Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

These advanced civilizations went into rapid decline, however,
in the 16th century when the Europeans introduced new diseases to
the Western Hemisphere, and Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and
their armies conquered the Aztec and Inka empires. Some native
elites survived and adapted to the Spanish presence, but most of the
once-glorious American cities were destroyed in the conquerors’ zeal
to obliterate all traces of pagan beliefs. Other sites were abandoned
to the forces of nature—erosion and the encroachment of tropical
forests. But despite the ruined state of the pre-Hispanic cities today,
archaeologists and art historians have been able to reconstruct much
of the history of art and architecture of ancient America. This chap-
ter examines in turn the artistic achievements of the native peoples
of Mesoamerica, South America, and North America before 1300.
Chapter 32 treats the art and architecture of the Americas from 1300
to the present.

Mesoamerica

The term Mesoamerica names the region that comprises part of
present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and the Pacific
coast of El Salvador (MAP14-1). Mesoamerica was the homeland of
several of the great pre-Columbiancivilizations—those that flour-
ished before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the subse-
quent European invasion.
The principal regions of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica are the
Gulf Coast region (Olmec and Classic Veracruz cultures); the states
of Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit, collectively known as West Mexico;
Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche states in Mexico,
the Petén area of Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras (Maya culture);
southwestern Mexico and the state of Oaxaca (Zapotec and Mixtec
cultures); and the central plateau surrounding modern Mexico City
(Teotihuacan, Toltec, and Aztec cultures). These cultures were often
influential over extensive areas.
The Mexican highlands are a volcanic and seismic region. In
highland Mexico, great reaches of arid plateau land, fertile for

maize and other crops wherever water is available, lie between heav-

ily forested mountain slopes, which at some places rise to a perpet-

ual snow level. The moist tropical rain forests of the coastal plains

yield rich crops, when the land can be cleared. In Yucatán, a subsoil

of limestone furnishes abundant material for both building and

carving. This limestone tableland merges with the vast Petén region

of Guatemala, which separates Mexico from Honduras. Yucatán

and the Petén, where dense rain forest alternates with broad

stretches of grassland, host some of the most spectacular Maya ru-

ins. The great mountain chains of Mexico and Guatemala extend

into Honduras and slope sharply down to tropical coasts. High-

lands and mountain valleys, with their chill and temperate climates,

alternate dramatically with the humid climate of tropical rain forest

and coastlines.

The variegated landscape of Mesoamerica may have much to do

with the diversity of languages its native populations speak. Numer-

ous languages are distributed among no fewer than 14 linguistic fam-

ilies. Many of the languages spoken in the pre–Spanish conquest pe-

riod survive to this day. Various Mayan languages linger in Guatemala

and southern Mexico. The Náhuatl of the Aztecs endures in the Mex-

ican highlands. The Zapotec and Mixtec languages persist in Oaxaca

and its environs. Diverse as the languages of these peoples were, their

cultures otherwise had much in common. The Mesoamerican peo-

ples shared maize cultivation, religious beliefs and rites, myths, social

structures, customs, and arts.

Archaeologists, with ever-increasing refinement of technique,

have been uncovering, describing, and classifying Mesoamerican

monuments for more than a century. In the 1950s, linguists made

important breakthroughs in deciphering the Maya hieroglyphic

script, and epigraphers have made further progress in recent

decades. Scholars can now list many Maya rulers by name and fix the

dates of their reigns with precision. Other writing systems, such as

that of the Zapotec, who began to record dates at a very early time,

are less well understood, but researchers are making rapid progress

in their interpretation. The general Mesoamerican chronology is

now well established and widely accepted. The standard chronology,

divided into three epochs, involves some overlapping of subperiods.

The Preclassic (Formative) extends from 2000 BCEto about 300 CE.

The Classic period runs from about 300 to 900. The Postclassic be-

gins approximately 900 and ends with the Spanish conquest of 1521.

Olmec and Preclassic West Mexico

The Olmec culture of the present-day Mexican states of Veracruz

and Tabasco has often been called the “mother culture” of Meso-

america, because many distinctive Mesoamerican religious, social,

and artistic traditions can be traced to it. Recent archaeological dis-

coveries, however, have revealed other important centers during the

Preclassic period. The notion of a linear evolution of all Mesoamer-

ican art and architecture from the Olmec is giving way to a more

complex multicenter picture of early Mesoamerica. Settling in the

tropical lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico, the Olmec peoples culti-

vated a terrain of rain forest and alluvial lowland washed by numer-

ous rivers flowing into the gulf. Here, between approximately 1500

and 400 BCE, social organization assumed the form that later

Mesoamerican cultures adapted and developed. The mass of the

population—food-producing farmers scattered in hinterland vil-

lages—provided the sustenance and labor that maintained a heredi-

tary caste of rulers, hierarchies of priests, functionaries, and artisans.

The nonfarming population presumably lived, arranged by rank,

within precincts that served ceremonial, administrative, and resi-

366 Chapter 14 NATIVE ARTS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE 1300

MAP14-1Early sites in Mesoamerica.

Teotihuacan

Cantona

Tula El Tajín

Tres

Zapotes

San Lorenzo

Monte Albán

La Venta Palenque

Yaxchilán

Bonampak

Altamira

Chichén Itzá

San Bartolo

Tikal

Quiriguá

Copán

Mexico City

PACIFIC OCEANPACIFIC OCEAN

Gulf of MexicoGulf of Mexico

Rio

Gr

an

de

Yucatán

Peninsula

Jaina

Tuxtla Island

Mt

s.

MEXICO

GUATEMALA

UNITED

STATES

BELIZE

HONDURAS

EL SALVADOR

NAYARIT

JALISCO

COLIMA

OAXACA

CAMPECHE

CHIAPAS

PETÉN

GUERRERO

TABASCO

V E R A C R U Z

YUCATÁN

0 200 400 miles

0 200 400 kilometers

Archaeological site