The Mesoamerican civilizations represent a long continuum of complex societies that emerged independently in Central America and southern Mexico from roughly 1500 BCE to the early 16th century CE, prior to Spanish conquest. Rather than a single empire or linear progression, Mesoamerica was shaped by successive cultural horizons in which shared ideas, such as maize agriculture, ritual calendars, urban ceremonial centers, and sacred kingship, were continually adapted to local environments and political structures. These societies developed without large domesticated animals or metal tools, relying instead on intensive agriculture, labor organization, and sophisticated knowledge systems.
Mesoamerican civilizations did not need the Europeans to give them civilization. All of the cradles of civilization had a stable food source—this provided the people with an adequate supply of food to fuel a population explosion. In North America, corn was developed at least 9,000 years ago in what is today central Mexico, spreading to what is now North America and the Andean region of South America. Corn was essential to the evolution of indigenous cultures, so much so that indigenous peoples worshipped maize. Corn made possible the changes in modes of production and helped mobilize labor to meet the challenges of population growth and cope with environmental change. Corn, like the pyramids, was a product of human labor and ingenuity.
Stages of Development
40,000 bc–8000 bc - Paleoindian
Hunting and Gathering. Characterized by bands of hunters and by seed and fruit gatherers.
8000 bc–2000 bc - Archaic
Incipient agriculture. Domestication of maize and other plants. Earliest corn grown in Tehuacán circa 5000 bc.
2000 bc–ad 200 - Formative Preclassic
Incipient agriculture. Domestication of maize and other plants. Earliest corn grown in Tehuacán circa 5000 bc. Intensification of farming and growth of villages. Olmeca chiefdom stands out. Reliance on maize and the spread of a religious tradition that focuses on the earth and fertility. Organizational evolution, 1200–400 bc: numerous chiefdoms evolve through Mesoamerica. The Maya appear during this period. Monte Albán is established circa 400 bc–ad 200. Rapid population growth, a market system, and agricultural intensification occur. Development of the solar calendar. Villages grow into centers.
ad 200–900 - Classic
The Golden Age of Mesoamerica. The evolution of statelevel societies. The emergence of kings. Priests become more important. Complex irrigation and population growth. Excellent ceramics, sculpture, and murals. Building of huge pyramids. Teotihuacán had more than 150,000 people, the largest city outside China.
ad 900–1519 - Postclassic
Growth of City-States and Empires. Civil, market, and commercial elements become more important. The Azteca and Tarascan empires emerge as dominant powers. Use of metals and increased trade.
The Corn People: An Overview
The earliest known villages in the Americas appeared along the coasts as early as 12,500 years ago. But it was not until around 7000 bc, when the hunters and fruit gatherers began to farm, that they began to alter or control their environment. In the Valley of Mexico, the climate changed, and water sources, game, and flora became scarce. As the population grew, the people were forced to turn to agriculture or perish. The evolution of this civilization was made possible by the cultivation of maize (corn). The origin appears to be the central valley of Mexico as early as 9,000 years ago.
The European invasion put the corn cultures in danger of extinction. This threat continues today. About a quarter of the U.S. commercial corn crop contains GMOs, and after harvest it is mixed with conventional corn. This concerns Mexicans since GMO foods and seed are an environmental threat to wild plants and species such as the monarch butterfly.
The Olmeca 1500 bc–500 bc
Around 3000 bc, a qualitative change took place in the life of the corn people. The agriculture surpluses and concentration of population encouraged specialization of labor. Shamans became more important in society. Tools became more sophisticated and pottery more crafted.
Because the Olmeca civilization was so advanced, some people speculate that the Olmeca suddenly arrived from Africa—or even from outer space! Most scholars, however, agree that Olmeca, known as the mother culture of Mexico, was the product of the cross-fertilization of indigenous cultures that included other Mesoamerican civilizations. The Olmeca “built the first kingdoms and established a template of world view and political symbolism the Maya would inherit.
One of a few known primary civilizations in the world—that is, state-like organizations that evolved without ideas taken from other systems—the Olmeca culture is one of the world’s first tropical lowland civilizations, an antecedent to later Mayan “Classic” culture. The Olmeca settled villages and cities in the Gulf Coast lowlands, mostly in present-day southeastern Veracruz and Tabasco.
