Native Americans of Middle and South America

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People and Languages

Mesoamerica was a great melting pot, home to many peoples and interrelated cultures. In the centuries before European contact, it was the most densely populated region in the Americas. Nearly 40 distinct indigenous languages were spoken in Mesoamerica, including dialects of the following language families and stocks: Chinantecan, Manguean, Mayan, Mixe-Zoquean, Mixtecan, Otomian, Popolocan, Tequistlatecan, Tlapanecan, Totonacan, Uto-Aztecan, and Zapotecan.

The best-known Mesoamerican cultures include—in roughly sequential order from 1500 bc to the Spanish conquest of Mexico in ad 1519—the Olmec, Zapotec, Teotihuacán, Maya, Toltec, and Aztec. Civilizations would flourish for a time, sometimes in tandem, and then decline as other cultures rose to dominance. Great cities were built and inhabited by successive groups, then abandoned. Forms of art and religion developed and shared by earlier groups profoundly influenced cultures that followed.

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Early Peoples

The human history of Mesoamerica reaches back many thousands of years. The first inhabitants of the region were nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose ancestors are believed to have migrated from Asia. Stone spearpoints found with ancient animal remains, including mammoth, provide evidence that early Mesoamericans hunted large game for at least part of their diet. By about 8000 bc, at the beginning of what is known as the Archaic period, Mesoamericans began to make numerous specialized tools and ceremonial objects, and they hunted a wide variety of game, including pronghorn antelope, rabbits, and gophers. They were expert foragers and harvested fruits, nuts, and the seeds of wild plants.

Drawing on their extensive knowledge of edible wild plants, Archaic Mesoamericans gradually learned to cultivate a variety of food crops, including maize (see Corn). Precisely when farming began in Mesoamerica is unknown, but agriculture had become widespread in the region by 4000 bc. Over time, Mesoamerican peoples came to rely on farming as their primary food source, and they settled in permanent villages. By about 2000 bc, many peoples of Mesoamerica were living principally on varieties of maize, beans, and squash. Intensive agriculture supported large populations and complex societies began to develop.

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After about 1500 bc Mesoamericans began to build ceremonial pyramids and temples in the larger towns, and these settlements grew into religious and political centers. As towns grew in size, Mesoamerican tribes became increasingly complex, and fixed classes of priests, bureaucrats, merchants, and craftspeople emerged. Some towns had many thousands of citizens; empires with millions of subjects were established. Agricultural wealth fostered a network of trade. Merchants in urban centers sold tools, cloth, and luxury items imported over long land and sea routes. Great heights were achieved in the arts and sciences. Ancient Mesoamericans developed systems of writing and highly accurate calendars based on their astronomical observations.

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Diet and Subsistence

Agriculture provided the principal source of food throughout Mesoamerica, with the variety of crops increasing toward the south. The main staple everywhere was maize, but other crops were important as well, especially beans and squash. Eaten together, maize, beans, and squash offered a diet rich in vegetable protein and carbohydrates.

Mesoamerican farmers cultivated many other plant species. Among the better known are tomatoes, sweet potatoes, chili peppers, tobacco, cotton, and peanuts. Lesser-known plants include amaranth, bottle gourd, and a type of edible cactus called prickly pear. The sap of the century plant, a species of agave, was fermented to make alcoholic beverages, including a drink called pulque. A plant called manioc (also known as cassava or yucca), was used, among other things, to make tapioca. Mesoamerican peoples also exploited many native fruits, including papayas, avocados, and cacao (to make chocolate). Fruit-producing trees were frequently planted in high concentrations in and around Mesoamerican cities.

In the tropical lowlands, Mesoamericans practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, in which areas of jungle were cleared and burned to make fields for crops. When the soil was depleted and crop yields declined, the plots were abandoned and new ones were cleared. In some highland areas, particularly in the Valley of Mexico, the people constructed irrigation systems and established gardens on artificially made islands, known as chinampas, in lakes and swampy areas. Wild plants, game, and domesticated animals, including dogs, turkeys, ducks, geese, and quail, were also used as food in various areas. Fish and shellfish were eaten along the coasts.

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Social and Political Organization

During the long Archaic period, which lasted until about 2000 bc, small villages of extended families were at the center of Mesoamerican society. Village resources were generally shared, and permanent social classes did not exist. Families directed the growing of corn and other village work, and most adult villagers were capable of performing all the tasks required to sustain life.

As agriculture became more intensive and efficient, and helped to ensure a stable food supply, Mesoamerican village life became more diverse. New gods that could assure bountiful crops—including deities believed to control rainfall, flooding, or fertility—grew in importance. At the same time, knowledge of various crafts—including weaving, basketry, and pottery—expanded, and a specialization of labor slowly emerged.

The first signs of social stratification in Mesoamerica appeared shortly after 1000 bc. At Olmec sites in the swampy rain forests of eastern Mexico, for example, the ancient architecture signals the beginning of a division of society into elite and commoner groups. The sites contain a complex of plazas, pyramids, courts for sacred ball games, and temples, which were used for prayer and religious ceremonies, as well as finely built stone dwellings for the upper classes. These sites mark the beginning of an evolutionary sequence characterized by ever larger, more complex, and more stratified societies in Mesoamerica.

As settlements grew larger, Mesoamerican societies became increasingly stratified according to social rank. The ranks of these societies typically included a large lower class of farmers, miners, and craftspeople; a middle class of merchants and government officials; and an upper class of priestly elites who directed religious and political life and maintained armies. In many of these societies, children were educated in formal schools. Most children were trained to follow their parents’ occupations, but talented youth might be selected for more suitable work. Citizens supported the state religion, although in the empires local religious observances were sometimes permitted to coexist with the state religion. War captives and debtors often became slaves.

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Settlement and Housing

Although Mesoamerica contained many impressive cities, most of the area’s population was rural. The region encompassed thousands of communities, ranging from small villages of perhaps 100 people to great urban centers such as Tenochtitlán, an Aztec city that—at its peak—was home to an estimated 200,000 people. Several hundred localities large enough to be called cities by modern standards emerged in Mesoamerica, although some of them served mainly as religious centers for a rural population living near them; their principal inhabitants were priests who gathered there to fast and purify themselves before important ceremonies.

In agricultural settlements, people typically lived in single-room round or rectangular huts made with poles covered by thatch or sometimes grass. In some areas homes were constructed of sun-dried adobe bricks or wattle and daub (interwoven twigs plastered with clay). Roofs were frequently gabled for protection against the heavy downpours that occurred every year during the rainy season. Each residence usually had a cooking hearth, storage pit, and workshop area where pottery and tools were made.

Mesoamerican cities often covered large areas. At their centers were great plazas surrounded by massive public buildings, including flat-topped pyramids, palaces, sanctuaries, monasteries, temples, baths, dance platforms, reviewing stands, bridges, terraces, and astronomical observatories. There were also ball courts, on which a game roughly resembling modern basketball and soccer was played for ceremonial purposes. Near the center of cities were the large stone houses and walled compounds of wealthy elites; the common people and the poor lived on the outskirts, often in single-room structures with earthen floors. By ad 200 in the city of Teotihuacán, many commoners were living in a new type of structure in Mesoamerica—one-story apartment buildings that could house up to 100 people.

Buildings in the cities were large and impressive, although rarely were they spacious enough inside to hold more than a few dozen people. The buildings often had façades crafted from stone and gleaming stucco. Sometimes the façades were elaborately carved with abstract geometric designs and with both stylized and naturalistic masks and figures of birds, humans, and other animals. The towering pyramids, made of mounds of earth and rubble faced with stone, were topped by temples, reached by steep flights of steps.

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