The original inhabitants of the Americas traveled across what is now known as the Bering Strait, a passage that connected the westernmost point of North America with the easternmost point of Asia. The Western hemisphere was disconnected from Asia at the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 B.C.E.
In 1492, the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus arrived at the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), mistakenly thinking he had reached Asia. Columbus’ miscalculation marked the first step in the colonization of the Americas, or what was then seen as a “New World.” Incorrectly referring to the native inhabitants of Hispaniola as “Indians” (under the assumption that he had landed in India), Columbus established the first Spanish colony of the Americas. “Pre-Columbian” thus refers to the period in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus.
The Spanish conquistadores (conquerors) found that the “New World” was in fact not new at all, and that the indigenous people of Mesoamerica had established advanced civilizations with densely populated cities and towering architectural monuments such as at Teōtīhuacān, as well as advanced writing systems.
The term pre-Columbian is complicated however. For one thing, although it refers to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the phrase does not directly reference any of the many sophisticated cultures that flourished in the Americas (think of the Aztec, Inka, or Maya, to name only a few) and instead invokes a European explorer. For this reason and because indigenous peoples flourished before and after the arrival of the Europeans, the term is often seen as flawed. Other terms such as pre-Hispanic, pre-Cortesian, or more simply, ancient Americas, are sometimes used.
What does “Mesoamerica” mean?
The region of Mesoamerica—which today includes central and south Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador—consists of a diverse geographic landscape of highlands, jungles, valleys, and coastlines. Mesoamericans did not exploit technological innovations such as the wheel—though they were used in toys— and did not develop metal tools or metalworking techniques until at least until 900 C.E. Instead, Mesoamerican artists are known for producing megalithic (large stone) sculpture and extremely sharp weapons from obsidian (volcanic glass). Featherwork and stonework in basalt, turquoise, and jade dominated Mesoamerican artistic production, while exceptional textiles and metallurgy flourished further south, among pre-Columbian Andean and Central American cultures, respectively.
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures shared certain characteristics such as the ritual ballgame,* pyramid building, human sacrifice, maize as an agricultural staple, and deities dedicated to natural forces (i.e. rain, storm, fire). Additionally, some Mesoamerican societies developed sophisticated systems of writing, as well as an advanced understanding of astronomy (which allowed for the development of accurate and complex calendar systems, including the 260-day sacred calendar and the 365-day agricultural calendar). As a result, cities like La Venta and Chichen Itza were aligned in relation to cardinal directions and had a sacred center. The fact that many of these cultural trademarks persisted for more than 2,000 years across civilizations as distinct as the Olmec (c. 1200–400 B.C.E.) and the Aztec (c. 1345 to 1521 C.E.), demonstrates the strong cultural bond of Mesoamerican cultures.
*The ballgame was played in different iterations at different times and in different places. It was played with a rubber ball that players hit with their elbows, hips, or knees. The ballgame was considered an important ritual in Mesoamerica and was practiced first by the Olmec and last by the Aztec. Since the rubber ball was solid and heavy, players wore protective gear to avoid injury and may have tried to score the ball through a ring, which was usually located high on the wall of the ballcourt. Numerous rubber balls and ballcourts have been discovered throughout Mesoamerica in El Tajín (image above) and Monte Albán, although the largest surviving ballcourt is located in Chichen Itza. While the ballgame was played by the elite, it was believed that the fate of the game and thus of the player was determined by the gods. As a result, the Mesoamerican ballgame held significant implications.
The Afro-Eurasian trade system was huge, but other regional trade networks existed outside of it. In the Western Hemisphere, unknown to anyone living on the other half of the globe, long-distance trade networks flourished. The most extensive of these was in Mesoamerica—in what is today Mexico and Central America.
Long-distance trade in the Americas faced significant barriers. Mesoamerica didn’t have pack animals, and its rivers were not good for transportation. Though some sea-based trade took place in the Caribbean Sea and on the Pacific coast, American societies didn’t develop sailing technology. Instead, huge canoes carried merchants long distances. Afro-Eurasian merchants could transport goods on a large scale thanks to pack animals and sailing ships, but in Mesoamerica, humans had to carry most loads. The development of long-distance trade networks in this region, beginning around 3,000 years ago is pretty impressive, considering it was mainly done on foot.
Carrying goods on their backs, merchants moved between the large urban centers that emerged in Mesoamerica. Beginning around 1200 BCE, the Olmec and Zapotec peoples built major cities and trade routes in what is now southern Mexico. Around the same time, Maya cities expanded in the Yucatan Peninsula. By around 150 BCE, the great city of Teotihuacan emerged further north, on the plateau of central Mexico. Teotihuacan grew into the most important center of trade in Mesoamerica by 300 CE. At its height, Teotihuacan had over 100,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities in the world and the largest city in the Americas.
In Mesoamerica, many cities grew powerful because they were near valuable resources, such as obsidian and jade. Jade was used in religious rituals, making the cities that distributed it especially powerful. The same was true of obsidian. Mesoamerican societies did not use metal for weapons and tools; they used obsidian instead. Teotihuacan controlled two important obsidian mines. As long as it dominated the obsidian trade, Teotihuacan remained a regional powerhouse.
Many other luxury materials circulated in the Mesoamerican network. Just like in Afro-Eurasia, many of these goods were produced in more than one place, and they mingled in large marketplaces across the region. But some regions were known for specific goods. Mayan merchants carried cacao, jade, salt, and quetzal feathers up and down the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Zapotec merchants on the Pacific coast were known for their cotton cloth and pottery. Further south, smaller societies in the highlands of what is now Guatemala traded jade and obsidian with their neighbors to the north. While the Mesoamerican networks were not as large as those in Afro-Eurasia, they also moved ideas. Many Mesoamerican societies shared religious and cultural symbols, which were adopted by new societies as they spread across trade routes.
Avocado, tomato, and chocolate. You are likely familiar with at least some of these food items. Did you know that they all originally come from Mexico, and are all based on Nahuatl words (ahuacatl, tomatl, and chocolatl) that were eventually adopted by the English language?
Nahuatl is the language spoken by the Nahua ethnic group that is found today in Mexico, but with deep historical roots. You might know one Nahua group: the Aztecs, more accurately called the Mexica. The Mexica were one of many Mesoamerican cultural groups that flourished in Mexico prior to the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century.
Where was Mesoamerica?
Mesoamerica refers to the diverse civilizations that shared similar cultural characteristics in the geographic areas comprising the modern-day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Some of the shared cultural traits among Mesoamerican peoples included a complex pantheon of deities, architectural features, a ballgame, the 260-day calendar, trade, food (especially a reliance on maize, beans, and squash), dress, and accoutrements (such as earspools).
Some of the most well-known Mesoamerican cultures are the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Mixtec, and Mexica (or Aztec). The geography of Mesoamerica is incredibly diverse—it includes humid tropical areas, dry deserts, high mountainous terrain, and low coastal plains. An anthropologist named Paul Kirchkoff first used the term “Mesoamerica” (meso is Greek for “middle” or “intermediate”) in 1943 to designate these geographical areas as having shared cultural traits prior to the invasion of Europeans, and the term has remained.
Typically when we discuss Mesoamerican art we are referring to art made by peoples in Mexico and much of Central America. When people mention Native North American art, they are usually referring to indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Canada, even though these countries are technically all part of North America. More recently, archaeologists and art historians have considered connections between the Southwestern and Southeastern U.S. and Mesoamerica, an area sometimes called either the Greater Southwest or Greater Mesoamerica. Focusing on these connections demonstrates how people were in contact with one another through trade, shared beliefs, migration, or conflict. Ball courts, for instance, are found in Arizona sites such as the Pueblo Grande of the Hohokam. It is important to remember that modern-day geographic terms—like Mesoamerica or the Southwestern U.S.—are recent designations.
