VII. Mesoamerica

Impressive civilizations developed in Mexico and upper Central America (see 'maps') after about 1400 BC. These civilizations originated from an Archaic hunting-and-gathering way of life that by 7000 BC included cultivation of small quantities of beans, squash, pumpkins, and maize.

By 2000 BC Mexicans had come to depend on their planted fields of these crops, plus amaranth, avocado and other fruits, and chili peppers.

Towns developed, and by 1400 BC the Olmec civilization boasted a capital with palaces, temples, and monuments built on a huge constructed platform about 50 m (about 165 ft) high and nearly 1.6 km (1 mi) long.

The Olmec lived in the jungle of the east coast of Mexico; their trade routes extended hundreds of miles, both to Monte Albán in western Mexico (in what is now Oaxaca State) and to the Valley of Mexico in the central highlands. As the power of the Olmec declined (about 400 BC), the centers in the central highlands grew, and by the 1st century AD the largest city in pre-Columbian Mexico had developed to an urban size at Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico.

Teotihuacán dominated Mexico for the first six centuries AD, trading with Monte Albán and with the Maya kingdoms (see Maya) that had arisen in southwestern Mexico and conquering rivals as far south as the Valley of Guatemala. The capital city covered some 21 sq km (some 8 sq mi) with blocks of apartment houses, markets, many small factories, temples on platforms, and palaces covered with murals. Teotihuacán fell around AD 650.

Later in the same century many Maya cities were abandoned, perhaps economically ruined when their trade with Teotihuacán ended. Other Maya cities, mostly in northern Yucatán, were not so affected.

George Holton/Photo Researchers, Inc.

Located in the northeastern part of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, the Maya city of Tulum was once one of the great cities of Maya civilization. The city was built during the 13th century, 1000 years after the zenith of the culture. Anthropologists still do not know what caused the decline of the civilization. Ruins of cities like Tulum, however, reveal fascinating aspects of the culture that once thrived in southern Mexico and Central America. Temples such as the one in the background were used by the Maya in religious ceremonies honoring their many gods and goddesses.

By 1000 in central Mexico, a new power -the Toltec- began building an empire that extended into the Valley of Mexico and into Maya territory. This empire collapsed in 1168.

By 1433 the Valley of Mexico had regained domination over much of Mexico as a result of an alliance of three neighboring kingdoms. This alliance secured the homeland from which one king, Montezuma I of the Aztecs, began territorial conquests in the 1400s. The empire flourished until 1519, when a Spanish soldier, Hernán Cortés, landed in eastern Mexico and advanced with Mexican allies upon the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán.

Internal strife and a smallpox epidemic weakened the Mexicans and helped Cortés conquer them in 1521.

At the time of these initial Spanish conquests the native peoples of Mexico included those in the domains of the Aztec Empire and of the powerful kingdoms of the Mixtec rulers in what is now Puebla State and the Tarascan in Michoacán State, and of the Zapotec in Oaxaca, the Tlaxcalan in Michoacán, the Otomí in Hidalgo, and the Totonac in Veracruz; the subjects of the remnants of the Maya state of Mayapán in the Yucatán and of a number of smaller undestroyed Maya states to the south; and many independent groups in the frontier regions, such as the Yaqui, Huichol, and Tarahumara in northern Mexico and the Pipil in the south.

After the Spanish conquest-which took more than two centuries to reach throughout Mexico-most of the Native American peoples were forced to survive as peasants governed by the Spanish-Mexican upper class.

The culture area of Mesoamerica-Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, western Honduras, and western Nicaragua-was one of farming villages producing maize, beans, squash, amaranth, turkeys, and other foods, supporting large city markets where traders sold tools, cloth, and luxury goods imported over long land and sea trade routes.

In the cities lived manufacturers and their workers, merchants, the wealthy class, and priests and scholars who recorded literary, historical, and scientific works in native-language hieroglyphic texts (astronomy was particularly advanced).

Cities were adorned with sculptures and brilliant paintings, often depicting the Mesoamerican symbols of power and knowledge: the eagle, lord of the heavens; the jaguar, lord of the earth; and the rattlesnake, associated with wisdom, peace, and the arts of civilization.

Women sit in the open air in Oaxaca, Mexico, weaving strips of cloth in the traditional style of the native people of Mexico. Finished cloth hangs from lines in the background. Uniphoto, Inc.

*** see also Pre Columbian Art & Architecture, VI Mesoamerican Area ***