Figure 1.-- This panel is part of a masterful Diego Rivera mural painted for the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay (1940). It is a celebration of Mexico’s indigenous Meso-American past. Rivera wrote: "I depicted the South in the period before Cortes. The outstanding physical landmarks were the massive and beautiful snow-crowned Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. Nearby were the temples of Nahuatl and Quetzalcóatl and the temple of the plumed serpent. Also portrayed were the Yaqui Deer Dancers, pottery makers, and Netzahualcoyotl, the Aztec poet-king of Texcoco who, according to tradition, designed a flying machine." Panel 1 forms the left side of a visual parenthesis that balances North and South. The right side of the mural completes the parenthesis with a celebration of Northern California’s technological boom of the nineteenth century. Click on the image foir a key to the mural. .

One question archeologists are wrestling with is the issue concerning the possible existence of a Meso-American mother culture. The many shared haracteristics among Meso-American peoples does suggest the existence of a mother culture. Here linguistic studies are not as useful a in other areas as we do nnot know what kanguage the Olmecs abd iother early civilizations spoke. The mother culture initially thought to be the Maya. Then earlier Olmec sites were found and dated using modern techniques. Even more recently, Mayan sites as early as the Olmec sites, like El Mirador, have been found in the Petén. This is northern Guatemala just south of the Olman. Which leaves the question of a mother culture much less certain than it was once thought to be. The two Meso-American peoples familiar to the modern reader are the Aztecs and the Maya. These were at the time of the Spanish Conquest the two major cultures, but there were many other cultures in Meso-America. Thus is one reason that Cortez with a handful of followers was able to overwhelm huge Aztec armies. Cortez was an effective diplomat and recruited native allies to fight the Aztecs--people oppressed by the Aztec or at wsar with them. Meaning that Cortez was able to form an army much closer to the size of the Aztec armies. The names of these allies are largely forgotten and known to only the serious reader who has studied Meso-American history. And over the millennia of historical development many cultures have come and gone before the arrival of the Spanish. One of the moist spectacular was Teotihuacan in the Central Valley and their huge pyramids and central city just north of modern Mexico City testify to their greatness. But they are only one of the countless cultures that make up the vibrant mosaic of Meso-America.

Mother Culture

Historians today debate what the Meso-American mother culture was. Meso-American people have sommanysgared beliefs and cultural similarities that there was widely believed to be a mother culture. This means the first people to take corn-based agriculture and create civilization. For many years archeologists studying Meso-American civilizations saw the Maya as the 'mother culture' of Mexican per-Colombian civilizations. Gradually scholars armed with improved dating techniques and improved archeological methods came to see the Olmecs as much more important than had earlier been believed. Many historians now believe that the The first advanced civilization was the Olmecs. The Olmecs are the youngest and least understood of the six cultures that independently invented civilization. They arose in the humid lowlands of the eastern Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow stretch of southern Mexico between the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. The Olmecs are best known for their huge carved stone heads, one of the few surviving artifacts. The Olmecs established themselves along the western Gulf of Mexico (Veracruz and Tabasco) (about 1000 BC). The Olmecs worshiped a jaguar God. They developed the first cities in what is now Mexico. The Olmec mysteriously disappeared (about 400 BC). The idea of a mother culture is now rather confused. Archeological work in the Peten (northern Guatemala) just south of the Olmec homeland (the Olman) has turned up early Mayan cities like El Mirador which seem to be as early as the Olmec sites and show little or no Olmec influence. It should be noted that cultural exchange was not a one way street. Even a mother culture was affected by the civilizations in which they came into contact.

Linguistic Relationships

Linguistics is one way of assessing historical development in pre-literate societies. One problem with linquistic studies is thar we have no idea what language many cultures spoke--even important cultures like the Olmec. Meso-America has three major linguistic groups: the Mayan, the Otomanguean, and the Uto-Aztecan. Mayan peoples spoke many different, but related languages comprising the Mayan group. With one important exception, the northeastern Huastecs, the Maya were found in southeastern Mesoamerica. Otomangueans occupied a large area of Meso-America between Uto-Aztecan peoples to the north and east and Mayan and other peoples to the south. Some now extinct Otomanguean languages were spoken south of the Mayan area along the Pacific coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua, and Chichimeco and North Pame (once spoken in the central desert of highland Mexico) are beyond Mesoamerica to the north. Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken over a vast non-contiguous area of North America, as far north as Oregon and Idaho. Hopi and Comanche are Uto-Aztecan languages. The Uto-Aztecan languages are now also spread out in non-contiguopus Mexican areas, but most porominently in and around the Central Valley. Before the Coinquest there are nelieves to have been large contiguous areas. The langagfe studies confirm the northern origins of the Aztecs. Classical Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and its modern offshoots are part of the Uto-Aztecan family. There are still some 1.5 million Nahuatl sopeakers in the Central Valley. The Pipil language, an offshoot of Nahuatl, spread to Central America by a wave of migration, but is now basically extict. One prominent off shoot in the north is Yaqui.

Subsequent Meso-American Cultures

The Olmec appear to have provided the cultural base for subsequent Native American peoples--the Teotihuacan, the Zapotecs and Mixtecs (Monte Alban), the Maya (Yucatan), the Toltecs, Aztecs, and many other smaller civilizations. Teotihuacan was not the first great civilization in the Americas, but it was the dominant civilization for an extended period. The civilization was a vast commercial empire that dominated central Mexico and began encroaching on the Maya in the south. Thec ruins of the city just north of Mexico City still impress modern visitors. The Pyramid of the Sun was the largest structure built in pre-Colombian America. Such massive construction must have meant a rich and hugely powerful society, the center of a vast trade network. The Toltec people of the Central Valley of Mexico developed corn. Although not immediately as important as the potato, it is today with the 20th century development of synthetic fertilizer the single most important food crop. This made possible the modern expansion of the world population. The Native Americans that the Spanish Conquistadores encountered were the Maya and Aztec. The Aztec in particular were a chillingly blood thirsty people, exceeding the Spanish in their lust for war, but not in their ability to wage war. The Spanish Conquistadores wanted gold, but it was corn that was Mexico's great contribution to human society. Native Americans were stone age peoples. Nonetheless they accomplished major advances. The most important achievement in Mexico was the development of corn, but there were other impressive accomplishments in various fields, including architecture, art, astronomy, engineering, mathematics, pottery, and textiles. The Maya were the technologically most advanced, especially in mathematics and astronomy. The Maya calendar was the most accurate in the world until the 20th century. These accomplished, however, were to a degree overshadowed by the prevalence of human sacrifice. And here the war-like Aztecs escalated human sacrifice to unprecedented levels. The Aztecs were the dominant civilization in central Mexico when the Spanish arrived.

Created: 7:07 PM 1/10/2021
Last updated: 7:07 PM 1/10/2021