This essay generalizes about Mesoamerican cultures, but keep in mind that each possessed unique qualities and cultural differences. Mesoamerica was not homogenous.
When was Mesoamerica?
Art historians and archaeologists divide Mesoamerican history into distinct periods and some of these periods are then further divided into the sub-periods—early, middle, and late.
The date for the end of the Postclassic period is somewhat contested as it presumes that Mesoamerican culture largely ended with the arrival of Spaniards into the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan in 1519, though Mesoamerican culture continued under Spanish control, albeit significantly transformed.
What language did people speak?
There was no single language that united the peoples of Mesoamerica. Linguists believe that Mesoamericans spoke more than 125 different languages. For instance, Maya peoples did not speak “Mayan”, but could have spoken Yucatec Maya, K’iche, or Tzotzil among many others. The Mexica belonged to the bigger Nahua ethnic group, and therefore spoke Nahuatl.
To students learning about Mesoamerica for the first time, the incredible diversity of people, languages, and even deities can be overwhelming. I recall my first Mesoamerican art history class vividly. I was intimidated by my lack of familiarity with different Mesoamerican words, languages, and cultural groups. By the end of the semester I was proud that I could differentiate between the Zapotec and Mixtec, and could spell Tlaloc. It took me a few more years to be able to spell and pronounce words like Tlacaxipehualiztli (Tla-cawsh-ee-pay-wal-eeezt-li) or Huitzilopochtli (Wheat-zil-oh-poach-lee).
Writing
Mesoamerican writing systems vary by culture. Rebus writing (writing with images) was common among many groups, like the Nahua and Mixtec. Imagine drawing an eye, a heart, and an apple. You’ve just used rebus writing to communicate “I love apples” to anyone familiar with these symbols. Many visual writing systems in Mesoamerica functioned similarly—although the previous example was simplified for the sake of clarity. You might encounter the phrases “writing without words” or “writing with signs” used to describe many writing systems in Mesoamerica. It is also called pictographic, ideographic, or picture writing.
Only the Maya used a writing system like ours, where signs like letters designate sounds and syllables, and combined together to create words. Maya hieroglyphic writing is logographic, which means it uses a sign (think of a picture, symbol, or a letter) to communicate a syllable or a word.
The 260-day ritual calendar vs. the 365-day calendar
Other shared features among Mesoamerican peoples were the 260-day and 365-day calendars. The 260-day calendar was a ritual calendar, with 20 months of 13 days. Based on the sun, the 365-day calendar had 18 months of 20 days, with five “extra” nameless days at the end. It was the count of time used for agriculture.
Imagine both of these calendars as interlocking wheels. Every 52 years they completed a full cycle, and during this time special rituals commemorated the cycle. For example, the Mexica celebrated the New Fire Ceremony as a period of renewal. These cycles were understood as life cycles, and so reflect creation, death, and rebirth. The Maya (especially during the Classic period), also used a Long Count calendar in addition to the two already mentioned (rather than a cyclical calendar, the Long Count marked time as if along an extended line that does not repeat).
Religion and pantheon of gods
A complex pantheon of gods existed within each Mesoamerican culture. Many groups shared similar deities, although there was a great deal of variation. Deities that had important roles across Mesoamerica included a storm/rain god and a feathered serpent deity. Among the Mexica, this storm/rain god was known as Tlaloc, and the feathered serpent deity was known as Quetzalcoatl. The Maya referred to their storm/rain deity as Chaac (there are multiple spellings). The equivalent of Quetzalcoatl among different Maya groups included Kukulkan (Yucatec Maya) and Q’uq’umatz (K’iche Maya). Cocijo is the Zapotec equivalent of the storm/rain god. Many artworks exist that show these two deities with similar features. The storm/rain deity often has goggle eyes and an upturned mouth/snout. Feathered serpent deities typically showed serpent features paired with feathers.
It is difficult to generalize about Mesoamerican religious beliefs and cosmological ideas because they were so complex. Throughout Mesoamerica, there was a general belief in the universe’s division along two axes: one vertical, the other horizontal. At the center, where these two axes meet, is the axis mundi, or the center (or navel) of the universe. On the horizontal plane, four directions branch off from the axismundi. Think of the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west). On the vertical plane, we generally find the world split into three major realms: the celestial, terrestrial, and underworld.
One Mexica example helps to clarify this complex cosmological system. An image in the Codex Féjervary-Mayer displays the cosmos’s horizontal axis. In the center is the deity Xiuhtecuhtli (a fire god), standing in the place of the axis mundi. Four nodes (what look almost like trapezoidal petals) branch off from his position, creating a shape called a Maltese Cross. East (top) is associated with red, south (right) with green, west (bottom) with blue, and north (left) with yellow. A specific plant and bird accompany each world direction: blue tree and quetzal (east), cacao and parrot (south), maize and blue-painted bird (west), and cactus and eagle (north). Two figures flank the plant in each arm of the cross. Together, these figures and Xiuhtecuhtli represent the Nine Lords of the Night. This cosmogram describes how the Mexica conceived of the universe.
The ballgame
Peoples across Mesoamerica, beginning with the Olmecs, played a ritual sport known as the ballgame. Ballcourts were often located in a city’s sacred precinct, emphasizing the importance of the game. Solid rubber balls were passed between players (no hands allowed!), with the goal of hitting them through markers. Players wore padded garments to protect their bodies from the hard ball.
The meanings of the ballgame were many and varied. It could symbolize a range of larger cosmological ideas, including the movement of the sun through the underworld every night. War captives also played the game against members of a winning city or group, with the game symbolizing their defeat in war. Sometimes a game was even played instead of going to war.
Numerous objects display aspects of the ballgame, attesting to its significant role across Mesoamerica. We have examples of clay sculptures of ballgames occurring on courts. Ballplayers are also frequent subjects in Maya painted ceramic vessels and sculptures. Stone reliefs at El Tajin and Chichen Itza depict different moments of a ballgame culminating in ritual sacrifice. Painted pictorial codices, such as the Codex Borgia (above), display I-shaped ballcourts, and stone depictions of ballgame clothing have been found. Today, people in Mexico still play a version of the ballgame.
Mesoamerican societies continue to impress us with their sophistication and accomplishments, notably their artistic achievements. Our understanding continues to expand with ongoing research and archaeological excavations. Recent excavations in Mexico City, for instance, uncovered a new monumental Mexica sculpture buried with some of the most unique objects we’ve ever seen in Mexica art. With these discoveries, our understanding of the Mexica will no doubt grow and change.
Historical periods are the sign posts we use to navigate the stream of Mesoamerican history. Historians and archeologists have defined these periods, such as Archaic and Classic, based on the changing characteristics of the material culture of this region. This essay provides a broad overview of the different periods of Mesoamerican history.
It is important to note though that historical periods are not real. No one, as far as we can tell, in ancient Mesoamerica, ever woke up and said, “This is 150 C.E. I must be now in the Classic period with a different set of characteristics.” Periods are a way for historians looking back on human growth and development to structure and assess these time periods in ways that help us think about them. In that sense, they’re not real to the history itself nor to the people who lived through that history. They’re what we call heuristic devices. They simply help us to organize this great stream of time that is Mesoamerican history.
You will notice that different sources might use slightly different date ranges for periods—this is because not everyone agrees on the exact boundaries of each period.
Archaic period, c. 14,000–1800 B.C.E.
We begin this story with the entry of humans into the Americas. People did begin to modify materials into objects similar to what we might now call art, such as an Archaic camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine, but generally throughout this entire period, we have found very few such items. Instead, during this historical period, we can talk about the foundations of Mesoamerican civilization. We can start with a simple but critical question: How did the people of this early period feed themselves? Throughout the Archaic period, hunting and gathering is the main mode of survival. They were hunters of megafauna—very large animals, many of which became extinct during this period (the mastodon for one). They also gathered plants to supplement their diet, though they did not grow these plants. When people consciously undertake agricultural activity, that is another type of lifestyle entirely, and something that we do not get with the early hunters in the Archaic period.
