Mesoamerican Preclassic period

The early Preclassic is the cultural point that marks the transition between the Upper Cenolithic period and the start of Mesoamerican civilization and its development.

For this reason, they formed trade routes, related to those pre-existing in the Upper Cenolithic, which allowed the societies involved in them to have access to resources from distant regions.

In the early Preclassic, however, regional styles prevailed (at least as observed in archeological remains from this period), though it is possible to speak of an incipient civilizing process (as Darcy Ribeiro called it), which allowed all the cultures of the area to be based on maize agriculture, and had also laid the foundations of the Mesoamerican belief system, expressed in the cult of the elements.

Some of these grew in population and became dominant, like El Opeño in the west; Tlatilco, Coapexco and Chalcatzingo in the center; and San José Mogote in Oaxaca.

During the early Preclassic, the principle site of the region was Yucuita (from Mixtec yuku 'hill' and ita 'flower', together meaning 'hill of the flowers'), a town with a few hundred inhabitants, founded around 1400 B. C. The settlement consisted of a central stone platform, around which huts were constructed.

In his book about Mesoamerican agriculture, Ángel Palerm [es] considered that the movement of large amounts of workers for the construction of hydraulic systems is an indication of segmented society, with a stronge centralized state.

The Mesoamerican peoples, as had been the case for a long time, had exploited the resources of their ecological niche, and had set up incipient exchange networks.

In addition, as noted above, society as a whole became more stratified, and the ruling class (composed of the nobility and priests) became more clearly defined as a group separate from the common people.

This can be seen from the remains found in the burials, the relative richness of the funerary offerings, the iconographic representations, and, above all, the appearance of sumptuary items of foreign origin.

On the other hand, the urbanization process in which some Mesoamerican villages were immersed at the end of the Early Preclassic period, takes on its clearest characteristics in this phase.

The villages become cities, which clearly repeat the segmentation of social life in the types of constructions (those of the elite tend to be more elaborate and durable than the popular dwellings).

The Mesoamerican cities were built based on a conscientious plan, which turned the ceremonial centers of this stage into true astronomical observatories.

Even the famous Maya Long Count of time and its positional numbering based on twenty, first appeared among the Olmecs of the Gulf jungles.

The decline of Cuicuilco is parallel to the emergence of Teotihuacan, and is consummated with the eruption of the Xitle volcano (circa 150 A.D.), which motivated the migration of its inhabitants to the north of the Valley of Mexico.