Pre-Columbian Cultures Of Mexico
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Pre-Columbian Cultures Of Mexico
The pre-Columbian (or prehispanic) history of the territory now making up the country of Mexico is known through the work of archaeologists and epigraphers, and through the accounts of Spanish conquistadores, settlers and clergymen as well as the indigenous chroniclers of the immediate post-conquest period. Human presence in the Mexican region was once thought to date back 40,000 years based upon what were believed to be ancient human footprints discovered in the Valley of Mexico, but after further investigation using radioactive dating, it appears this is untrue. It is currently unclear whether 21,000-year-old campfire remains found in the Valley of Mexico are the earliest human remains in Mexico. Indigenous peoples of Mexico began to selectively breed maize plants around 8000 BC. Evidence shows a marked increase in pottery working by 2300 BC and the beginning of intensive corn farming between 1800 and 1500 BC. Between 1800 and 300 BC, complex cultures began to form. Many ma ...
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Huastec Civilization
The Huastec civilization (sometimes spelled Huaxtec or Wastek) was a pre-Columbian civilization of Mesoamerica, occupying a territory on the Gulf coast of Mexico that included the northern portion of Veracruz Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Political divisions of Mexico, Federal Entit ... state, and neighbouring regions of the states of Hidalgo (state), Hidalgo, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas.Diehl 2000, pp. 184–185. The Huastec people were an early offshoot of the Maya peoples that migrated northwards. Surviving remains from the Huastec civilization include several large archaeological sites, a well-preserved temple, and a large amount of stone sculpture. By the Mesoamerican chronology#Postclassic period, Late Postclassic (c. AD 1200–1521), the Huastecs had developed Metallurgy in pre-Columb ...
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Oasisamerica
Oasisamerica is a cultural region of Indigenous peoples in North America. Their precontact cultures were predominantly agrarian, in contrast with neighboring tribes to the south in Aridoamerica. The region spans parts of Northwestern Mexico and Southwestern United States and can include most of Arizona and New Mexico; southern parts of Utah and Colorado; and northern parts of Sonora and Chihuahua. During some historical periods, it might have included parts of California and Texas as well.Alfredo López Austin and Leonardo López Luján''Mexico's Indigenous Past'' p. 30. The term was first proposed by German-Mexican anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff, who also coined MesoamericaPaul Kirchhoff“Gatherers and Farmers in the Greater Southwest" p. 532. and Aridoamerica, and is used by some scholars, primarily Mexican anthropologists, for the broad cultural area defining pre-Columbian southwestern North America. It extends from modern-day Utah down to southern Chihuahua, and from th ...
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Aridoamerica
Aridoamerica is a cultural and ecological region spanning Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States, defined by the presence of the drought-resistant, culturally significant staple food, the tepary bean ('' Phaseolus acutifolius'').Pratt and Nabhan 419 Its dry, arid climate and geography stand in contrast to the verdant Mesoamerica of present-day central Mexico into Central AmericaCordell and Fowler 85 to the south and east, and the higher, milder "island" of Oasisamerica to the north. Aridoamerica overlaps with both. Because of the relatively hard conditions, the pre-Columbian people in this region developed distinct cultures and subsistence farming patterns. The region has only to of annual precipitation. The sparse rainfall feeds seasonal creeks and waterholes.Bye and Linares 273 The term was introduced by American anthropologist Gary Paul Nabhan in 1985, building on prior work by anthropologists A. L. Kroeber and Paul Kirchhoff to identify a "true cultural ...