Pre-classic period, c. 1800 B.C.E.–150 C.E.
The next period is called the Pre-classic. It opens with the widespread adoption of ceramics. Bowls, jars, and figurines were made from a widely available material—clay—that could be shaped into storage vessels as well as expressive clay sculpture. It only takes fire to transform the wet clay into a permanent form. Ceramics develop alongside a revolutionary new technique for producing food: farming.
It is during the Pre-classic period that the the slow domestication of corn or maize (maíz in Spanish), which is so important to Mesoamerican culture, takes place. Corn begins to be planted regularly and becomes an important part of the diet. Beans and squash also become important staples alongside corn. All these need to be stored and cooked, and ceramic vessels filled this need. Some of the earliest decorated ceramic containers seem to have been used for making corn beer, an important source of safe hydration and an important feature of the ceremonies held in these first farming villages.
The rise of agriculture is an important foundation for the Pre-classic period, but it is not the only issue that we talk about when we discuss the Pre-classic. This period also saw the rise of urban civilization. People begin to live in cities early on in this period, fully adopting agriculture and settling down; this is often described in relation to the Neolithic revolution. They are no longer hunting and gathering and moving around as their main dietary or food strategy. While people did still hunt and go out and gather food, it was not the main way that they fed themselves.
The rise of villages and towns occurs when people settle together to work their fields, and they develop particular cultural practices as they gather together. One example is Tlatilco, which was located close to a lake, where fishing and bird hunting became important ways to obtain food. Burials at Tlatilco included hundreds of ceramic figurines shaped like humans and animals.
Soon after the establishment of villages, more complex organizations and settlements arise, we call these cities. The difference between a village and a city is that people in cities develop specialties and hierarchies. Not everyone grows the food. This is no longer a settlement of farmers. A city is a settlement of many different paths, offices, and jobs—all working together in a complex system.
With the rise of cities comes the rise of hierarchies. This period shows the clear evidence of elites, or people at the top of the social pyramid. Elites in Mesoamerica patronize or pay for particular kinds of art to be associated with their high status. For instance, they get involved in the trade and the working of precious materials like jade; this is a really important part of Pre-classic artistic development because artists were given the time and resources to develop their skills, under the patronage of these new elites.
Finally, in the middle of these cities we get monumental art and architecture. An example of major Pre-classic sites are the Olmec cities of San Lorenzo and La Venta. San Lorenzo flourished between c. 1200–900 B.C.E. and had a wealth of sculpture set into tableaux (interacting sculptural figures) in the center of the city. Archaeologists discovered a palace at San Lorenzo with an attached sculpture workshop, making clear the relationship between the elite and the emerging class of artists. The city of La Venta flourished between 900–400 B.C.E. and had a massive pyramid and large stelae (an upright flat slab of stone worked in relief on one, two, or four faces). Both Olmec cities of San Lorenzo and La Venta exhibited colossal heads of rulers, and smaller objects made in precious materials like jadeite.
Classic period, c. 150–650 C.E.
The Classic period is easier to define because it’s really an elaboration of the Pre-classic patterns. Monumental art and architecture in cities gets more elaborate and there are more traditions because there are more cities.
The Classic period is defined by the rise of the megacity in historical writing that treats the Classic period, especially the single great metropolis called Teotihuacan. Teotihuacan was the sixth largest city in the world in its heyday around 400 or 450 C.E. It was a city on a grander scale than any other cities in Mesoamerica by this time, and it had a profound influence on other cities and places during the Classic period.
In the Maya region (southern Mexico and Central America) we also find powerful and prosperous cities, including Palenque, Yaxchilán, and Tikal. Rulers of these city-states commissioned buildings and monumental sculptures to communicate messages of power and divinity, including portrait stelae.
Epiclassic, c. 650–950 C.E.
The single most defining characteristic of the Epiclassic period is the lack of Teotihuacan to serve as the central force in Mesoamerican civilization. By 650 C.E., when the Epiclassic begins, Teotihuacan was a shadow of its former self, with a much smaller population and little real influence outside the valley of Teotihuacan.
The political history of the Epiclassic is the story of the power vacuum left by Teotihuacan’s demise. In many areas, that vacuum was filled by local powers, with individuals who had newfound access to wealth that was used to create monumental architecture and elite art. The Epiclassic is the story of these secondary or regional power centers, that grew up in the wake of Teotihuacan’s fall. It is the story of sites like Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, and El Tajín. This period is marked not only by the rise of these regional centers, but also by interesting, accomplished, eclectic art styles, and a plethora of elite architecture.
In terms of art history and architectural history, it’s a vibrant period. The decline and fall of Teotihuacan allowed smaller regional centers, that had been previously been held back by the dominance of Teotihuacan, to flourish artistically, economically, and politically. There was also an intense competition among these newly important centers, and much of that competition was expressed in new building programs, sculpture, and precious objects.
Post-Classic period, c. 950–1519 C.E.
Finally, in the the Post-Classic period we find developing patterns from the Epiclassic, such as numerous regional centers instead of a great metropolis like Teotihuacan. These regional centers seemed to be linked commercially through ever more complex trade networks that moved everything from volcanic glass to precious jade and shell jewelry. With this economic exchange came trade in religious ideas that seem to echo across much of Mesoamerica.
The Post-Classic is distinguished from the preceding Classic/Epi-Classic by an increase in merchants, and in the importance of merchants in commercial activities on a large scale. Post-Classic art transforms large parts of the Classic artistic tradition. Some Post-Classic artists rejected the most refined elements of the Classic tradition. This is especially true among the Maya, whose Post-Classic traditions dropped the idealizing features of Classic Maya nobles and gods and instead developed a rough carving tradition with seemingly endless lines of similar figures. Sculpture at the large site of Chichen Itzá has hundreds of good examples of the Post-Classic carving style. The major related site of Tula, Hidalgo, also follows this trend.
However, the Post-Classic is not, by any means, a complete break with the Classic period. You see people continually reflecting back on the art of the Classic period as they build their Post-Classic social and artistic patterns, at places like Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán and Mitla in Oaxaca.
For instance, Oaxacan nobles in the region called the Mixteca created complex hieroglyphic books (such as the Codex Zouche-Nuttall) out of the glyphic tradition found in places like Xochicalco as well as nearby Monte Albán and other Oaxacan sites during the Epiclassic. These people, called the Mixtec, also created a tradition of fine metalworking in gold and silver. Precious metals had not been important to Mesoamerica before this period, although it was well-known to the south of Mesoamerica, especially in the Andes. Mesoamericans had preferred jade as the primary elite material since the time of the Olmecs, but the Mixtec became adept at goldwork, almost certainly learning from peoples on the Pacific Coast of Mexico who learned metalsmithing (creating objects in metal) in turn from peoples farther south.
It is in the Post-Classic period that the Mexica (or Aztec) empire develops and grows, often incorporating elements of peoples they conquered into their art and architecture—including the Mixtec. Merchants were an important feature of the Mexica empire, and there was also a steady stream of raw materials and goods into Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital city.
The Spaniards arrive in 1519 and change things drastically enough that we can no longer talk about Mesoamerican civilization in the same terms that are used for the period from 14,000 B.C.E. to 1519 C.E. Indigenous artists continued to erect buildings and decorate them, and they continued to make books. They did so in an artistic landscape so changed that some scholars have spoken of the “extinction” of Indigenous Mexican art. In reality, many Indigenous artists were deeply committed to the new artistic vocabulary of church, cross, and mural, especially when they were building for their own city (pueblo de indios). Indigenous artists have never gone away. They are with us today, continuing to make meaningful and beautiful artistic statements.