Around 2000 bc, the production of maize and other domesticated crops became sufficient to support whole villages. A second breakthrough occurred with the introduction of pottery throughout the region. The earliest pottery came from the Oco, who populated the Pacific coast of Chiapas.
Although not much is known about the Oco, their pottery is found in Veracruz. The development of pottery allowed the storage of food surpluses, encouraging the Olmeca and other Mesoamerican people to form small villages.
The Olmeca began to build villages on the Gulf Coast as early as 1500 bc. By 1150 bc the Olmeca civilization formed settlements of thousands of people; constructed large formal temples built on earthen mounds; and carved colossal nine-foot-high stone heads. San Lorenzo was one such settlement, an urban center with public buildings, a drainage system, and a ball court.
La Venta (population 18,000), a major ceremonial site in Tabasco, eclipsed San Lorenzo (2,500) as the center of the Olmeca civilization in about 900 bc. Tres Zapotes (3,000) would eventually overtake La Venta. By the Middle Formative period, other chiefdoms emerged throughout Mesoamerica. Trade networks linked the Olmeca with contemporaries in Oaxaca and Central Mexico. In the Valley of Oaxaca, San José Mogote functioned as a primary center, as did Chalcatzingo in the present-day state of Morelos.
The Olmeca left behind archaeological evidence of their hieroglyphic script and the foundations for the complex Mayan and Zapotecan calendars. The Olmeca developed three calendars: a ritual calendar with a 260-day cycle that was used for religious purposes; a solar calendar with 18 months of 20 days, plus 5 days tacked on (corresponding to our 365-day calendar); and a combination of the two calendars in which religious days determined tasks such as the naming of a newborn infant. In any case, the Olmeca used a more accurate calendar before the time of Christ than the West uses today. The development of the calendar required a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics.
Pre-Columbian astronomy was also far ahead of Europe’s. The writing system of the Olmeca is still being deciphered. These hieroglyphic texts represent more than a history; they also constitute literature. Other Olmeca legacies are the ball game and the feathered-serpent belief of Quetzalcoatl that they shared with most Mesoamerican cultures.
The growth of agricultural surpluses increased trade, which gave the Olmeca the luxury of developing advanced art forms. Although they are best known for the massive carved full-rounded heads, they also crafted smaller figurines of polished jade. Religion and the natural world inspired the subject matter for Olmeca art. The Olmeca culture passed its organizational forms, religion, and art to the Maya, Teotihuacán, and later Azteca societies. About 300 bc, Olmeca civilization supposedly mysteriously vanished. In truth, it continued to exist from 150 bc to ad 450, in what some scholars call the Epi-Olmec period.
The Maya
Mayan agricultural villages appeared about 1800 bc. The Maya formed a trade network that interacted with other chiefdoms in the Gulf Coast, Oaxaca, and Central Mexico. Merchants from Teotihuacán lived in Maya centers such as Tikal from at least the first century ad. The Maya experimented with advanced forms of agriculture, dug irrigation canals, and reclaimed wetlands by constructing raised fields. As their population increased, they built larger ceremonial centers.
From ad 250 to 900, the Maya lived in an area roughly half the size of Texas (today the Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo and part of Chiapas and Tabasco.
Agriculture and trade produced prosperity and gave the Maya the ability to build temple-pyramids, monuments, and palaces of limestone masonry in dozens of states. They also used their astronomy skills to link earthly events to those of the heavens. Their calendars were a product of time science.
Maya Hieroglyphic Writing
The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing is leading to a greater understanding of the Maya culture, including the identification of dynasties of rulers and an understanding of how the various people interacted. One of the greatest rulers of the ancient city of Yaxchilán, Shield Jaguar, lived almost 100 years.
Maya glyphs suggest that a ball game, played throughout Mesoamerica, served as a means to communicate with the gods. It also enhanced social and economic organization and was a substitute for war. Revered by both the Maya and the Azteca, the game possessed deep religious significance. The object of the game, which was played by small groups in an outdoor stone court, was to pass a large rubber ball through a stone ring at opposite ends of the court.
Their knowledge of mathematics allowed the Maya to develop an advanced calendar. The astronomy of the Maya was not limited to observation of the stars and approximate predictions of the movements of the heavenly bodies. Using sophisticated numerical systems and various tabular calculations in conjunction with the hieroglyphic script, Maya astronomers calculated figures running into the millions.
