Mesoamerican chronology

The Paleo-Indian (less frequently, Lithic) period or era is that which spans from the first signs of human presence in the region, which many believe to have happened due to the Bering Land Bridge, to the establishment of agriculture and other practices (e.g. pottery, permanent settlements) and subsistence techniques characteristic of proto-civilizations.

Many of the distinctive elements of Mesoamerican civilization can be traced to this period, including the dominance of corn, the building of pyramids, human sacrifice, jaguar-worship, the complex calendar, and many of the gods.

In the Maya region, under considerable military influence by Teotihuacan after the "arrival" of Siyaj K'ak' in 378 CE, numerous city states such as Tikal, Uaxactun, Calakmul, Copán, Quirigua, Palenque, Cobá, and Caracol reached their zeniths.

In the Postclassic Period many of the great nations and cities of the Classic Era collapsed, although some continued, such as in Oaxaca, Cholula, and the Maya of Yucatan, such as at Chichen Itza and Uxmal.

Examples include the 'Pueblan-Mexica' style in pottery, codex illumination, and goldwork, the flourishing of Nahua poetry, and the botanical institutes established by the Aztec elite.

Indigenous peoples did not disappear, although their numbers were greatly reduced in the sixteenth century by new infectious diseases brought by the Spanish invaders; they suffered high mortality from slave labor, and during epidemics.

In the early Preclassic period, the Capacha culture acted as a driving force in the process of civilizing Mesoamerica, and its pottery spread widely across the region.

San José Mogote, a site that also shows Olmec influences, ceded dominance of the Oaxacan plateau to Monte Albán toward the end of the middle Preclassic Era.

Apart from the West, where the tradition of the Tumbas de tiro had taken root, in all the regions of Mesoamerica the cities grew in wealth, with monumental constructions carried out according to urban plans that were surprisingly complex.

Based on linguistic evidence, archaeologists and anthropologists generally believe that they were either speakers of an Oto-Manguean language, or (more likely) the ancestors of the present-day Zoque people who live in the north of Chiapas and Oaxaca.

This site is quite enigmatic, since it dates from several centuries earlier than the main populations of the Gulf, a fact which has continued to cause controversy and given rise to the hypothesis that the Olmec culture originated in that region.

These feats of Olmec stonecutting are especially impressive when one considers that Mesoamericans lacked iron tools and that the heads are at sites dozens of kilometers from the quarries where their basalt was mined.

The principal centers of this phase were Monte Albán, Kaminaljuyu, Ceibal, Tikal, and Calakmul, and then Teotihuacan, in which 80 per cent of the 200,000 inhabitants of the Lake Texcoco basin were concentrated.

The cities of this era were characterized by their multi-ethnic composition, which entailed the cohabitation in the same population centers of people with different languages, cultural practices, and places of origin.

The growth of the cities could not have happened without advances in agricultural methods and the strengthening of trade networks involving not only the peoples of Mesoamerica, but also the distant cultures of Oasisamerica.

Especially notable are the Maya stelae (carved pillars), exquisite monuments commemorating the stories of the Royal families, the rich corpus of polychrome ceramics, mural painting, and music.

[17] In Teotihuacan, architecture made great advances: the Classic style was defined by the construction of pyramidal bases that sloped upward in a step-wise fashion.

The Teotihuacan architectural style was reproduced and modified in other cities throughout Mesoamerica, the clearest examples being the Zapotec capital of Monte Alban and Kaminal Juyú in Guatemala.

The ruin of the Classic Maya civilization in the northern lowlands, begun at La Passion states such as Dos Pilas, Aguateca, Ceibal and Cancuén, c. 760, followed by the Usumacinta system cities of Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, and Palenque, following a path from south to north.

Toward the end of the late Classic period, the Maya stopped recording the years using the Long Count calendar, and many of their cities were burned and abandoned to the jungle.

Once free of competition in the area of the Lake of Mexico, Teotihuacan experienced an expansion phase that made it one of the largest cities of its time, not just in Mesoamerica but in the entire world.

This occurred around 600 CE, and even though people continued to live there for another century and a half, the city was eventually destroyed and abandoned by its inhabitants, who took refuge in places such as Culhuacán and Azcapotzalco, on the shores of Lake Texcoco.

They probably had a greater mastery of the art of war than Teotihuacan, yet the idea that they were a peaceful society given to religious contemplation, which persists to this day, was particularly promoted by early- and mid-20th century Mayanists such as Sylvanus G. Morley and J. Eric S. Thompson.

However, more recent excavations indicate the Maya sites enjoyed urban services as extensive as those of Tikal, believed to be as large as 400,000 inhabitants at its peak, circa 750, Copan, and others.

The construction of these sites was carried out on the basis of a highly stratified society, dominated by the noble class, who at the same time were the political, military, and religious elite.

As in the rest of Mesoamerica, they imposed on the lowest classes taxes—in kind or in labor—that permitted them to concentrate sufficient resources for the construction of public monuments, which legitimized the power of the elites and the social hierarchy.

During the early Postclassic period, the warlike political elites legitimized their position by means of their adherence to a complex set of religious beliefs that López Austin called zuyuanidad.

Another feature of the zuyuano system was the formation of alliances with other city-states that were controlled by groups having the same ideology; such was the case with the League of Mayapan in Yucatán, and the Mixtec confederation of Lord Eight Deer, based in the mountains of Oaxaca.

In the late nineteenth century, liberal army general Porfirio Díaz, a Mestizo did much for modernizing Mexico and integrating it into the world economy, but there were renewed pressures on indigenous communities and their lands.