Drawing of the Aztec Sun Stone, which carries references to the Aztec calendar, from Antonio de León y Gama, Descripción histórica y cronológica de las dos piedras que con ocasión del nuevo empedrado que se está formando en la plaza principal de México, se hallaron en ella el año de 1790..., 1792 (Library of Congress)
We think of calendars as utilitarian—as tools that we all use every day to organize our time. But calendars also tell us a great deal about how the cultures that produce and use them understand and structure their world.
Before Spanish conquerors invaded the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Indigenous peoples of ancient Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras—an area known today as Mesoamerica—developed cultures over more than three millennia that were distinctive but that also held many ideas in common. Some of the features that they shared include the presence of ballcourts where a game was played using a heavy rubber ball, the development of complex religions with elaborate pantheons of deities, and, in works of art, a shared understanding of the importance of materials like greenstone and precious feathers.
Many Mesoamerican cultures also shared common ways of counting time. Calendars consisted of a system of two different counts that ran simultaneously. The first count tracked a cycle of 260 days (in Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua ethnic group, this was called the tonalpohualli), which was used for divining an individual’s fate (or predicting their future); that fate was itself understood as a portrait of an individual’s character. The other count, closer to our solar year, followed a cycle of 365 days (in Nahuatl, the xiuhpohualli); this calendar tracked the passage of the alternating wet and dry seasons. Calendars were central to Mesoamerican cultures because they were tied to major seasonal cycles, and related to ideas around individuals and their fates.
Works of Mesoamerican art often include references to calendars and time. Taking a closer look at the role of the calendar in different artistic contexts helps us to understand how knowledge about time was represented and utilized in the ancient world.
This page from an almanac in the Codex Borbonicus represents a 13-day period from the 260-day calendar used for divination in the Mesoamerican world. Codex Borbonicus, p. 13, early 16th century, paint on amate bark paper (Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale)
Painting the ritual calendar
Painted books—known today as codices, or codex in the singular—created both before and after the arrival of Spaniards to Mesoamerica in 1519 give us an idea of how the 260-day ritual count (the count most closely related to divination and prognostication) was represented in Mesoamerican art.
The accordion-fold format common to Indigenous Mesoamerican codices
In the first half of the sixteenth century, a painted book (today known as the Codex Borbonicus) was created in Central Mexico using a very long strip of bark paper folded in an accordion-like format. This book was likely similar to the books typical of Mexica (sometimes called Aztec) visual culture, a tradition that flourished in Central Mexico in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The 13th trecena. Codex Borbonicus, p. 13, early 16th century, paint on amate bark paper (Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale)
One page from an almanac in the Codex Borbonicus represents a 13-day period (called a trecena), and each trecena had a presiding patron deity. Calendar specialists consulted images like these to interpret whether the individual days that were represented might portend good, evil, or ambiguous fates. The first section of the Codex is dedicated to these 20 months of 13 days that made up the 260-day calendar.
Let us take a close look at the 13th trecena. This complex image consists of two parts, including both the count of days in the ritual calendar and the deities who were associated with those days. In the grids that run along the sides of the page, the artist has painted a sequence of 13 glyphic signs representing each of 13 days; the count starts at the bottom left and ends and the top right. 1 Earthquake is the first day of this period.
Meanwhile, the larger space on the page is a cartouche where we see the gods who are associated with these days. On the left, a frontally oriented female deity (Tlazolteotl) is depicted in the position of giving birth, while the deity on the right is an avian god who holds two perforators for sacrifice. These gods are surrounded by insects like the spider and centipede (creatures associated with night and darkness) and by objects, like an incense burner and perforators.
Codex Borbonicus, detail of 13th trecena with Tlazolteotl, p. 13, early 16th century, paint on amate bark paper (Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale)
When a calendar specialist consulted this painting, these images of deities, animals, and objects could be interpreted to understand the fates and characters associated with the set of days referenced in the painting. Each day in the 260-day count was associated with a distinct quality or fate. Some days were believed to be tied to good outcomes and good character; others were ambiguous, and others still predicted evil ends. These destinies also spoke to the identity of people born on those dates. The birthdate of a child was considered in a number of contexts to be intimately tied to their fate, and in some contexts, like in the Mixtec tradition from southern Mexico, individuals were named after their birthdates, speaking to the close tie between the calendar and identity.
Trecena day signs, including the 13th trecena in the blue box. Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 1, book 4, 1575–1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
Today, we have some idea of how a painting like this one might have been interpreted in the Aztec world thanks to the texts in a manuscript known as the Florentine Codex. This manuscript was created in the second half of the sixteenth century, after the Spanish Conquest, when the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún asked a number of Nahuatl-speaking Indigenous collaborators to explicate various facets of Nahua thought and history, including their ideas about the calendar. When these collaborators turned to describe the ritual period depicted in the above page of the Codex Borbonicus, they wrote that those born on these days had destinies that were “only half good. He who was then born, man or woman, who did penance well, who took good heed, who was well reared, succeeded and found his [rewards]. But if he did not take good heed, and were not well reared, the opposite resulted. He met misery […]”[1] In this case, the fate of the days in the painting was ambiguous. It might portend either a good or bad fate, depending on the actions taken by the person who was born then.
The solar calendar’s festivals
While the 260-day ritual calendar was used for understanding individuals’ fates, the 365-day count tracked the passage of time and the seasons of the solar year. In Aztec culture, the distinctive seasons of the year were times for different activities. During the rainy season, Aztec culture emphasized agricultural fertility and rites to propitiate gods related to water and sustenance. During the subsequent dry season, warfare and the expansion of the empire became major concerns. The 365-day solar calendar was divided into shorter 20-day periods (with 18 months total) when festivals were celebrated that were related to these seasonal concerns. The names of these 20-day periods speak to the character of the seasons: One period is named Toxcatl, “dryness,” and another is called Atlcahualo, “the ceasing of the waters.”
Celebrants unwrap tamales for a feast marking the festival of Atemoztli, “Descent of the Waters,” from the 365-day solar calendar. Detail from Codex Durán folio 342r, 1575, ink and wash on European paper (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid)
In manuscript paintings made late in the sixteenth century, we find images that depict the festivals that were scheduled according to the 365-day solar calendar. Images of these rites appear in the manuscript known as the Codex Durán. These images were painted by Indigenous artists around Mexico City in the year 1575 and the text was written by the Dominican friar, Diego Durán. One painting shows how an indigenous artist living in the colonial world depicted the ancient festival from the period of Atemoztli, a name that means “the descent of the waters.” In the painting, a group gathers upon a woven mat to eat tamales, the customary food for the celebration of this festival; the descending male figure at the top of the painting may represent the rains. Feasting was an important rite for this festival from the solar calendar; Codex Durán tells us that the tamales that the celebrants eat were considered offerings to ensure good rains and a good harvest. Unlike in the case of the Codex Borbonicus, this painting probably does not follow the format of an ancient book, since pre-Conquest references to the twenty-day festivals do not tend to include ritual scenes combined with important information about the months in the clouds. But it does show us how Indigenous artists imagined one of the festivals surrounding the agricultural cycle from the vantage point of their Colonial context.
The origins of the calendar
Manuscripts like the Codex Borbonicus and the Codex Durán show us how the calendar was visualized in the sixteenth century, but Mesoamerican calendars were in use long before that. We do not know exactly when the counts of the calendar were first adopted in Mesoamerican history, but archaeology tells us that the calendar’s past lies deep in the region’s history. On ancient stone monuments, solar calendar inscriptions appear by the first century B.C.E. in the region of Mexico’s Gulf Coast; in Oaxaca, inscriptions have been found that may date earlier still.
