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Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south through the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before the European discovery of the New World by Columbus. Mesoamerican is the adjective generally used to refer to that group of Pre-Columbian cultures.Some common shared Mesoamerican traits include intensive agriculture based heavily on maize (corn); worship of a set of deities including a rain god, a sun god, a feathered-serpent god ( Quetzalcoatl); a Vigesimal numbering system; the use of a 260 day ritual calendar in addition to the solar year calendar (see: Mesoamerican calendars); the construction of temples elevated atop stepped pyramids; a ritual ball-game (see: Mesoamerican ballgame); and various other artistic and cultural conventions.
Mesoamerica is also a canonical example of a Linguistic area : all of the major Mesoamerican languages show some subset of a pool of common traits. Mesoamerica's economy and geopolitics benefited from extensive use of a lingua franca, the Nahuatl language, at least since the 7th century, and perhaps even going as far back as 2,000 years.
Mesoamerican civilizations included the OlmecThe Olmec were a people living in south-central Mexico, roughly what would now be the Veracruz and Tabasco regions of the Mexican isthmus. Their immediate cultural influence went much further though, Olmec artwork being found as far afield as El Salvador., ZapotecZapotec refers to a native people of Mexico, their language, and their historic culture and traditions. The Zapotec people are centered in Oaxaca, to the south of central Mexico. In Pre-Columbian times they were one of the Mesoamerican civilizations., TeotihuacanTeotihuacan is the largest Pre-Columbian archeological site in the Americas. Teotihuacan is located in the San Juan Teotihuacan municipality of the State of Mexico, Mexico, approximately 40 km (about 25 miles) northeast of the Mexico City, which covers a, MayaThis article is about the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. See Maya people for a discussion of the modern Maya. The Maya are a people of southern Mexico and northern Central America with some 3,000 years of rich history. The Maya were part of the Mesoamer, MixtecThe Mixtec (or Mixteca are a Native American people centered in the Oaxaca state of Mexico. Mixtec" is also the name of their historic language. In Pre-Columbian times, the Mixtec were one of the major civilizations of Mesoamerica. Important ancient cente, HuastecThe Huastec also rendered as Huaxtec and Huastecos are an indigenous people of Mexico, historically based in the Mexican states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Panuco river and along the coast of th, TotonacThe Totonac are a Native American people in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Totonac" is also the name of their native language; most now speak the Spanish language, some in addition to the traditional tongue. The Totonac built the Pre-Columbian city of El, ToltecThe Toltecs (or Toltec or Tolteca were a Pre-Columbian Native American people who dominated much of central Mexico between the 10th and 12th century AD. Their language, Nahuatl, was also spoken by the Aztecs. They originated as a militaristic nomadic peop, Tarascan, and the Aztec.
In some writings from the 1920s and 1930s the alternative term Middle America was used to refer to Mesoamerica, but that acception of the term has generally fallen out of favor, see Middle America.
1 Related topics
- Human antiquity in Mesoamerica
- Mesoamerican chronology, languages
- Zapotec calendar , mythology
- Maya calendar, numerals
- Aztec calendar, mythology
- Mesoamerican practices: agriculture, obsidian use, trephinning
- Mesoamerican iconography: jaguar
- Spanish conquest of: Yucatán, Michoacán , Guatemala