At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Maya still wrote glyphs—not only on stone slate but in handmade books. In 1566 in the Yucatán, Friar Diego de Landa read a great number of Maya books. According to him, because the books were about the indigenous antiquities and sciences, which he believed were based on nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil, he burned them. However, not all of the Maya books were burned; some were sent to Europe as part of the booty seized by Cortés from the Native Americans. The Spaniards could not decipher them, and over the years, most crumbled into dust or were thrown out as trash.
Maya Society
Like other Mesoamerican societies, the Maya lived within the matrix of the community. Multiple generations of a clan that had a common ancestor resided in one household compound.
In Palenque during the sixth and seventh centuries, there were two women rulers, Lady Kanal-Ikal and Lady Zac-Kuk. Both were the descendants of kings and thus legitimate rulers. They inherited the throne and passed it on to their children. Lady Zac-Kuk was the granddaughter of Lady Kanal-Ikal and was the mother of the Great Pacal, who built grand buildings as testimony to her greatness. Indeed, Pacal got his legitimacy through his mother’s line of ancestry. She enjoyed great prestige because she lived for 25 years into his rule. Pacal died in his nineties.
After ad 909 the Maya built few new temples, and even fewer cities, except in the northern Yucatán at sites such as Chichén Itzá and Tulum. Chichén Itzá was first founded about ad 400 and was governed by priests. The architecture reflects this religious dominance and there are many representations of the god Chaac, the Maya rain god, on the buildings. With the arrival of the Itzá from Central Mexico about ad 850, the city was rebuilt and images of the god Kukulcán, the plumed serpent, became numerous. Tulum and other coastal cities were important centers for sea-based commerce.
The Maya constructed a mosaic of sunken gardens, fruit trees, and terraces—a system that used the rainfall, fertile soil, and shade of the jungle to their advantage without permanently harming it. Maya farmers dug canals and built raised fields in the swamps for intensive agriculture.
Although the cities of the Maya lowlands shared a common culture, they were not politically unified. Each region had a capital city and numerous smaller subject cities, towns, and villages.
Teotihuacán
Teotihuacán, the “city of the gods,” located in the Valley of Teotihuacán in a pocket-like extension of the Valley of Mexico, became the primary center of Mesoamerican civilization around 200 bc. Like the other city-states, by the end of the Formative Preclassic period, it concentrated sufficient authority and technology to make a quantitative and qualitative leap from a loose collection of settlements to a unified empire. The civic–religious complex laid the foundation for this development. At its height, at the end of the sixth century ad, Teotihuacán covered about eight square miles. It may have housed more than 150,000 inhabitants, making it the largest city in the world outside China.
In the Early Classic period, the people of Teotihuacán lived in apartment compounds, with some larger than others. There were more than 2,000 separate residential structures within the city. Built by the rural peasants, the outlying villages were linked to the core city by commerce.
Urbanism and Trade
Teotihuacán was a major manufacturing center in the Early Classic period. The products of its craft workers spread over much of Mesoamerica, as far south as Honduras. The pottery, especially, represents Teotihuacán’s highest achievement as a city and empire. Its hallmark feature is the cylindrical vessel with three slab legs and a cover. Vessels shaped like modern flower vases and cream pitchers graced the city. So fabled was Teotihuacán that Azteca royalty annually made pilgrimages to the city.
Teotihuacán civilization was contemporary with the Maya Classic period and acted as the hub of trade networks from Central America to today’s southwestern United States. Without trade, the Maya culture would have remained at the chiefdom stage instead of evolving into a sophisticated world system that stressed material production and common ideas. It grew to a population of 100,000–200,000.
From Teotihuacán emanated a network of societies such as in the city of Xochicalco, later associated with the Tolteca people. It also remained a center of long-distance trade, continuing its history of robust mercantile contact with other regions.
The Tolteca
The Postclassic period is characterized by a secularization of Mesoamerica. Although religion remained important to the Mesoamerican peoples, the civil and commercial sectors of society became more important, and their rise led to the expansion of market systems and long-distance exchange. The Tolteca emerged in what is today central Mexico in about the tenth century ad.
