Intermediate Period (c. 200 BC–AD 600), called from the Nazca Valley but including also the Pisco, Chincha, Ica, Palpa, and Acarí valleys. Nazca pottery is polychrome. Modeling was sometimes employed, particularly in the later phases; it is, however, rather simply done. In the polychrome painting, it is not unusual for four or more colors to have been employed. Backgrounds are usually white or red, with designs outlined in black and filled in with various shades of red, orange, blue-gray, or purple. The designs are naturalistic (people, animals, birds, fish, plants) but quite stylized and often stiff or angular. Early Nazca pottery tends to be confined to either open bowl forms or double-spouted jars with flat bridge handles, and the painted designs are relatively uncomplicated and bold; the Late Nazca (Ica) style runs to other vessel forms, including some modeled effigies, and the designs incorporate more fine detail.

Publisher: M. Celio Durrani

Source: Britannica