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Cholula (Mesoamerican Site)
Cholula (; , Otomi language, Otomi: ) was an important city of Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, dating back to at least the 2nd century BCE, with settlement as a village going back at least some thousand years earlier. The site of Cholula is just west of the modern city of Puebla City, Puebla and served as a trading outpost. Its Great Pyramid of Cholula, immense pyramid is the largest such structure in the Americas, and the largest pyramid structure by volume in the world, measuring 4.45 million cubic meters. Cholula was one of the key religious centers of ancient Mexico.McCafferty, Geoffrey G. "Cholula." In David Carrasco, Davíd Carrasco (ed). ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures''. : Oxford University Press, 2001. Location and environment Cholula is located in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of the central Mexican highlands. It is surrounded to the west by the snow-covered peaks Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, and Malinche (volcano), Malinche to the north ...
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Tenochtitlan
, also known as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was a large Mexican in what is now the historic center of Mexico City. The exact date of the founding of the city is unclear, but the date 13 March 1325 was chosen in 1925 to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the city. The city was built on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. The city was the capital of the expanding Aztec Empire in the 15th century until it was Fall of Tenochtitlan, captured by the Tlaxcaltec and the Spanish in 1521. At its peak, it was the largest city-state, city in the pre-Columbian Americas. It subsequently became a ''Municipalities of Mexico, cabecera'' of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Today, the ruins of are in the historic center of the Mexican capital. The World Heritage Site of contains what remains of the geography (water, boats, Chinampa, floating gardens) of the Mexica capital. was one of two Mexica (city-states or Polity, polities) on the island, the other being . Etymol ...
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Cities
A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agreed definition of the lower boundary for their size. In a narrower sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and Urban density, densely populated place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, Public utilities, utilities, land use, Manufacturing, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organisations, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution. Historically, city dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, bu ...
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Urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation in British English) is the population shift from Rural area, rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It can also mean population growth in urban areas instead of rural ones. It is predominantly the process by which towns and City, cities are formed and become larger as more people begin to live and work in central areas. Although the two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, urbanization should be distinguished from Urban sprawl, urban growth. Urbanization refers to the ''proportion'' of the total national population living in areas classified as urban, whereas urban growth strictly refers to the ''absolute'' number of people living in those areas. It is predicted that by 2050, about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. This is predicted to generate artificial scarcities of land, lack of dr ...
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Nuevo León
Nuevo León, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Nuevo León, is a Administrative divisions of Mexico, state in northeastern Mexico. The state borders the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosi, and has an extremely narrow international border with the U.S. state of Texas. Covering 64,156 square kilometers (24,771 square miles) and with a population of 5.78 million people, Nuevo León is the thirteenth-largest Political divisions of mexico, federal entity by List of Mexican states by area, area and the seventh-most List of Mexican states by population, populous as of 2020. Monterrey, the state's capital, is the most populous city in Nuevo León and the List of cities in Mexico, ninth-largest in Mexico. Monterrey is part of the Monterrey metropolitan area, the Metropolitan areas of Mexico#List of metropolitan areas in Mexico by population, second-largest metropolitan area in the country with an estimated population of 5.3 ...
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Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, M ...
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Yaxchilan 1
Yaxchilan () is an ancient Maya city located on the bank of the Usumacinta River in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. In the Late Classic Period Yaxchilan was one of the most powerful Maya states along the course of the Usumacinta River, with Piedras Negras as its major rival.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 421 Architectural styles in subordinate sites in the Usumacinta region demonstrate clear differences that mark a clear boundary between the two kingdoms. Yaxchilan was a large center, important throughout the Classic era, and the dominant power of the Usumacinta River area. It dominated such smaller sites as Bonampak, and had a long rivalry with Piedras Negras and at least for a time with Tikal; it was a rival of Palenque, with which Yaxchilan warred in 654. The site is particularly known for its well-preserved sculptured stone lintels set above the doorways of the main structures.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 435 These lintels, together with the stelae erected before the major buildin ...
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Aztec
The Aztecs ( ) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the Post-Classic stage, post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl, Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (''altepetl''), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Mexica or Tenochca, Tetzcoco (altepetl), Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco (altepetl), Azcapotzalco. Although the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahuas, Nahua polities or peoples of central Pre ...
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