The Tolteca were a dominant force during this period (from about ad 900 to 1150). A subgroup of the Chichimeca, a Nahua-speaking people from the northern desert, the Tolteca controlled the Valley of Mexico. Their capital was Tula (Tollan), about 40 miles north of present-day Mexico City. Founded in the ninth century, Tula incorporated part of the heritage of Teotihuacán, although it is generally associated with Tolteca culture. Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl (Our Prince One-Reed Feathered Serpent) ruled Tula from ad 923 to 947. Ce Acatl is often confused with the Azteca deity Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent who for 1,000 years was part of Mesoamerican mythology.
The Tolteca developed a system of cosmology, practiced religious rites and built grand temples to their gods. In the courtyards of Tula, supporting the roof of the great Temple of Quetzalcóatl, stood 15-foot columns in the form of stylized human figures, specifically, enormous statues of warriors standing stiffly under the weight of their weapons and wearing rigid crowns of eagle feathers. The Plumed Serpent, formerly interpreted in Teotihuacán as the benevolent divinity of agricultural plenty, in Tula became a god of the Morning Star, the archer-god with fearsome arrows.
The Tolteca influence can be seen in a cross-cultural fusion of deities depicted in Mayan glyphs, frescos, and designs.
Tula was the axis of the Tolteca civilization. It controlled most of central Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Gulf Coast, and it is speculated that its interests extended to Chiapas and the Pacific coast. The Tolteca also expanded trade with people as far away as Zacatecas, Veracruz, and Puebla; New Mexico and Arizona; and Costa Rica and Guatemala. They assimilated with many of the peoples that they cultivated ties with. An example is the important Mayan ceremonial center of Chichén-Itzá. The Toltecas added the Observatory, Kukulcán’s Pyramid, the Temple of the Warriors, the Ball Court, and the Group of the Thousand Columns.
Other Corn Civilizations
The Zapoteca were the original occupants of the Valley of Oaxaca. About 4,000 years ago, Oaxaca’s people settled in agricultural villages. Interaction with common ancestors played an important role in integrating autonomous villages. Between 500 bc and 100 bc, a highly centralized, urbanized state emerged with Monte Albán as its principal center. Great plazas, pyramids, a ball court, and underground passageways graced the city. Some evidence exists that the Zapoteca and the Olmeca engaged in long-distance trading that dates to the time of San Lorenzo, and that the Zapoteca later enjoyed good relations with the city of Teotihuacán.
As with the Maya, Zapoteca society was religious; it held that a supreme being created everything, although not by himself, and there was no beginning and no end of the universe. Like other Mesoamerican societies, the Zapoteca wrote in hieroglyphics and were obsessed with astronomical observation. Their 365- and 260-day calendars set a rhythm for their lives, with the latter serving as a religious guide and marking the birthdays of its adherents.
Mitla, in the eastern part of the Oaxacan valley, took on greater importance. Mitla is the best-known Postclassic site, continuously occupied since the Early Formative period, and is thought to have been a Zapoteca religious center. Despite the growth of other societies, the Zapoteca remained a major player in the region.
Meanwhile, in the highlands, the Mixteca increased their influence, and by the eleventh century they interacted with the Zapoteca-speaking people of the valley. There was a high degree of assimilation and intermarriage between the Mixteca and the Zapoteca nobility. The Mixteca established the kingdom of Tututepec on the coast. The Mixteca expanded their power by establishing strong bonds with other city-states through extensive intermarriage.
The Mixteca developed their own art style, influenced by the Zapoteca, and the two cultures created a synthesis. The creations of their goldsmiths and their manuscript illuminations are exceptional. Mixteca manuscripts or codices constitute an illustrated encyclopedia, reflecting religious beliefs and rites and the history of the aboriginal dynasties and national heroes. The style and color range of the illustrations, as well as the symbols linked to the ritual calendar, are also found in their murals. The history depicted in the codices is a holy history, showing an abundance of deities and rituals. The Mixteca also excelled in ceramics, which became the most highly prized ware in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Mexico.
The Tarasco
By the twelfth century, the Tarasco people, also known as the Purépecha, ruled a vast territory in west Mexico, centered in present-day Michoacán. Their exact origin is unknown. Most probably, they were part of the Chichimeca migration.