Stela C from the site of Tres Zapotes in Veracruz, Mexico, features one of the oldest calendrical inscriptions from Mesoamerica; it names a year that corresponds to 31 B.C.E. (CC0)
One of the oldest Mesoamerican monuments with a calendrical text is a sculpture from the site of Tres Zapotes, and it includes an inscription that notes the date of 31 B.C.E. Looking closely at its inscription, the left-hand column includes a series of numerals represented as dots above horizontal bars. This part of the text enumerates the number of days that have passed from a commonly held “start” point deep in time; the effect is that the inscription precisely names a single date that we are able to reconstruct today. Thanks to this count, we know exactly which historical moment was named in the inscription, and thanks to this monument, we appreciate the deep historical origins of calendrical monuments in Mesoamerica.
Detail of Oxomoco and Cipactonal, Codex Borbonicus, p. 21, early 16th century, paint on amate bark paper (Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale)
Although archaeology tells part of the story about the origins of the calendar, the Indigenous collaborators who created the Florentine Codex conveyed their ideas about the origins of the calendar. In their telling, the calendar had been invented by deities, including the feathered serpent known as Quetzalcoatl and a divine elderly couple named Oxomoco and Cipactonal; these elders are also named in other Nahuatl-language texts (including the manuscript known as the Anales de Cuauhtitlan). Indigenous peoples living in the colonial period had important beliefs about the sacred origins of the Mesoamerican calendar, beliefs that should be taken into account alongside contemporary archaeology’s story about the origins of the calendar.
Calendrical Inscriptions and Images of Power
Mesoamerican monuments show us that in some cases, calendrical information was deployed in support of images of power. This was the case in both the Maya and the Aztec worlds, where calendrical inscriptions contributed to visualizing the power of rulers.
This fifth-century sculpture, Stela 31 from Tikal, Guatemala, represents the royal Siyah Chan K’awiil II dressed in elaborate finery; the back of the monument tells the story of generations of Tikal’s history using precise calendrical dates (photos: Left-Greg Willis, CC BY-SA 2.0; right-HJPD, CC BY 3.0)
In Classic Maya art, a tradition that flourished between 250 and 900 C.E., freestanding stone sculptures (known as stelae) were a surface where Maya scribes used calendrical inscriptions to record important moments in the lives of kings, such as the dates when they were born or when they ascended to the throne. This was the case on Stela 31 from the site of Tikal in northern Guatemala. Dedicated in the fifth century C.E., the front side of the monument depicts a king from Tikal named Siyah Chan K’awiil II. In the image, he appears covered in elaborate royal finery and accompanied by images referring to his lineage.
On the back of the monument, a long text describes episodes from Tikal’s history, from the moment when a foreign power took up leadership in the city in the previous century through Siyah Chan K’awiil II’s rise to the throne in 435, all the way to the moment when the stela itself was dedicated. Precise calendrical reckoning situated the events that led to Siyah Chan K’awiil II’s reign firmly in historical time and played an important role in constructing the king’s image and authority in this monumental work.
The Aztec Dedication Stone features a scene of a deceased king and his successor performing autosacrifice above a large date glyph corresponding to 1487–1488 (Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City; left: Sarahh Scher, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; right: Zach Lindsey, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Among the Aztecs, monumental calendrical inscriptions also played an important role in constructing a ruler’s power. The Aztec Dedication Stone represents an important ceremony of royal ritual autosacrifice carried out by a deceased ruler and his successor. At the top of the work, the ruler Ahuitzotl (seen at right) is shown with his royal predecessor Tizoc (left) performing autosacrifice, drawing streams of blood from their ears with sharp perforators. Their sacrificial blood feeds a hungry earth, represented as an upturned, open maw; Aztec religion involved sacrifices in which offerings were made to the earth to ensure that cosmic order was maintained. Below this scene, the sculptor depicted a very large calendrical inscription that dominates the entire composition, associating the ritual with the date 8 Reed (or 1487–1488). With the great visual weight given to this date, this politically potent monument and its concerns around succession and rule shows the importance of graphically foregrounding historical time in an image of royal power in Aztec art. Even so, time is also interestingly manipulated on this monument. Tizoc’s death before Ahuitzotl’s ascension suggests that the time imagined in the ritual scene is likely imaginary; what mattered instead was that the new ruler appear beside his predecessor, emphasizing his continuity with royal power.
Calendar after the Spanish Conquest
In the decades that followed the Spanish Invasion of the Americas, European missionary friars became interested in the Mesoamerican calendar because they sensed that it still held a powerful influence in the communities that they sought to convert to Christianity. In the Codex Durán, Diego Durán wrote that he suspected that an Indigenous town had adopted their patron saint because his feast day fell on an important day on the ancient calendar. [2] Since many of these friars believed that the practice of the ancient calendar was a way of maintaining idolatrous practices, missionaries sought to end the use of the Mesoamerican calendar altogether.
Despite Colonial efforts at extirpation, the calendar continued to constitute an important form of knowledge in some areas of Mesoamerica long after the Colonial period. Among K’iche Maya speakers in the Guatemala highlands, for example, specialists in Mesoamerican calendrical knowledge have continued to interpret and use the calendar in the twenty-first century as an integral part of their social and political milieu. The special place accorded to calendrical knowledge in these communities today speaks to the continued relevance of the Mesoamerican calendar into our own century, as well as the prestige and status accorded to the keepers of this vital form of understanding the world.
Notes:
Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 4: p. 85.
Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites and The Ancient Calendar, trans. Doris Heyden and Fernando Horcasitas [1971], pp. 409–410.
Mesoamerican art in context: an excerpt from an origin story (Popol Vuh)
by DENVER ART MUSEUM
“In the Denver Art Museum’s Art of the Ancient Americas galleries, we worked with Mexico City-based animators Hola Combo to create animations to help tell the origin stories that explain the relationship between ancient American communities and the their environment. For Mesoamerica we chose an excerpt from the “Popol Vuh,” a sixteenth-century book in K’iché Maya, that recounts the formation of the earth and the first peoples, among other tales. The K’iché people live in the highlands of Guatemala and speak one of the many Mayan languages. Despite its sixteenth-century origins, the stories in the Popol Vuh exhibit a strong connection with ancient Maya objects. Many of the same characters from the book appear on vessels and other ancient Maya visual material as Dr. Oswaldo Chinchilla-Mazariegos illustrates in his book Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya.”
Stele 50, Izapa, pre-classic period (photo: Gary Todd, public domain)
Basic characteristics of the late Pre-classic period
This essay examines the late Pre-classic period, especially its basic characteristics. The late Pre-classic runs from 400 B.C.E. to 150 C.E.. It is bracketed on one side by the dissolution of the Olmec culture, and on the other by the rise of Teotihuacan as the Mesoamerican mega city.
Map of Mesoamerica, with the borders of modern countries
It is important to remember that no one woke up on January 1st, 400 B.C.E. and said, “We are no longer Olmec.” The dissolution of that culture was not so abrupt, and elements of it were mixed into later cultures throughout Mesoamerica. In fact, the Olmec legacy is a large question in Mesoamerican art history. Just how important were the Olmec and in what way?
In the same way, no one woke up at Teotihuacan in 150 C.E. and said, “We are now ancient Mesoamerica’s metropolis.” Now, this is a little easier to see. You would have been able to experience in 150 C.E. pyramids on a scale that rarely, if ever, were seen in ancient Mesoamerica before, since, or in other places during that period. You would have been seeing a city that had grown to a size that ancient Mesoamerica had not experienced before. Granted, you might have felt like there was a new era dawning if you paid attention to such markers.
Panoramic view of Monte Alban, initially constructed in the pre-classic period (photo: Eke, CC BY-SA 3.0)
I want to stress that these period dates are not real. They are simply helpful. Because it is the case that the years between 400 B.C.E. and 150 C.E. saw the creation of numerous capital cities outside of the old Olmec heartland, while there was an explosion of regional art styles at the same time, as groups took on the idea of urban civilization but gave it their own twist.
