Word: mesoamerica
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...archaeologists and tourists alike, the monumental ruins of Mesoamerica are humbling testimony to the complex civilizations that once flourished there. Even the names of these peoples evoke power and mystery: Aztecs, Maya, Zapotecs, Toltecs, Olmecs. But of all the great pre-Columbian metropolises that dot the region, arguably the most magnificent of all belonged to a people who remain nameless. The Aztecs, who took over the area some 25 miles north of modern Mexico City in the 15th century, were convinced it was built by supernatural beings. Their name for the city, which we still use: Teotihuacan, or Place...
...northern end by the Pyramid of the Moon and flanked by the even larger Pyramid of the Sun and other ceremonial buildings, was the core of a much larger metropolis. Indeed, at 8 sq. mi. and with an estimated population of 150,000, Teotihuacan was the largest city in Mesoamerica in its heyday (about A.D. 500) and one of the six largest in the world--larger even than Rome. Its political power reached all the way to Mayan city-states hundreds of miles away, with outposts as far away as Guatemala...
More than 1,500 years before the Maya flourished in Central America, 25 centuries before the Aztecs conquered large swaths of Mexico, the mysterious Olmec people were building the first great culture of Mesoamerica. Starting in 1200 B.C. in the steamy jungles of Mexico's southern Gulf Coast, the Olmec's influence spread as far as modern Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica and El Salvador. They built large settlements, established elaborate trade routes and developed religious iconography and rituals, including ceremonial ball games, blood-letting and human sacrifice, that were adapted by all the Mesoamerican civilizations to follow...
...historians and archaeologists agree, however, that the Olmec produced the earliest sophisticated art in Mesoamerica and that their distinctive style provided a model for the Maya, Aztec and other later civilizations in the region. According to Joralemon, small-scale Olmec objects made prior to 900 B.C. tend to be ceramic, whereas later pieces were often fashioned of jade and serpentine, rare materials that required great skill to carve. The vast majority of Olmec artifacts are sculptures--figurines, decorated stone stelae, votive axes, altars and the like--some of which were polished to a mirror-like shine...
...have managed to uncover a number of key sites, including the monument-strewn ruins of Teopantecuanitlan in the Mexican state of Guerrero, and the sacred shrine at El Manati, whose murky springs yielded the first examples of wooden Olmec statuary and the earliest known evidence of child sacrifice in Mesoamerica. Heat and hardship notwithstanding, the prospect of understanding the still shrouded origins of Mesoamerican civilization--and the haunting beauty of the items on display at the National Gallery--makes it all seem worthwhile...