The Azteca were part of the later wave of Chichimeca. They, along with the Tarascans, formed the Nahuas. The Tarascan civilization was originally formed through political unification of some eight city-states located within the Párzcuaro basin. The Tarasco occupied the region for more than 1,600 years (150 bc–ad 1530). Their development resembled that of other Mesoamerican cultures. Ceramic artifacts link the Tarasco to the old traditions of Chupicuaro (present day Guanajuato). Their pottery and metalwork styles are unique.
The capital city of the Tarasco was Tzintzuntzán, built on the shores of Lake Pátzuaro and dominated by a huge platform that supported five round temples. The Tarasco from Tzintzuntzán forged an empire. Their language and culture almost totally dominated the region. They were excellent craftspeople.
Unlike other Mesoamericans, the Tarasco were not well-known traders. Nevertheless, it is speculated that they did engage in some long-distance trading, even by sea, reaching South America. The capital city dominated the area, although most people lived in rural settlements.
The Tarasco had many deities who, among other things, were associated with animals and calendrical days. Ceremonial dances affirmed their connection with ancestral gods.
The Azteca
Between ad 1325 and 1345, the Azteca founded their capital of Tenochtitlán on an island in Lake Texcoco. The Azteca confederation of city-states reached a population of more than 350,000. They were from a legendary place today called Aztlán. (Some Chicanos say that it was in what is today the southwestern United States; others, in northern Mexico, in the area of Zacatecas.) A network of trade routes linked the high plateau of central Mexico with Maya territories, reaching as far as the most remote northern districts of the empire, in what is now the southwestern United States.
The Azteca farm surpluses underwrote a highly advanced craft-manufacturing economy. The Azteca excelled in the building arts and supplied food for large cities. The growth of market systems gave the Azteca more opportunities to exchange their goods as well as access to other people.
The Azteca benefited from their highly productive agricultural infrastructure. They farmed on raised fields, or chinampas, fashioned by piling earth over the natural growing surface, as a way of reclaiming swampland for cultivation. They stacked flat mounds of fertile river sediment and then deepened the ditches or canals around them to create a waffle-like pattern. The advantage of raised fields was that they could be cultivated year-round, even during the dry season, because swamp water percolated up into the nutrient-rich soil. Five hundred acres of fields could have fed up to 5,200 people.
Mixteca art played an important role in Azteca artistic skill development. Azteca sculpture displayed technical perfection and powerful symbolism. The Azteca knew and appreciated the masterpieces of the civilizations that preceded them and those of contemporaries such as in Monte Albán. They had a well-defined literature, some of which has been preserved through oral testimony. Much of this tradition was conserved in codices, which consist of a combination of pictographs and ideographs. Religious and cosmological themes dominate the manuscripts.
They also had two kinds of schools—one for commoners, the other for nobility. In both, boys and girls were taught rhetoric, history, ritual dancing, and singing; in the Calmecac School for future leaders, the curriculum included law, architecture, arithmetic, astronomy, and agriculture. The poets were frequently kings or military captains from satellite principalities.
Women could enter priesthood. Women enjoyed equal rights under the law and could participate in the economy. They could also hold property.
The Azteca were the beneficiary of Tolteca culture, and many Azteca males took Tolteca wives.
There were male transvestite performers, who are said to have been bisexual, and they enjoyed access to male privileges.
Azteca society was well-ordered and highly moralistic, treating commoners with “consideration, compassion, and mercy. Medical treatment was on a par with Europe’s, and life was less harsh than it was in Europe at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards.
Los Norteños
Corn is bound to the rise of Mesoamerica and sustained the northern people. Mexico’s north had varied societies. The Southwest outside of Mesoamerica and northern Mexico has the longest continuous history of habitation. The indigenous populations of the Southwest shared an agricultural tradition revolving around corn and the use of ceramics.
Similar to what is present-day northern Mexico, many formed homes in villages or rancherías or remained hunters. Agriculture transformed the lives of the people and by 500 bc corn, squash, and beans were grown and pottery was crafted. The cultivation of corn is estimated to have occurred from 1100 bc to 500 bc. This led to complex social and economic systems among the northern peoples, namely the Hohokam and the Mogollon.
Ranchería populations comprised of Opata and Pima Altos lived in northern Sonora.
One of the most successful civilizations was the Hohokam beginning with their transformation about 300 bc, although, as with the Mesoamerican civilizations, the process began hundreds of years before this date.
