Prehispanic Mesoamerica

Prehispanic Mesoamerica

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

Mesoamerica

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.)