The story of the late Pre-classic is this regionalization of the urban civilization model. This is especially apparent in the different styles of monumental art and architecture seen throughout the region during this period. That said, it is during this period when monumental art and architecture became especially important for any Mesoamerican capital. This is what you needed to have—monumental art and architecture—to be a capital, to communicate to other Mesoamericans, “We are somebody that you need to deal with. We have arrived in that way.”
This explosion of regional art styles may be seen most fully, however, in the precious elite objects in jade and other fine materials that were circulating throughout Mesoamerica by this time.
For the remainder of this essay, I want to go over some important characteristics of two of these new regional capitals, Izapa on the Pacific Coast and Monte Alban in the modern Mexican state of Oaxaca. I am not proposing these two capitals were more important than others. There were several important urban civilizations that were developed during the late Pre-classic away from the Gulf Coast. They do, however, serve as useful examples of the trends developing at this time.
Let’s start with Izapa, which is located on a hot, humid part of the Pacific Coast. We often associate the Gulf Coast with heat and humidity and the Pacific Coast with a little bit more temperate climate, and certainly drier, but this is not the case at the very southern edge of Mexico on the Pacific Coast, where we find the site of Izapa. It’s as hot and humid as anywhere in the tropics.
It’s a great place to grow cacao, which is exactly what the Izapans were doing, almost certainly by the late Pre-classic. Cacao, or chocolate as it’s known in English, is and was the most valuable crop in this area. In fact, for ancient Mesoamerican elites, the value of chocolate is hard to overstate. Much later, or almost 2,000 years later when the Spanish arrived, cacao was the exclusive province of upper levels of society. The ability to drink chocolate, the ability to buy chocolate and then have it made into what we would call hot chocolate, was an elite prerogative. It’s one of the things that made you elite. Almost certainly, this goes all the way back to the late Pre-classic in the development of the regional elites during this time. Izapa was one of the places where cacao could be grown at a scale that Mesoamerica needed by this time.
Each of the green structures protects Izapan stone sculptures, including stele, Pre-classic period
Izapa Stela 25, Pre-classic period
There’s another really important characteristic found at Izapa, but this one doesn’t have to do with food. It has to do with the art. Izapan art, unlike all of these regional capitals, had a number of monumental art objects placed in the center of their city. In fact dozens of stelae, or large dressed stones that then were carved in relief with a scene of what we think is part of the story that becomes the Popol Vuh. We have a particular kind of art format, which is the monumental stone stelae—dressed and flattened and given a planar surface on which to make a relief that tells a story.
Izapa Stela 25 drawing (CC BY-SA 3.0)
This kind of art making is called narrative art, or story-making art. It’s the first time that we see narrative art in such an elaborate way, worked out over the course of many stelae at the site. It is fairly clear that the iconographers who have worked on these stelae are agreed that some of the scenes seem to be proto-versions (very early versions) of scenes in the story of the Popol Vuh that we will find much later on.
Izapa was important: it introduces narrative art. It is one of the early cultivators of cacao and distributors of chocolate for the elite and in the late Pre-classic. It was a central place, an important player, in the Mesoamerican political and artistic landscape.
The same can be said, just north and a little west, in Oaxaca, where the site of Monte Alban rose to prominence by the late Pre-classic. In fact, Oaxaca’s history opens in the late Pre-classic with the dominance of Monte Alban in and around 400 B.C.E.
Monte Alban is a special, impressive place because it’s on top of a mountain that has been flattened. The peak of it has been cut off and then developed into a monumental center for art and architecture. This started in 400 B.C.E. or a little before, and gives you a sense of just how much power and work these leaders could call upon as they were building their early Mesoamerican cities.
Stela 6 with typical Zapotec writing that begins on the upper left. It says something like “In the Year 10 Deer a man named 2S was captured.” Monte Alban, Pre-classic period (photo: HJPD, CC BY 3.0)
In addition to just flattening the place and creating a huge plaza that then served as the foundation for the monumental art and architecture, we also see very early writing, and lots of it, by the late Pre-classic period at Monte Alban. Stele with writing are not always in the same place that they were during the late Pre-classic. Monte Alban was continuously inhabited, and they had the tendency, which is somewhat frustrating to archaeologists, of moving their monuments around quite a bit over the course of Monte Alban’s history. Nevertheless we can date with some confidence many of the stones that have hieroglyphic writing to the late Pre-classic period.
A time of flowering regional cultures
To sum up, the late Pre-classic is a really interesting time of the flowering of regional cultures. By the late Pre-classic period we see this urban civilization pattern exploding almost everywhere in Mesoamerica, and it will of course then come to a certain kind of fruition in the megalopolis of Teotihuacan in 150 C.E., and that’s when we see the late Pre-classic ending and a new era beginning—what we call “the Classic Period.”
Teotihuacan, Mexico, main structures c. 50–250 C.E.
Tlatilco figurines, c. 1200–600 B.C.E., ceramic, Tlatilco, Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico) (includes examples from the National Museum of Anthropology as well as the Female Figure at the Princeton University Art Museum); speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker
We don’t know what the people here called themselves. Tlatilco, meaning “place of hidden things,” is a Nahuatl word, given to this “culture” later. Around 2000 B.C.E., maize, squash and other crops were domesticated, which allowed people to settle in villages. The settlement of Tlatilco was located close to a lake, and fishing and the hunting of birds became important food sources.
Archaeologists have found more than 340 burials at Tlatilco, with many more destroyed in the first half of the 20th century.
Double-faced female figurine, early formative period, Tlatilco, c. 1200–900 B.C.E., ceramic with traces of pigment, 9.5 cm. high (Princeton University Art Museum)
Intimate and lively
Tlatilco figurines are wonderful small ceramic figures, often of women, found in Central Mexico. This is the region of the later and much better-known Aztec empire, but the people of Tlatilco flourished 2,000–3,000 years before the Aztec came to power in this Valley. Although Tlatilco was already settled by the Early Preclassic period (c. 1800–1200 B.C.E.), most scholars believe that the many figurines date from the Middle Preclassic period, or about 1200–400 B.C.E. Their intimate, lively poses and elaborate hairstyles are indicative of the already sophisticated artistic tradition. This is remarkable given the early dates. Ceramic figures of any sort were widespread for only a few centuries before the appearance of Tlatilco figurines.
Appearance
The Tlatilco figurine at the Princeton University Art Museum has several traits that directly relate to many other Tlatilco female figures: the emphasis on the wide hips, the spherical upper thighs, and the pinched waist. Many Tlatilco figurines also show no interest in the hands or feet, as we see here. Artists treated hairstyles with great care and detail, however, suggesting that it was hair and its styling was important for the people of Tlatilco, as it was for many peoples of this region. This figurine not only shows an elaborate hairstyle, but shows it for two connected heads (on the single body). We have other two-headed female figures from Tlatilco, but they are rare when compared with the figures that show a single head. It is very difficult to know exactly why the artist depicted a bicephalic (two-headed) figure (as opposed to the normal single head), as we have no documents or other aids that would help us define the meaning. It may be that the people of Tlatilco were interested in expressing an idea of duality, as many scholars have argued.
Double-faced female figure figurine, early formative period, Tlatilco, 1200–900 B.C.E., ceramic with traces of pigment, 9.5 cm. high (Princeton University Art Museum)
The makers of Tlatilco figurines lived in a large farming villages near the great inland lake in the center of the basin of Mexico. Modern Mexico City sits on top of the remains of the village, making archaeological work difficult. We don’t know what the village would have looked beyond the basic shape of the common house—a mud and reed hut that was the favored house design of many early peoples of Mexico. We do know that most of the inhabitants made their living by growing maize (corn) and taking advantage of the rich lake resources nearby. Some of the motifs found on other Tlatilco ceramics, such as ducks and fish, would have come directly from their lakeside surroundings.
