Central American Civilizations

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Central American Civilizations
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Major Central American Cultures

• OLMEC ca. 1200-300 bce
• ZAPOTEC ca. 500 bce- 1000 ce
• TEOTIHUACAN flourished 100-650 ce
• MAYAN
• Preclassic 2000 bce-100 ce
• Classic 100 -900 ce
• Postclassic 900 ce-1500 ce
• TOLTEC 900-1526 ce
• AZTEC 1350-1519 ce

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Olmecca. 1200-300 bce
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Olmecs

• Established the first major Mesoamerican
  civilization.
• Often regarded as the Mother Culture of later
  Middle American civilizations,the Olmec people
  called themselves Xi
• First to use stone architecturally and
  sculpturally
• Clever mathematicians and astronomers who made
  accurate calendars
• Highly developed technical skills
• magnetic compass
• skill with iron ores
• complex drainage system
• First writing in North America

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Lord of the Two Scrolls

• Monumental sculptures and ruins suggest a highly
  stratified society with rulers, administrators,
  engineers, foremen and a large peasantry
• Destruction and burial of monuments and
  sculpture suggest the need to harness
  uncontrolled power

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Olmec heads glorified the rulers when they were
alive and commemorated them as revered ancestors
after death
Made of basalt, they range from 5 to 11 feet
high Quarried stone needed to be transported 65
miles from Tuxtla Mts. via log rollers, wooden
sleds and rafts
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Olmec Religion

• Olmecs recognized at least 10 gods including a
  jaguar god, a serpent god, a fire god, a rain
  god, a corn god, and the Feathered Serpent
• Prodigious offerings were given in the form of
  mosaic pavements of jaguar masks, jade
  sculptures, and possibly human sacrifices
• Four ceremonial sites uncovered
• San Lorenzo ca. 1200-900 bce
• Laguna de los Cerros ca. 1000-600 bce
• La Venta ca. 1000-600 bce
• Tres Zapotes ca. 300 bce

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Shamanism

• The most well-known aspect of shamanism in
  Mesoamerican religion - and in the whole of
  Native American shamanism - is the ability to
  assume the powers of animals associated with the
  shaman.
• Such animals are called nahuales, and in Olmec
  art the most common of these is the jaguar.
• The spirituality and intellect of man and the
  ferocity and strength of the jaguar are all
  combined in the shaman and his jaguar nahuale.

The Jaguar Child may exemplify this combination.
This is a very common representation in Olmec
art, and it often includes .slitted eyes and a
curved mouth.
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Olmec influence on Central-American Civilizations

• Art
• Religious symbolism
• Hieroglyphic writing
• Bar and dot numbering system
• Calendar
• Bloodletting ritual
• Ball game

Olmec Glyph shows the World Tree sprouting out of
Creation Mountain
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Zapotecsca. 500 bce-1000 ce

• Carried on traditions of Olmecs
• Ruled by powerful aristocrats
• Aggressive conquerors
• Human sacrifice
• Developed hieroglyphic script to record conquests
• Fast and dangerous ball game
• First great stone pyramid builders in Central
  America
• Center of civilization at Monte Alban
• Agriculture nurtured by extensive irrigation
  systems led to great population growth

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Teotihuacanflourished 100-650 ce

• Named by the Aztecs place of the gods
• Writing and language did not survive
• Primary manufacturing center of Central America
  obsidian

Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
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MAYANS

• Although there was never such a thing as a Mayan
  Empire, the diverse peoples and
  politico-religious formations that in the past
  occupied Yucatán and modern day Belize, Chiapas,
  Guatemala and Honduras, all had common cultural
  characteristics
• a highly developed calendar
• a rich complex writing system, and sophisticated
  mathematics.
• Archeologists and historians recognize several
  periods in the history of these cultures
• Preclassic 2000 bce-100ad
• Classic 100 -900 ad
• Postclassic 900 ad-1500 ad

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Mayan Royal Audience
Mayan Ball Game
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Mayan Hieroglyphics

• The unit of the Maya writing system is the
  glyphic cartouche, which is equivalent to the
  words and sentences of a modern language.
• Maya cartouches included at least three or four
  glyphs and as many as fifty.
• There is no Maya alphabet.
• Writing considered to be a sacred gift from the
  gods.
• Knowledge of reading and writing was jealously
  guarded by a small elite class, who believed that
  they alone could interact directly with the gods

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Glyphs representing, from left to right
the sky, an ahau (king), a house, a child, and
the city of Palenque.

The Maya wrote using 800 individual signs or
glyphs, paired in columns that read together from
left to right and top to bottom. Maya glyphs
represented words or syllables that could be
combined to form any word or concept in the Mayan
language, including numbers, time periods, royal
names, titles, dynastic events, and the names of
gods, scribes, sculptors, objects, buildings,
places, and food.
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Codices

• Maya glyphs were also painted on codices made of
  either deer hide or bleached fig-tree paper that
  was then covered with a thin layer of plaster and
  folded accordion-style.
• Record rituals, chronologies and important
  events.
• Most were burned by the Spanish during the 16th
  c.

4 Extant Codices Dresden, Madrid, Paris, Grolier
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Toltecca. 900-1526 ce

• The Toltecs, a Nahuatl-speaking people, ruled
  much of Maya central Mexico from the 10th-12th
  centuries ad.
• About AD 900 they sacked and burned the great
  city of Teotihuacan. They formed a number of
  small states of various ethnic origins into an
  empire later in the 10th century.
• Last dominant Mesoamerican culture before the
  Aztecs, and inherited much from Maya
  civilization.
• The Toltec capital was at Tula
• The most impressive Toltec ruins are at Chichen
  Itza in Yucatan, where a branch of Toltec culture
  survived beyond the civilization's fall in
  central Mexico.

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Chichen Itza Chac-Mool

• The advent of the Toltec marked the rise of
  militarism in Mesoamerica.
• They were also noted as builders and craftsmen
  and have been credited with carved human and
  animal standard-bearers, and peculiar reclining
  Chac-Mool figures.
• Beginning in the 12th century the invasion of the
  nomadic Chichimec among the invaders were the
  Aztec, or Mexica, who destroyed Tula about the
  mid-12th century.

Tula Toltec Warriors
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Aztecs1350-1519 ce

• Aztecs came into the Valley of Mexico during the
  12th and 13th century A.D., and rose to be the
  greatest power in the Americas by the time the
  Spaniards arrived, in the 16th century.
• According to myth, Huitzilopochtli told Tenoch
  to lead his people to a place of refuge on a
  swampy island in Lake Texcoco. When they reached
  their destination, they were to look for an eagle
  perched on a cactus.
• At that location, they were to build their city
  and honor Huitzilopochtli with human sacrifices.
  The city they built was called Tenochtitlán the
  city of Tenoch.

Aztec Calendar Stone
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Offerings to the Gods

• Images of the gods Huehueteotl-Xiuhtecuhtli,
  together with Tlaloc, presided over most of the
  offerings found in the Templo Mayor.
• Representing fire and water respectively, this
  pair of deities probably symbolized the concept
  of "burning water," a metaphor for warfare

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Human Sacrifice

• Human sacrifice was conducted on a sacrificial
  stone, a flint knife and a recipient to deposit
  heart offerings, called cuauhxicalli.
• Invested with great importance because it was a
  way to insure that life follow death, mirroring
  nature
• By way of human sacrifice, the most precious
  thing in life was offered, namely blood and life
  itself, so that by way of death arose life anew.