- What are Mesoamerican cultures?
- General characteristics of Mesoamerican cultures
- Olmec culture
- Zapotec culture
- The Mayan culture
- Mixtec culture
- Teotihuacan culture
- The Purépecha culture
- Mexica culture
We explain what the Mesoamerican cultures were and what the Olmec, Zapotec, Mayan, Mixtec, Teotihuacan and more cultures were like.
What are Mesoamerican cultures?
Mesoamerican cultures or Mesoamerican civilization are the set of nations aborigines that made up the Mesoamerican Cultural Region, that is to say, that they populated for centuries the territories of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, part of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors to America.
It was a vast and complex network of nations, ethnically and linguistically different, but practicing a economy and one culture with many common points. Their civilization spanned millennia, reaching different highlights in different parts of the world. geography and the history of the region, in a process of mixing and exchange that lasted until the conquest by Spain in the 16th century.
Mesoamerican cultures practically became extinct under European colonization, but they left behind a huge linguistic, architectural, mythological and archaeological legacy that has been rescued and valued in recent times. In addition, many of its traditions and world perspectives survive, mixed with the Hispanic, in the popular sectors of modern nations that arose in their ancient territory.
General characteristics of Mesoamerican cultures
The Mesoamerican nations, although diverse, jointly share numerous characteristics, such as the following:
- The first indications of its appearance date from the year 7,000 a. A., Judging by the agricultural evidence of the time of the Holocene. However, it is estimated that its initial development took place between the 15th and 12th centuries BC. C.
- Theirs was a fundamentally agricultural society, and they domesticated cocoa, corn, beans, tomatoes, avocados, vanilla, squash, and chili.
- Its agricultural economy was complemented by pottery, Commerce, hunting and gathering. His technology it was mostly lithic, with little (or no) development of metallurgy.
- They spoke various languages belonging to the Ottomanguean, Mayan, Mixezoquean, Totonac, and Uto-Aztec language families.
- They had a religion little unified polytheist, but in which gods were transmitted from one culture to another and from one era to the next. They also shared two calendars: a ritual of 260 days and a civil calendar of 365.
- The architecture and crafts flourished and left many abandoned cities, as well as totem poles and buildings. Some of them constitute today the main deposits archaeological of the region: Teotihuacan, Chichén Itzá, Tikal, etc.
- The main Mesoamerican cultures (or at least the most studied) are the mexica, the Maya, the teotihuacana, the Zapotec, the mixtec, the olmec and the purepecha.
Olmec culture
Head-shaped totems from the Olmec culture are still preserved.
For a long time the Olmecs were considered to be the mother culture of the entire Mesoamerican region, as many of their own traits became typically Mesoamerican and there is archaeological evidence of their presence throughout the region.
They arose around century XIV a. C. and they were consolidated as a power around XII a. Their large settlements were established in La Venta, San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes (the coast and “rubber region” of Mexico), where their large head-shaped totems still remain. The reasons for their decline are unknown, but they could be associated with the flourishing of other rival cultures.
Zapotec culture
It is another of the oldest Mesoamerican cultures: its origins can be traced back to 9000 BC. C., in the settlement of communities nomads or semi-nomads in the current Mexican state of Oaxaca. However, its first urban developments took place between the 15th and 14th centuries BC. C., and its flowering between centuries V a. C. and X d. C.
Its great ceremonial center was located in Monte Alban, on top of a hill in the central valleys of Oaxaca, until in the 15th century they were displaced by the Mixtecs and, later, both peoples faced the Mexica (Aztecs) for the control of trade in the region. The Zapotecs would eventually end up allying with the Mexica themselves, until the arrival of the European conquerors.
The Mayan culture
Due to their great development and sophistication, the Mayans created one of the most important Mesoamerican cultures. Inhabitants of the current Mexican southeast (Yucatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas and Tabasco), as well as the current Guatemalan territory, Belize, part of Honduras and El Salvador, administered a region of more than 300,000 km2 of surface, in which arose since 2000 a. C. its first settlements.
