Mesoamerica

Question 1

Area of Maya Occupation

Answer 1

• Modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belie, Honduras, and El Salvador
• Height of Maya civilization centered on the El Peten district of the Southern Lowlands of Guatemala
• traditional view is that anywhere outside El Peten was “Peripheral” and unimportant, but this is no longer accepted

Question 2

Paleo-Indian Archaic Period

Answer 2

• Everything up to the first villages
• Earliest occupation 12000 BC
• Mobile hunter-gatherers, no pottery
• Characterized by stone tools (lithic points) called Lowe Points
• Earliest start of permanent villages and domestication. These were located near stone or water sources

Question 3

Early Preclassic Period

Answer 3

• Beginning of the use of pottery
• Oldest distinct pottery traditions found in Belize near Cello
• Growth in population sizes due to the development of agriculture
• Pollen analysis shows greater deforestation and more maize pollen

Question 4

Middle Preclassic

Answer 4

• Appearance of distinctively Maya culture and sociopolitical expressions
• Older ideas suggest these expressions were limited to the Classic Period, but we are finding older settlements
• Large Scale monumental architecture Such as E-groups
• Glyphic script carved into stone monuments and Stela, linked with ideas of leadership
• Introduction of large multi-platformed terraced stone pyramids that opened into central plazas. This was the basic Maya settlement pattern

Question 5

E-Group

Answer 5

• Two main platform buildings, East and West, with 3 additional buildings on top
• When viewed from the west, they matched up with the rising and setting Sun on the Equinoxes
• Found in every Maya region, demonstrating large scale common practices across the culture

Question 6

Stela

Answer 6

• Tall upright carved stones used to store information
• Glyphic writing was used on them in Mesoamerica

Question 7

Late Preclassic Period

Answer 7

• Formation of the first big cities that had economic and sociopolitical control over large territories
• Centered on El Mirador in Northern Peten and Kaminaljuyu in the Highlands, which is under a modern city.
• Significant trade between the Highlands and Lowlands in the form of agricultural excess, stone products, obsidian, and jade. El Mirador probably controlled this trade
• Greater centralized authority with divine Kingship (Kings were intermediaries with the Gods, but were not Gods themselves
• Higher wealth division in grave goods suggests social stratification
• Ajaw glyph depicts this, directly translating to “lord,” and associated with kingship

Question 8

Classic Period

Answer 8

• Glyphic scripts depicting elites, rulers, and the concept of 0
• Carved architecture and used pottery as stelae
• Long count and sacred calendars
• The ball game, which expressed rulership and religion and was related to the creation story in their Popol Vuh (sacred text)
• No singular kingdom or empire, instead multiple city states / polities shifted in power and authority
• Ruled by hereditary divine kings
• Traditional views state that there was a stark divide between an upper and a lower class, but there is growing evidence to suggest that there was a middle class who gained their economic status through trade

Question 9

Early Classic

Answer 9

• Formation and extended control of a few powerful political polities in the Southern Lowlands, Calakmul and Tikal
• These were ruled by “divine lords”
• Calakmul was ruled by the Kan Dynasty, the “snake kings,” who may have come to El Mirador after Calakmul’s collapse
• Tikal was a new city with local leadership until AD 378
• The two cities were powerful rivals with control over many territories
• The Entrada

Question 10

The Entrada

Answer 10

• Recorded on stela
• Siyaj K’ak’ (fire is born) arrived from the West and invaded Tikal
• When depicted, his clothes look like they are from Teotihuacan, and he is associated with a glyph of a spear throwing owl
• He overthrew the leadership of Tikal in one day, and was replaced a year later by Yax Nuun Ahiin
• He turned Tikal into a dominant polity which conquered many others. They eventually influenced most of the Southern Lowlands, as evidenced by the dispersal of Teotihuacan style material culture
• They still competed heavily with Calakmul during this time, and in AD 600 they began losing territory and influence, resulting in a 150 year hiatus which splits the Early and Late Classic

Question 11

Late Classic

Answer 11

• Follows the hiatus of Tikal
• After Tikal’s hiatus, it regained some of it former glory, but never bounced all the way back

Question 12

Terminal Classic Period

Answer 12

• “Collapse” of the Maya, more of a gradual decline
• Many cities were abandoned, with the elite leaving first and the commoners following
• Occurred over decades or centuries
• Transformation to new systems, including material culture
• Pottery stopped depicting divine kingship related glyphs and transitioned into everyday scenes
• The long count calendar fell out of use
• One of the theories for why this happened is climate change. This theory states that long reaching droughts affected agriculture, and as a result the people deforested huge areas to sustain their population and leached the soil
• The issue with this theory is that the Northern lowlands did not experience drought, and the milpa system of farming did not require deforestation
• During this time conflict and competition increased, because the noble class was growing. This would have also contributed to the decline
• In the end, any cities in the Peten were abandoned, elite-focused material culture ended, there was a move toward more public architecture, and there was more migration to peripheral areas

Question 13

Postclassic Period

Answer 13

• Creation of new cities in the periphery such as Chichen Itza and Mayapan
• Material culture was associated with the traditions of the North rather than Peten
• Ended with the arrival of the Spanish and the fall of the final Maya kingdom in the 1500s

Question 14

Lamanai, Belize

Answer 14

• Continual uninterrupted occupation from the middle preclassic to the 19th century
• Thrived through the terminal classic, in which it had some of its largest construction projects
• Survived because it used water-based trade and included pan-Mesoamerican ideology
• One of 6 Maya sites that had copper
• Eventually decimated by disease and forced under Spanish rule and religion
• Codices (books) were burned and only 4 survived
• There was continual rebellion throughout this process, but it was unsuccessful