Reconstruction of a house, c. 1200 B.C.E., central Mexico
Shaman, Middle Preclassic (1200–600 B.C.E.), Tlatilco, 9.5 cm high (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)
Male figures are rare
Tlatilco artists rarely depicted males, but when they did the males were often wearing costumes and even masks. Masks were very rare on female figures; most female figures stress hairstyle and/or body paint. Thus the male figures seem to be valued more for their ritual roles as priests or other religious specialists, while the religious role of the females is less clear but was very likely present.
How they were found
In the first half of the 20th century, a great number of graves were found by brick-makers mining clay in the area. These brick-makers would often sell the objects—many of them figurines—that came out of these graves to interested collectors. Later archaeologists were able to dig a number of complete burials, and they too found a wealth of objects buried with the dead. The objects that were found in largest quantities—and that enchanted many collectors and scholars of ancient Mexico—were the ceramic figurines.
Tlatilco figurine of a woman with a dog, Tlatilco, c. 1200–600 B.C.E., ceramic (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City) (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Craftsmanship
Unlike some later Mexican figurines, those of Tlatilco were made exclusively by hand, without relying on molds. It is important to think, then, about the consistent mastery shown by the artists of many of these figurines. The main forms were created through pinching the clay and then shaping it by hand, while some of the details were created by a sharp instrument cutting linear motifs onto the wet clay. The forms of the body were depicted in a specific proportion that, while non-naturalistic, was striking and effective. The artist was given a very small space (most figures are less than 15 cm high) in which to create elaborate hairstyles. Even for today’s viewer, the details in this area are endlessly fascinating. The pieces have a nice finish, and the paint that must indicate body decoration was firmly applied (when it is preserved, as in the two-headed figure above). Many scholars doubt that there were already full-time artists in such farming villages, but it is certain that the skills necessary to function as an artist in the tradition were passed down and mastered over generations.
The start of the Olmec civilization, at a site known as San Lorenzo in the modern Mexican state of Veracruz, stretches back to about 1350 BCE and the construction of a large earthen platform rising some 164 feet above the flat landscape. Upon this platform, the Olmec built ceremonial and other structures, water reservoirs, a system of drains, numerous stone works of art, and a number of massive sculpted stone heads. One of the structures has become known as “the red palace” because of the red ocher pigment on the floor and walls. It was likely a residence for the elite and included large stone columns and aqueducts. The massive stone heads and other sculptures, some weighing as much as fifty tons, were carved from volcanic basalt that came from as far as ninety miles away and was likely brought by raft for part of the way and on rollers over land.
Because little of the San Lorenzo site remains, we can only speculate about the organization of the Olmec civilization, but it is clear that their civilization shaped those that followed. For example, the great earthen platform and monumental sculptures shaped liked step pyramids attest to a highly sophisticated culture, with a clearly defined elite that could control large labor forces. Relying on pottery fragments and population density estimates, scholars have concluded that most workers were probably free laborers working to accomplish larger goals. They likely lived well beyond the elevated center reserved for the elite, in villages surrounded by gardens and other agricultural zones where the Olmec grew maize, avocados, palm nuts, squash, tomatoes, beans, tropical fruits, and cacao for chocolate.
The stone heads themselves are remarkable. Seventeen have been found across all the Olmec sites; some stand eleven feet tall. All are generally similar in form and style, depicting men’s faces with large lips and noses with flared nostrils, but they were likely intended to be realistic portraits of rulers of the sites where they were discovered. Upon their heads are helmets of various styles, some with coverings for the ears. Given the effort required to transport the stone and carve the heads, these works were likely intended to emphasize the power of the rulers, both to the Olmec people and to outsiders.
Evidence of possible vandalism on some of the heads has led some scholars to suspect an invasion occurred in the tenth century BCE, with desecration of the images as a result. Others, however, believe this is evidence of reworking that was never completed. We may never know for sure, but we do know that during the tenth century BCE, San Lorenzo declined in importance. At the same time, another Olmec site rose in significance, some fifty miles to the northeast at La Venta.
La Venta was built around 1200 BCE on a high ridge above the Palma River less than ten miles from the Gulf of Mexico. By 900 BCE, it had become the dominant Olmec city in the region. At its height, La Venta covered almost five hundred acres and may have supported as many as eighteen thousand people. Its central monuments included several large earthen mounds, plazas, a possible sports arena, several tombs, and numerous stone heads and other sculptures. The complexity of this urban complex reflects a major development in Mesoamerican civilizational and architectural design. It was likely built as a sacred site, with its temples and other complexes organized on a north–south axis believed to enhance the rulers’ authority by connecting them to supernatural environments. This style of urban design was later adopted by other Mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya.
Olmec art depicts numerous deities, such as a dragon god, a bird god, a fish god, and many fertility deities like a maize god and water gods. The Olmec also clearly recognized many types of supernatural mixed beings, like a feathered serpent and the were-jaguar, a cross between a jaguar and a human. These artistic images imply that the Olmec had a sophisticated pantheon of gods who controlled the universe and expected certain rituals be performed, perhaps by Olmec leaders themselves, who may have functioned as shamans empowered to communicate with the spirit world. The rituals were performed in the temples and plazas of the sacred cities like La Venta and San Lorenzo, as well as in sacred natural sites like caves and mountaintops.
Other rituals were connected to a type of ball game played in a special court with balls made from the abundant natural rubber of the region. Sports contests often existed to bring communities together, to allow men to show prowess and strength in times of peace, and to entertain. It is also likely that in times of heightened spiritual need, such contests could take on greater meaning and might have been choreographed to play out supernatural narratives and perhaps connect people to the gods. Like some later civilizations, the Olmec also saw bloodletting as a link to the spirit world. Blood sports may have been used to create pathways to understanding the will of their gods.
The Olmec were clearly in contact with other groups around southern Mexico and Central America. There is evidence of a robust trade in pottery and valued materials like obsidian, magnetite, and shells, likely carried out by merchants traveling across the larger region. Over time, this trade exposed other Mesoamerican cultures to Olmec ideas about religion, art, architecture, and governance. Some scholars thus conclude that Olmec civilization was a “mother culture” for later large and sophisticated Mesoamerican states. Cultural similarities exist among these, such as ritual ball games, deities, and calendar systems. Olmec-style artifacts have also been found at sites as far away as what are now western Mexico and El Salvador. Like much related to the Olmec, however, the extent of their influence is a question we may never answer with certainty. By the time this civilization disappeared around 400 BCE, a number of other Mesoamerican cultures were emerging.
Further Reading
The ritual ball game of the Olmec became a cultural feature of Mesoamerica over the centuries, and various forms of it were played by the Maya, the Aztec, and many others. Read more about the history of the Mesoamerican ball game and see pictures of related artifacts from different Mesoamerican cultures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website.
Adapted from Ann Kordas, Ryan J. Lynch, Brooke Nelson and Julie Tatlock, World History, Vol. 1 to 1500. Houston: OpenStax, 2030 (https://openstax.org/books/world)
Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Olmec mask (offering 20 from the Templo Mayor),” in Smarthistory, August 10, 2015, accessed July 31, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/olmec-mask/.
Offering vessels like this one have been found in the tombs of high-ranking Zapotec lords and noblewomen in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico.
Zapotec nobles were buried in tombs set around the central plaza of their capital at Monte Albán, which was founded in the 6th century B.C.E. and flourished between the 3rd and 7th centuries C.E.. This imposing site was located on the top of a hill with views of the Oaxaca Valley and surrounding mountains. The supporting population, which at its height numbered around 25,000, lived on the terraced slopes in the valley below.
