History of Mesoamericans

Tukin A Pakat

(Welcome to the Maya World)

Mesoamerican civilizations are divided into three periods: the Preclassic (2000 B.C. to A.D. 250), the Classic (A.D. 250 to 900), and Postclassic (900 to 1521 A.D.). During these three periods, hundreds of Mesoamerican societies rose, flourished, and fell prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s. Mesoamerican cultures included the Olmec (1200 - 400 B.C. ), Maya (1000 B.C. - A.D. 1521), Zapotec (500 B.C. - A.D. 1000 ), Teotihuacan (A.D. 1 - 650), Mixtec (A.D. 900 - 1521), Huastec (A.D. 1200 - 1521), El Tajin (A.D. 550 - 1100), Toltec (A.D. 950 - 1150), and Aztec (A.D. 1200 - 1521).

Geographical boundaries of the ancient Maya empire spread through the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, western Honduras and the five Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Campeche and Chiapas (see map), a total area is around 500,000 square kilometers. The ancient Maya civilization lasted for 3,000 years, yet they are often dismissed because, even though they built huge stone temples and pyramids, they lacked metal tools and didn't use the wheel or beasts of burden. But they fashioned tools harder than steel, invented numerals and discovered the concept of zero (something that escaped the Greeks and Romans). One of the Maya's unique contributions to architecture is the Korbel Arch, also called the Maya Arch, which was formed by projecting stone blocks out from each side of a wall until they met forming a peak. This technique was a handy substitute for a true arch. The Maya also invented the wheel but, dismissing its usefulness, only used it for children's toys.

By 1700 B.C., native american or Mesoamerican peoples began domesticating plants, principally maize, beans, and squash. Corn formed the backbone of Maya cuisine in the form of tamales, tortillas and atole, a hot breakfast drink. The Maya even worshipped a corn god to ensure good harvest. Chiapas, today, has a special chocolate drink called tascalate made from a mixture of chocolate, ground pine nuts, achiote, vanilla and sugar. Chicle, a milky sap extracted from the chicozapote tree found throughout the Yucatán peninsula and the Petén region of Guatemala, launched the worldwide chewing gum industry. 

Early villages and farming communities sowed the seeds of the advanced societies to follow. Pottery came into widespread use. Household artifacts such as small clay idols, perhaps fertility deities, suggest the rise of more complex religious beliefs.

Mesoamericans also tracked the movement of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They not only developed a calendar as accurate as our Gregorian but were also highly-skilled astronomers, astrologers, urban planners and excelled as mathematicians. Their grand cities with monumental temples (the word "pyramid" was introduced by the Spaniards) were built without the use of today's tools. Yet, each major city-state was carefully planned with temples and palaces in the center, a nearby ball court for the famous pre-Hispanic team sport and the surrounding adobe houses of the common people at a respectable distance from the ceremonial center of town.

Major Maya Finds in Guatemala and Mexico since 1995:

(1) The remains of a seaside community dating from 1300 B.C. at Chiquiuitan. It yielded large globular storage jars - and the remains of the residents’ food.

(2) A major site at Ujuxte occupied between 400 B.C. and A.D. 250 by people who produced pottery in the Maya style. The cite featured a central plaza lined with large stelae and altars backed by huge mounds. The plaza’s east-west axis was oriented to the raising of the sun on the mornings of the spring and fall equinoxes.

(3) La Nueva, the most recently discovered site, where some 5,000 Maya lived from A.D. 250 to 900.

(4) In the middle of Central America's Usumacinta River (pronounced "YOU-SU-ma-cinta"), in the dense Mexican rain forest, lay the ruins of an ancient Mayan city. On the Guatemalan side of the river, lies roads, fields and kingdom. A massive pile of rocks revealed one of the most advanced feats of ancient times. The mysterious rocks weren't the ruins of a temple or a once-dry building since swallowed by a shifting river, as some archaeologists had suggested, but a support pier - part of the world's largest suspension bridge for about three centuries, starting about 700 A.D.  Rock piles lined up with ruins on both sides of the river, but the "pile" are actually a solid mound of rocks held together by Mayan concrete.

The river, which is 40 feet deep near the bank and 150 feet deep in the channel, has a swift-moving current that has erased much of the structure during the past 1,000 years. Staircases led to the bridge on the Yaxchilan side of the river. Rocks with large grooves cut in them could have held hemp-rope cables to support the span. The 10-foot wide, 600-foot-long bridge, in continuous use for about 300 years, includes a 203-foot span between two piers in the fast-flowing river. That midsection made the seventh-century bridge the world's longest until 1377, when it was bested by Europeans. By that time, however, the bridge and the city it served had likely been abandoned for 400 years, following the collapse of Central America's pre-Colombian civilization.