After about ad 1000 Hohokam villages took on a more urban aspect. Each contained several “great houses,” typically three or four stories high, and numerous smaller dwellings. One city stretched for a mile and included at least 25 compounds of buildings. A vast irrigation network consisting of more than a thousand miles of canals crisscrossed an area of some 10,000 square miles.
Archaeologists estimate that at least 100,000 and possibly a million people lived in these ancient cities. They subsisted on the barren desert, making the desert productive through irrigation and by breeding a variety of drought-tolerant corn that would grow from planting to harvest on a single watering. In addition, they cultivated squash, beans and cotton. Acid-etched shells suggest that the Hohokam traded with tribes a thousand miles to the east.
Present-day Casas Grandes in Chihuahua is set within a vast network of ancient ruins that was once the heart of one of the Southwest’s largest trading centers. The area is still being excavated, and much remains unknown about this center. Small villages surrounded the city of Paquime, which evolved into a sophisticated center with an irrigation system that included dams, reservoirs, and trincheras (stone ditches). It had warehouses, ball courts, ceremonial structures, plazas, and steam rooms.
The Pima, Opata, and the Tohono O’odham did not have a border marking Mexico and the Southwest. They used the resources of the land to their fullest, building rancherías and in some cases small villages. Notable among the tribes were the Cáhita, who spanned northern Sinaloa to central Sonora. Among the Cáhita were the Yaquí: they had a strong sense of identity with the Yaquí River, one of the great waterways of North America.
Unlike other people of the desert, they had use of a fast-flowing river that allowed them to form villages of up to 3,000 villagers. Their lives differed from the Tarahumara (Raramuri) and the Conchos, who lived on the eastern slopes and to the east of the Sierra Madre. Although these tribes numbered in the tens of thousands, they traveled in bands of 30 or fewer people, farming, hunting, and gathering to survive. When the sun got blistering hot, they migrated to the headwaters of the sierras to farm; in the harsh winters they migrated to lower altitudes to hunt and gather.
The indigenous people to the north were bound together by corn, they traded intensely and they endured.
Conclusion: The World System in 1519
Mesoamerica was an interconnected world that was integrated and in which events taking place in one social unit affected those in another over an extended region. It was composed of large towns and their dependent rural communities. The forms of government varied from chiefdoms to fully developed states. In the Valley of Mexico, there were about 50 city-states with rulers or joint rulers appointed by the “royal” lineage as the supreme authority. They called the supreme ruler a tlatoani, “he who speaks,” or in the case of joint rulers, tlatoque.
The Core Zones
Mesoamerica, meaning “Middle America,”—located between North and South America—was divided into multiple core zones, of which Central Mexico was the most prominent. The exchanges between the core, periphery, and semi-periphery were important in determining the flow of luxury goods—cotton garments, jade, cacao beans, hides, feathers, and gold ornaments.
We have identified the core zones as Central Mexico, West Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya zone. Tenochtitlán was the capital of the Central Mexico zone, inhabited by some 200,000 persons. The Azteca Empire ruled over approximately 300 city-states and over another 100 or so client states throughout the Central Mexico core zone. The Azteca appointed administrators to oversee the states and in other instances cemented alliances through marriage between Azteca and other elites. Considerable cultural and linguistic diversity existed within this core.
The Tarasco held sway over the West Mexico core zone.
The Oaxaca core zone consisted of 50 small kingdoms in which the dominant languages were Zapoteca and Mixteca. However, as in the other zones, multiple languages coexisted with the dominant languages. Trade took place within and outside the core. Intermarriage also occurred between the Mixteca and Azteca, who had significant cultural exchange.
The Maya core zone structurally resembled that of Central Mexico. Maya language and culture dominated the zone.
The Semi-Peripheral Zones
The semi-peripheral zones, regions that mediated between the core and the periphery, were important to the exchange network. Casas Grandes, in what is now the state of Chihuahua, was one such semi-peripheral region. The Mexican state of Tabasco on the Gulf Coast was also an important semi-peripheral zone. Many of these regions were port-of-trade societies, and centers such as Xicalanco were quite cosmopolitan. They organized the governing classes, comprised of merchants, into political councils, in which women could reach high positions of authority. The south Pacific coast region is less well known. The Caribbean coast, including the Yucatán Peninsula was another important semiperipheral zone. Among the most important of these semi-peripheral centers was the island of Cozumel, which was run by merchants who invested in massive temples, shrines, and palaces.
