Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Week 1 - Basics of
Mesoamerica
- TIME PERIODS
- Paleoindian
- ????-Ended 7000 BC
- Crossing of land bridge between Siberia
and Alaska
- Santa Isabel Iztapan - bones from at least 8 mammoths
found with chipped stone artifacts
- Temporary camps, low population density
- Clovis - Hunting mega-fauna
- Folsom - Hunting smaller, modern animals
- Tequixquiac (Hidalgo, Mexico) - organic remain with
manmade modifications
- Megafauna extinctions - hypotheses; humans are to blame, or climate
is to blame
- Archaic
- 7000BC-1800BC
- Domestication of food plants
- Maize, Beans, Squash
- Mobility decreases
- Guila Naquitz, used as seasonal camp
- Tehuacan Valley, transformation from foraging to village farming
- Gourds = first Meso domesticate
- EVIDENCE OF CHANGE: -Stratigraphy (repeated evidence of occupation of same site over a
period of time) (for example, cooking evidence, changing tool types such as ground stone
(mano y metate), projectile points, and basketry and wood)
- Pre-Classic
- 1800 BC - 150 AD
- Appearence of civic-ceremonial
architecture such as ball courts
and elite residences
- THE OLMEC
- Pasa de la Amada (Chiapas)
- Monte Alban
- Classic
- Urban planning, grids, population
increase
- Teotihuacan
- Step pyramids - Tikal,
Palenque
- AD 300 - 950
- Post-Classic
- AD 950-1521
- Chichen Itza - Maya
- Tenochtitlan - Aztecs
- KEY MESOAMERICAN FEATURES
- Ritual 260-day calendar and 365-day agricultural
calendar, cyclical passage of time, maya had
THREE calendars including Long Count
- Stepped Pyramids
- The Ballgame
- No use of wheel/draft animals
- Obsidian tools/weapons
- Maize, Beans, Squash, Peppers, Tomatos, Cacao
- ADOPTION OF AGRICULTURE
- Population Pressure
- Sedentism -> accumulation of stuff and people
- More reliable food source = need more people
- More people = more mouths to feed
- Prestige Model
- The knowledge of how to grow a
plant domesticating brings people
and groups prestige
- Risk Reduction
- Unreliability of the natural
environment to give you enough food.
- agriculture reduces risk of your group
going hungry