Its main cities arose around the year 750 a. C., and towards the year 500 a. C. had a monumental architecture, with large temples, palaces and facades, some of which still remain as archaeological sites: Tikal, Chichen Itzá, Calakmul, among others.
The Mayans developed a complex culture, with a system of writing hieroglyphic unique in pre-Columbian America, and cultivated the astronomy, architecture, history and the math. Their society was monarchical and vertical, and their religion was polytheistic and pantheistic, in which human sacrifices were common.
Mixtec culture
The pre-Hispanic ancestors of the current Mixtec people took their first steps as an organized society between the 15th and 12th centuries BC. C., in which they populated the mountainous region of the current Mexican states of Puebla, Oaxaca and Guerrero, and their decline occurred around the XV century AD. C., with the arrival of the Spanish conquerors.
His is one of the most extensive and well-known chronologies of Mesoamerican civilization, and many of its cultural traits were shared with their Zapotec neighbors, with whom they even shared the meaning of their name, which can be translated as “people of the clouds”.
However, unlike their neighbors, the Mixtecs preferred to build smaller populations and fewer individuals. For this reason, its cultural heyday and flowering did not occur until the 13th century AD. C., under the government of the famous chieftain Ocho Venado Garra de Jaguar, founder of the kingdom of Tututepec and initiator of an expansive policy in the region.
Eventually Mixtecs and Zapotecs fought together against the Aztec Empire, but this paradoxically fueled enmity between neighboring nations, eventually leading the Mixtecs to defeat. Thus, when the Spanish conquerors began their invasion, many of the Mixtec leaders voluntarily submitted to vassalage and retained certain privileges during the initial stages of the colonization European.
Teotihuacan culture
The Teotihuacán culture is a mystery, since it is unknown who built the city that gives it its name, Teotihuacán, located northwest of the Valley of Mexico, 78km from present-day Mexico City. The name of the city is the Nahuatl toponym long after the decline of its original inhabitants, of which there is not much linguistic evidence.
It is known that Teotihuacán was built around the beginning of the Christian era, and that it had its heyday between the 3rd and 4th centuries (AD). It came to house about 200,000 inhabitants and was probably a commercial and cultural emporium in the central Mexican region.
In fact, there is evidence to suggest close ties to other cities of Mayan origin in the south. However, towards the 7th century the decline of the city occurred, coinciding with a time of political and climatic instability in the northern region of Mexico.
The Purépecha culture
The Purépecha or Tarascan Empire was the peak of the organization of the Purépecha, pre-Columbian ancestors of the current settlers of the same name. There is archaeological evidence of its existence dating back to 1800 BC. C.
The Purépechas or Michoacanos settled in an extensive region both Mesoamerican and aridoamerican, which included the current Mexican states of Michoacán and Jalisco, as well as the south of Guanajuato, Guerrero, Querétaro, Colima and the State of Mexico. Between the years 1300 and 1500 gave rise to the second empire largest in the region by the time of the arrival of the Spanish conquerors.
Ruled by a government monarchical Y theocratic, which nevertheless ended up falling to the Europeans in the 16th century, the Purépecha were great enemies of the Aztec Empire, against which they fought on numerous occasions.
Mexica culture
The Mexica or Aztecs were a Nahua people from the Mesoamerican North, who at the beginning of the 15th century founded México-Tenochtitlán, on an islet in Lake Texcoco, where Mexico City sits today.
That city was soon the capital of the Aztec Empire, the largest and most powerful state in the region and the main military rival of the Spanish colonizers. Allied with other peoples of the lake basin of the Valley of Mexico, the Aztecs subdued the other neighboring peoples and earned their fierce enmity, which is why many of them allied with the Spanish against the Aztec Empire during the war of conquest. .
The Mexica were fierce warriors and, unlike other peoples, practiced a sophisticated pre-Hispanic metallurgy based on the handling of gold, silver and bronze, although more for ornamental than military purposes. His was a complex culture, measuring time through astronomical calendars and using pictogram writing to document facts and calculate architectural works.