AP World History: Mesoamerican Civilizations

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AP World History Mesoamerican Civilizations

• Period 1 Technological and Environmental
  Transformations, to c. 600 B.C.E.
• Key Concept 1.3. The Development and Interactions
  of Early Agricultural, Pastoral, and Urban
  Societies
• Themes ______________

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The First People in the Americas

• A) Land Bridge Theory During the last major ice
  age (15,000 11,000 years ago), the ocean level
  was lower. Siberia and Alaska were connected by
  land. People from Siberia walked to Alaska,
  following herds of animals.

B) Clovis points (a type of spear point) have
been found in North America that date from 11,500
to 11,000 BCE. This fits in with the Land Bridge
Theory.
C) But there is not 100 proof of an ice free
passage where Siberians could have walked from
Alaska into the Americas. Also, the oldest
archaeological site in the Americas is Monte
Verde in South America! D) Therefore, it is
possible that people from Asia also came to the
Americas by boat.
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• New Theory on How the First Americans Came Here
  Multiple Migrations!

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Mesoamerica Geography

• Mesoamerica is divided into highland areas
  (1,000 meters above sea level) and lowland areas
  (between 1,000 meters and sea level). Lowland
  areas tend to be hot and tropical, while highland
  regions are generally much cooler.

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The Olmecs 1775 400 BCE
Olmec has been translated to mean rubber
lpeople or mouth of the jaguar in Nahuatl (a
language also spoken by the Aztecs who settled in
the area much later). They were the first major
civilization in Mesoamerica, and therefore often
referred to as the mother civilization of later
pre-Columbian civilizations. They lived in the
Gulf Coast area.
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Olmec Government Economy Olmec Culture, Religion, Society
City-states ruled by priest-kings. 3 main cities La Venta in Tabasco, Laguna de los Cerros in Veracruz, and San Lorenzo in Tenochtitlan. Art with images of jaguars Carved giant stone heads with large lips and noses possibly to revere rulers. Wore helmets for the Mesoamerican ballgame. First civilization in Mesoamerica to build step pyramids Created a calendar, but no writing system
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Olmec Heads
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Mother Culture, or Only a Sister?

• Last month, the simmering pot of mother-sister
  controversy was stirred anew by Dr. Jeffrey P.
  Blomster, an Olmec archaeologist at George
  Washington University Dr. Blomster's team
  analyzed the chemistry of 725 pieces of pottery
  decorated with symbols and designs in the Olmec
  style and collected throughout the region. The
  researchers compared the composition of the
  ceramics with local clays. They determined that
  most of these were not imitations of the Olmec
  style made by local potters. In a significant
  number of pots, the clay matched the chemistry of
  material found around San Lorenzo. "The evidence
  is overwhelming that San Lorenzo, the first Olmec
  capital, was doing the exporting," Dr. Blomster
  said. "The Olmecs were disseminating their
  culture and it was something of great interest to
  others. But Dr. Diehl, a proponent of the
  mother school and the author of "The Olmec,"
  published last year, said in an interview that
  the "connections we are seeing may not have
  lasted more than a generation, perhaps the time
  of a particular ruler, and at most, not more than
  a century or century and a half. Dr. Grove
  disputed Dr. Blomster's conclusions, saying that
  the research demonstrated only that Olmec pottery
  was traded, not that the trade disseminated Olmec
  political and religious concepts around the
  region. Others questioned the assertion that no
  pottery of other cultures had found its way to
  San Lorenzo John Noble Wilford, NY Times
  March 15, 2005

What would it mean if the Olmec pottery was only
traded? Would that mean that the Olmecs were not
a mother culture of Mesoamerica?
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Teotihuacan

• It was massive, one of the first great cities of
  the Western Hemisphere. And its origins are a
  mystery. It was built by hand more than a
  thousand years before the swooping arrival of
  the Aztec in central Mexico. But it was the
  Aztec, descending on the abandoned site, no doubt
  falling awestruck by what they saw, who gave it a
  name Teotihuacan. A famed archaeological site
  located fewer than 30 miles (50 kilometers) from
  Mexico City, Teotihuacan reached its zenith
  between 100 B.C. and A.D. 650. It covered 8
  square miles (21 square kilometers) and supported
  a population of a hundred thousand, according to
  George Cowgill, an archaeologist at Arizona State
  University and a National Geographic Society
  grantee. "It was the largest city anywhere in the
  Western Hemisphere before the 1400s," Cowgill
  says. "It had thousands of residential compounds
  and scores of pyramid-temples and was comparable
  to the largest pyramids of Egypt. Oddly,
  Teotihuacan, which contains a massive central
  road (the Street of the Dead) and buildings
  including the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of
  the Moon, has no military structuresthough
  experts say the military and cultural wake of
  Teotihuacan was heavily felt throughout the
  region. www.natgeo.com Scholars are still
  unsure if the Toltec or another culture built
  it.

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Pyramid of the SunTeotihuacan, Mexico
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Chavin Civilization 1200 BCE 200 CE
Government Economy Culture, Religion, Society
Ruled by Priest-Kings Economy based on hunting, fishing, and irrigation used to farm Polytheistic, with a pantheon of Gods First distinctive art style in Peru made from metals, including gold Most famous archaeological structure was the complex at Chavin de Huantar
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Chavin de Huantar
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Chavin de Huantar
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Chavin Art