Prehispanic Mesoamerica
Prehispanic Mesoamerica
- Prehispanic = before Columbus (1492)
- Mesoamerica = historical and cultural region in Central America
Mesoamerica[edit | edit source]
- a cultural and historical region
- extends from northern Costa Rica (on the Pacific coast) northward, encompassing both Pacific and Caribbean coasts, to central Mexico
- including all of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua
- "meso" = "middle" or "intermediate"
- Mesoamerica is the location of the earlier states (centralized government with urban populations) in the Americas
- with state-formation starting around 2,000 BC, and flourishing from 350BC to 1500 AD
- Mesoamerican culture has common features:
- architecture, including pyramid building
- precise and extensive calendars
- writing system (hieroglyphic scripts or "glyphs", which are symbolic carvings that carry specific meaning)
- numerical system
- agriculture (maize, or American "corn")
- (note that the word "corn" refers to any staple or primary "cereal", or grass, crop, such as maize, wheat, oats, barley, rice, millet, etc.)