Royal ancestor worship was the focus of Zapotec belief and ceremonial practice and the powerful figures depicted on offering vessels—or funerary urns as they are also known—are thought to represent these ancestors rather than deities. The importance of ancestry lies in the Zapotec use of genealogy and ancestral lines to pass on power and wealth.
Figures like this have been found inside tombs, positioned alongside bodies, as well as in niches in the walls. They’ve also been found buried in the floors of ceremonial centers, seemingly as offerings.
The figure on this example wears a mask and headdress representing the depicted ancestors’ potent supernatural force. The chest ornament features a glyph or sculpted symbol of a day in the 260-day Zapotec ritual calendar.
The exact use and purpose of these vessels is unknown. The container, or urn, itself—usually a cylindrical vessel hidden behind the sculpted figure—may simply have been used to hold perishable offerings, as remains have been found inside.
This hollow figure represents a dog, the most commonly portrayed animal in the art of Colima. Dogs were believed to assist the dead in their journey to the Underworld. During the sixteenth century, the dog was also a central figure in the myths of creation, according to sources which themselves referred to Colima’s ancient inhabitants.
The type of dog depicted here is a hairless breed, which was eaten at feasts. The same breed is found in Ecuador and on the coast of Peru and may have been introduced from there to West Mexico. Dogs are not the only animals portrayed in the ceramics of Colima: fauna (ducks, fish, crabs, parrots and serpents, for example), and flora (such as squashes, fruits and cacti) are all realistically represented. Human representations include hunchbacks and dwarfs, musicians playing a variety of instruments, and males holding bowls. Women are rarely depicted.
The ceramics of Colima represent a wider diversity of themes and shapes than those of Jalisco and Nayarit, but there is less variety in style. They generally exhibit a great naturalism. Best known are the hollow figures with a glossy slip. Their color varies from deep red to light orange, although some of them are blackened as a result of the firing process.
Source: The British Museum, “Pottery dog, Colima culture,” in Smarthistory, March 12, 2021, accessed July 31, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/dog-colima/.
Teotihuacan
by Dr. Maya Jiménez
Teotihuacan, Mexico, main structures c. 50–250 C.E. Speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris URL: https://youtu.be/taCxra5ezKg
Metropolis
An impressive city of 125,000–200,000 inhabitants, by the 6th century, Teotihuacan was the first large metropolis in the Americas. Teotihuacan, as the city is called, is a Nahuatl name that means “the place where the gods were created” and was given by the Mexica (sometimes called Aztec) centuries after it was abandoned in the 7th century. The Aztecs attributed names and significance to its buildings but had no contact with this earlier culture. Very little is known of the people who built Teotihuacan, and as a result, much of our knowledge of the site, its art, and Teotihuacan culture is derived from Aztec sources. Largely created before 250 C.E., Teotihuacan is a testament to the ambition of its people, who built the first American city on a grid plan.
Pyramid of the Moon seen from the Avenue of the Dead with Cerro Gordo in the distance, Teotihuacan, Mexico (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Due to an absence of (or as of yet undiscovered) royal palaces and graves, the lack of evidence for a cult of personality, and the as-of-yet undeciphered hieroglyphs, the governing system of Teotihuacan remains largely elusive to scholars. Nevertheless, the dramatic monumental architecture and dense urban fabric reveal a complex environment carefully planned to support a large population but also structured by the surrounding natural environment and in relation to specific constellations and planetary events. In keeping with the stratified nature of other Mesoamerican societies, Teotihuacan also benefitted from rulers, or a ruling elite, who commissioned massive architectural landmarks such as the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, and who spread Teotihuacan’s sphere of influence throughout Mesoamerica—even into the Maya region as far away as Guatemala.
Pyramid the Temple of Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent), Teotihuacan, Mexico (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Plan and pyramids
The city of Teotihuacan is aligned, like other Mesoamerican cities such as La Venta, on a north-south axis. This alignment is made explicit by the central artery, known as the Avenue of the Dead, which extends more than 1.5 miles across the city. Entering the city from the south, the Avenue of the Dead leads visitors to the city’s three main architectural monuments, the Ciudadela, a sunken plaza at the southernmost tip that contains temples, including the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, the Pyramid of the Sun further down the avenue, and the Pyramid of the Moon located at the northernmost point. In the distance and behind the Pyramid of the Moon, visitors can also catch a glimpse of the impressive Cerro Gordo, an extinct volcano that frames the pyramid and demonstrates the harmonious relationship between architecture and natural topography. Running perpendicular to the Avenue of the Dead, another street follows the San Juan River. These axes help to define the grid of intersecting horizontal and vertical corridors that structure and organize the city plan. The urban grid helped to establish order for religious, domestic, and commercial complexes and a structural coherence that supported the management of the city and its population. Thousands of apartment complexes also reflect the ordered planning of the site.
Pyramid of the Sun and the Avenue of the Dead, Teotihuacan, Mexico (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The Pyramid of the Sun, which reaches a height of over 200 feet, was the tallest structure in the Americas at the time. Built over a cave, it is unclear who or what the pyramid was built to commemorate, although art historians have suggested that creation mythology may be at issue, since Aztec and Maya sources refer to caves as places of origin and fertility. The pyramid was meant to be viewed and approached from the East. Visitors can still climb the pyramid’s steep staircase, which originates near the Avenue of the Dead and rises over five levels to what is now a bare flattened top. Keep in mind that this pyramid was heavily reconstructed in the modern era, so its original shape may have appeared somewhat differently than it does today.
Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent), Teotihuacan, Mexico (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent occupies a prominent place in the Ciudadela, a large open space that offers a respite from the massive presence of the Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon. Like so much else at Teotihuacan, the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent was built in the talud-tablero style. The temple stands out for its sculptural ornamentation depicting the feathered serpent, known by its Aztec name Quetzalcoatl. The feathered serpent is associated with water imagery and is depicted numerous times on the exterior of the temple as an undulating snake navigating among seashells. Two faces project outwards, one of which depicts the feathered serpent. The identification of the other head is more challenging. One interpretation is that it represents an early version of the Aztec god Tlaloc (known for his goggled eyes) and is associated with rain and warfare. However, some scholars identify the head as an early precedent of Xiuhcoatl, or Fire Serpent, who was associated with warfare, fire, and time (or the calendar). Most scholars agree that the temple was associated with warfare and human sacrifice, as confirmed by numerous skeletal remains (presumably of warriors) that were discovered by archeologists in the 1980s. Speculation has also arisen about whether the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent may have contained the body of a ruler.
Agustín Villagra, reconstruction of mural from Tepantitla in Teotihuacan in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Paintings
Teotihuacan was a heavily painted site, with murals found throughout the city. For example, on the walls of the apartment complex in the Tepantitla district, we find an elaborate mural showing a figure often identified as the Great Goddess and, more recently, as a mountain-tree. The female figure stands frontally while a blossoming tree with butterflies and spiders emerges from her head (potentially a reference to the heavenly realm), while her feet remain attached to the underworld. The inverted u-shape found below the mountain-tree may function as a symbolic womb, similar to the cave found at the Pyramid of the Sun.
The identity of the two individuals to her side, possibly priests, have sparked interest. Considering the cosmopolitan nature of the city, it had been thought that Teotihuacan’s figurative art was not portraiture, but rather generic representations that sought to unify a diverse population. Recently, however, some painted signs have been recognized as representing the names of individuals, leading to a re-examination of whether Teotihuacan artists portrayed specific individuals and reminding us that there is still much to learn about this complex and ancient city.
Archeologists have dated the city’s collapse to the seventh century, when many of Teotihuacan’s buildings were destroyed.
Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris
The Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Sun are massive architectural constructions that tell us a lot about Teotihuacan culture.
The Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, c. 1st century C.E., Mexico. Speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris URL: https://youtu.be/Zdsi0qKVJO8