The Cultures of Mesoamerica and South America in the Classic Era

    The Cultures of Mesoamerica and South America in the Classic Era 

    How do the art and architecture of Mesoamerica and South America reflect the relationship of the various cultures of the region to their gods?


The cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, comprising modern-day Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and southern Mexico, possessed a great sense of their own history. They were fully aware that cultures at least as great as themselves—the Olmec in particular (see Chapter 1)—had preceded them. But during a period of about a thousand years, roughly 250 bce to 900 ce, which archeologists call the Classic Era, the cultures of Mesoamerica flourished. “Pre-Columbian” refers to the era before Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, and the title “Classic Era,” borrowed from Greco-Roman culture, designates what historians consider to be the high point of pre-Columbian culture in the Americas. Three great cultures thrived in Mesoamerica during the Classic Era: the Zapotec culture in the state of Oaxaca; the somewhat mysterious but enormously influential civilization centered at Teotihuacán, just north of Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City); and to the south, the Maya culture in the states of Yucatan and Chiapas, and the countries of Belize and Guatemala (Map 11.5). These cultures were at once highly developed and, from a Western point of view, seemingly backward, astronomically sophisticated, with two separate but extraordinarily accurate calendars, yet lacking a domesticated beast of burden capable of carrying an adult. Even more astonishing, they lacked one of the most fundamental tools of civilization—the wheel. Although they used wheels on children’s toys, they never enlarged them for use on wagons or carts. These civilizations never discovered how to process bronze or iron, yet they moved and cut stones weighing in excess of 100 tons and built enormous temples, the centerpieces of cities rivaling any in Europe or Asia. But what they lacked, they probably did not need, and what they developed was extraordinary.