Prehispanic Mesoamerica

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Prehispanic Mesoamerica

  • Prehispanic = before Columbus (1492)
  • Mesoamerica = historical and cultural region in Central America

Mesoamerica[edit | edit source]

Mesoamerica and its cultural areas[according to whom?]
  • 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.)


Early state formation[edit | edit source]