Mesoamerica and Central America, 2000?1000 BCE
Encompasses present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama
Overview
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle gives way almost completely to sedentary agriculture. Villages around the Basin of Mexico and the Soconusco region of coastal Guatemala establish trade routes and social organization becomes increasingly complex. Rapid development of the Olmec site of San Lorenzo, Veracruz, after 1200 B.C., includes massive basalt sculptures. An iconographic system with its roots in the Gulf Coast spreads across Mesoamerica, as evidenced in the ceramics of central Mexico and in monumental sculpture and carvings as far south as Honduras and El Salvador.
Key events
ca. 1800 B.C. Sedentary village life is widespread and pottery is abundant.
? ca. 1600 B.C. Villages along the Coatzacoalcos River drainage on the Gulf of Mexico flourish based on abundant riverine resources and fertile soils.
? ca. 1600 B.C. Established villages expand in the Soconusco region of the Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala and Chiapas (Mexico).
? ca. 1400 B.C. Luxury goods such as ceramic figurines, stone bowls, and greenstone beads are placed in burials in villages of the Soconusco region.
? ca. 1400 B.C. The people of San Lorenzo modify the form of the natural plateau upon which the center is built. Rising above the Coatzacoalcos River drainage in southern Veracruz, the plateau becomes home to the dominant city of the coastal lowlands, the impressive capital of an innovative people now known as the Olmec.
? ca. 1400 B.C. Highland villages in central Mexico produce numerous sophisticated works of ceramic, notably small, detailed female figurines. Certain villages, such as Tlatilco and Tlapacoya in the Basin of Mexico and Las Bocas in western Puebla, begin to establish precedence over their neighbors.
? ca. 1400 B.C. A ground and polished greenstone celt?a tear-shaped ax or adze?is placed as a dedicatory offering below a large residential mound at Paso de la Amada, a major village in the highlands of Chiapas. Ground stone celts are used as agricultural tools throughout much of Mesoamerica. They take on a revered, symbolic role, thought to be based on their primary function as tools.
? ca. 1350 B.C. The first public building in the Valley of Oaxaca is constructed at the major regional center of San Jos? Mogote. It is a stuccoed wattle-and-daub structure built on a platformlike foundation.
? ca. 1250 B.C. At San Lorenzo, ceramics of distinctive white, gray, and black surfaces are produced, often the result of specialized firing techniques. These colors come to be identified with Olmec ceramics, as do certain design motifs, wherever they are found.
? ca. 1200 B.C. The beginning of the period known archaeologically as the Middle Formative, one of particularly significant development in Mesoamerica.
? ca. 1200 B.C. Within the precincts of the Red Palace, a large earthen and wood structure with red-stained sand floors and pigmented walls, the Olmec of San Lorenzo control raw materials and the production of stone sculpture. Volcanic stone, a rare commodity imported into the floodplains of the Gulf Coast from the distant Tuxtla mountains, is used and reused for large, unprecedented three-dimensional sculpture, including multi-ton stone heads.
? ca. 1050 B.C. Olmec stylistic traits are present in ceramics and greenstone figurine fragments in the Soconusco region of the Pacific coast.
The Geography of Mesoamerica
Geographically, Mesoamerica is located between the Sinaloa River valley in northern Mexico and the Gulf of Fonseca south of El Salvador; it encompasses most of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras, where great differences in altitude and rainfall result in numerous distinct climatic and ecological zones. Mesoamerica is culturally divided into two parts: central Mexico roughly west and north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the Maya region to the east and south.
Central Mexico is dominated by the southern Mexican Plateau, an upland area extending from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec north toward the United States border. The region is temperate highland savanna flanked by mountain systems on three sides. It includes historically important areas like the Basin of Mexico and the Puebla region. On the west, it is bordered by the rugged Sierra Madre Occidental which parallels the Gulf of California. South the Sierra Madre del Sur covers most of the modern Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca and is home to the large Valley of Oaxaca. To the east, the plateau ends in the temperate Veracruz region of the Sierra Madre Oriental. The tropical, coastal plain that makes up much of the rest of Veracruz extends south along the Gulf of Mexico, crosses through Tabasco, and abuts the base of the Yucat?n Peninsula. The rainforest lowlands continue and the Maya area includes parts of the Mexican state of Chiapas, the adjoining Pet?n department of Guatemala, most of Belize, and the Caribbean coast of Honduras. To the north of the humid tropics, the Yucat?n Peninsula is primarily flat limestone tableland. The mountainous Pacific side, with its geologically recent volcanoes, is rugged and temperate, and the immediately adjoining Pacific plain, which runs narrowly along the coast of Guatemala, Chiapas, and El Salvador, is hot and humid.