The Mesoamerican Periphery
The zones of the Mesoamerican periphery actively participated in the economic, political, and cultural life of the Mesoamerican world. The periphery extended to Mexico’s northwest, from Colima to Culiacán and well into Sonora. In the northeastern part of what is now Mexico, the Huaxteca played a peripheral role.
It is important to reiterate that contact also existed with what is now the U.S. Southwest. This contact varied, but was most intense with the descendants of the Hohokam and other sedentary populations. Distance played a role in how much influence the core had. Frontier people such as the Azteca were eventually integrated into the core. The main point is that the diverse peoples of Mesoamerica were unified under a vast, well-defined world system, in many ways more distinct than the European world system.
Although there has to be more research, it is highly probable that a trade structure existed that integrated the disparate regions. There was a high use of turquoise in Mesoamerica. Trade contributed to the evolution of the division of labor; it led to the evolution of state systems in Mexico proper, and it was a mechanism of economic integration.
Erendira the princess of the Purépecha Empire of Meso-America ( known mainly as the Tarascan Empire which is a name given by the Spanish). More info on the read more
Erendira's existence is debated and is regarded as a semi legendary person. Her story I have not been able to find a full telling in English online but I recommend the book Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky Myths of Mexico by David Bowles. If you are interested in the story of the Purépecha I recommend this video:
Happy international womens day to all my mighty strong female warriors around the world. Unite, stay strong, and be true to yourself. Always be proud of where you come from and fight for not only your rights, but for many other women around the world. Together we can create a might force that can overcome any obstacle. You are all beautiful and talented. Quick drawing of a purepecha indigenous woman from my tribe, in her traditional clothing. One day i need to braid me hair with tons of flowers. Sorry for hardly not posting much, been very busy with school work and big projects. But it seems I'm catching up. Enjoy #art #ink #sketch #doodle #illustration #women #sister #family #sisterhood #internationalwomensday #womenhistory #womenrights #fightforfreedom #proudofmyroots #indigenous #native #purepecha #tarascan #mexican #latina (at Southwest Side, Chicago, Illinois)
A Typology of Ancient Purépecha (Tarascan) Architecture from Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico - Volume 30 Issue 3 - Christopher T. Fisher, Anna S. Cohen, Rodrigo Solinis-Casparius, Florencia L. Pezzutti, Jason Bush, Marion Forest, Andrea Torvinen
The morphological study of architectural features, the building arrangement within urban spaces, and multiscalar variation are critical for understanding urbanism as a process. Building types and architectural typologies form the foundational blocks of urban morphology and are essential for identifying architectural patterning. We use a process-typological approach to present an architectural typology from the ancient Purépecha (Tarascan) city of Angamuco, located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico. Using archaeological survey, lidar analysis, and excavation, we analyze building foundations from houses and public structures; storage facilities; monumental architecture such as pyramids, altars, and public buildings; and landscape features such as plazas, roads, terraces, and raised roadways locally known as huatziri. Our typology enhances understanding of the dense urban environment of this important prehispanic city during and after the formation of the Purépecha Empire.
El estudio morfológico de los rasgos arquitectónicos, de la configuración de construcciones dentro de espacios urbanos y de la variación multiescalar es fundamental para entender el urbanismo como proceso. Los tipos de edificios y las tipologías arquitectónicas forman los bloques fundamentales de la morfología urbana y son esenciales para identificar patrones arquitectónicos. Aquí usamos un enfoque procesual-tipológico para presentar una tipología arquitectónica de la antigua ciudad Purépecha (Tarasca) de Angamuco, ubicada en la cuenca del Lago de Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, México, basada en prospecciones arqueológicas, análisis de datos lidar y excavaciones. Este trabajo incluye cimientos de edificaciones habitacionales y estructuras públicas, construcciones para almacenamiento, estructuras monumentales tales como pirámides, altares y edificios públicos y elementos del entorno construido tales como plazas, caminos, terrazas y calzadas elevadas conocidos localmente como huatziri. Nuestra tipología nos permite comenzar a comprender el denso entorno urbano de esta importante ciudad prehispánica durante y después de la formación del imperio Purépecha.
I don’t know if this link will work for direct access to the article or not. I was able to access the article through incognito with none of my logins. If it doesn’t work, I apologize.
