Mesoamerica is a region that extends from Central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. This culture area included some of the most complex and advanced cultures of the Americas, including the Olmec, Teotihuacan, the Maya, and the Aztec. Archaeological research has established a set of phases with regionally distinct and sometimes even site specific phase names. There are an abundance of phase names in use in Mesoamerica, so we will look at the stages or periods known as Paleo-Indian, the Archaic, the Preclassic (or Formative), the Classic, and the Postclassic.
In the beginning the Paleo-Indian period refers to mobile hunter-foragers. Evidence for this period is scarce but we do know that the type of religion was based on the co-residing group is sacred, and so are the plants and animals upon which life depends.
Next, the Archaic period concentrated on plants and animals that came to characterize specific regions. The religion was based on sedentism and food production that paved the way for important social changes, the focus of sacredness shifted as well, the most important food crops received more ritual attention than did other useful plants and animals. The early development of pottery, often seen as a sign of sedentism, has been documented as a number of sites.
For all peoples of Mesoamerica, the world around them was vital and living, and had spiritual substance, a theory sometimes referred to as animism. The earth itself was perceived as a living being, caves and springs were entries into a new world, the start of the beginnings and endings of a cyclical religion. Mesoamerica creation myths have in common the idea that the present world is one in a series, that previous worlds were destroyed, along with their inhabitants. We will look at the stages of these creation myths in just a minute.
Now on to the Formative period, the first complex civilizations to develop in Mesoamerica were the Olmec, who arose in the marshy lowlands of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. They created sculptures from stone, jade and ceramics. San Lorenzo now remains as a huge platform upon which the Olmecs erected and buried some of their colossal heads, which were portraits of their rulers. The next site is La Vento, which shows the type of architecture that we associate with great civilizations, a massive pyramid towers over its surroundings, and was the cornerstone of an extensive and elaborate group of platforms and plazas. Another one of its main sites is Tenochtitlan, which was surrounded by a lake and was a verdant green island crosscut by glittering canals and plastered roads. The city’s center was dominated by the pyramids of the Great Temple precinct and to the south, the city’s main plaza, an expansive open square. Religion was based on the most important family in the tribal village or chieftain claimed a special and more direct relationship to supernatural powers. Public practice of religion became an institution, requiring the loyalty of all members of a society. Mesoamerican culture developed and thrived around such foods as maize. Village agriculture was the mainstay of Mesoamerican life in this time. The late Formative period saw the rise of the Maya in the southern Maya highlands and lowlands and at a few sites in the northern Maya lowlands. By 1500 BC civic ceremonial architectures was in evidence, with two important types of building, the ball court and the elite residence, that would be found in virtually every important Mesoamerican site. In the Valley of Oaxaca, San Jose Mogote developed some of the earliest examples of ceremonial structures, the use of adobe, and hieroglyphic writing. Also, one of the first to demonstrate inherited status, signifying a radical shift in socio-cultural and political structure.
The Classic periods developed many states and proto-states, particularly in the central highlands of Mexico and the Maya lowlands. States were Tikal, which was founded when Teotihuacan sent out traders, envoys and colonists all over Mesoamerica and one group reached the Maya region in 378 AD and they even installed one of their own as king. Tikal comes to be politically, economically, and militarily dominate much of the southern Maya lowlands during the Early Classic. Towards, the end of the early classic conflict would lead to Tikal’s military defeat at the hands of Caracol in 562 and a period commonly known as the Tikal Hiatus. We know all of this because the Maya documented their history with the hieroglyphic script that they inscribed into stone, and painted into books and onto ceramic vessels and plastered walls. This practice, plus the Maya refinement of the Mesoamerican calendric system, lasted for over 600 years. The Maya remain the best-know of Mesoamerican cultures. The collapse of Maya civilization in the lowlands was a gradual process, beginning with environmental degradation that ended with the tropical forest reclaiming the farmlands within a few centuries.
The Postclassic period culminated the establishment of the great tribute empire of the Aztecs, a political entity that covered much of modern Mexico. Mayapan rose and dominated the north for 200 years, after this it revolved around a number of large towns or city-states. The early portion of the postclassic correlates with the rise of the Toltec and an empire based at their capital, Tula. The religion of this time was what I had mentioned before, creation myths. They believed that they and we are in the 5th world, a product of the fifth creation of the life-giving sun. Each of the five worlds has had a patron deity and a human-or nearly human population. The four previous worlds were catastrophically destroyed, and the present world is scheduled to have a cataclysmic end (the Maya predict that the present world is scheduled to end on the date equivalent to our December 23, 2012. Creating humans gods accomplished by grinding up the bones of extinct humans and mixing them with the blood of the gods. Humans owed a debt to the gods with was repaid with the blood of a sacrifice, either drawing one’s own blood, or the sacrificial killing of an animal or human being. The era before the present one saw the exploits of two sets of twins who battled gods in the underworld. The creator couple gave birth to the first set of twins, which included Han Hanahph, an avatar of the Maize God. After his decapitation he miraculously conceived twin sons, the Hero Twins who themselves battled scheming gods and died in the underworld, but were reborn. These cyclical patterns of death and regeneration are typical of this culture. The Postclassic ends with the arrival of the Spanish and their subsequent conquest of the Aztec between 1519 and 1521. This was the end of their culture as they knew it.
The Colonial period from 1521 to the 1800’s found the suppression of indigenous culture and the Republican period brought independence to Mexico.
Mayan Calendar Round
