Lecture 37: The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era

The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era..........................................

LECTURE

Market relations and warfare seem to have linked all these areas of

evolving Agrarian civilization into a large network of exchanges and

warfare. So, it may be appropriate to talk of an evolving Mesoamerican

“world system.”

H

ow similar was the evolution of Agrarian civilizations in the

American and Afro-Eurasian world zones? And what were the

crucial differences? In the Americas, Agrarian civilizations evolved

in Mesoamerica and the Andes. In both regions, evidence of embryonic

Agrarian civilizations began to appear from the 2nd millennium B.C.E. In

Mesoamerica, incipient Agrarian civilizations appeared in the middle of the

2 nd millennium B.C.E. They appear among the Olmec of Southeast Mexico,

near modern Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. Improved varieties of maize,

beans, and squash allowed rapid population growth in regions of heavy

rainfall, where drainage was more important than irrigation. Towns such as

Lorenzo (with a population of about 2,500 people) and La Venta appeared.

They had large ceremonial centers, with pyramid-like tombs up to 33 meters

high. The Olmec made huge and distinctive basalt stone heads. With no large

domestic animals, these had to be transported by humans, presumably under

compulsion. The small size of these towns suggests that they represented

polities perhaps at the level of chiefdoms. The presence of obsidian and other

precious goods at Olmec sites shows the existence of extensive exchange

networks. La Venta was destroyed violently in about 400 B.C.E., clear

evidence of the importance of warfare. An inscribed stone found in 2006 in

Veracruz suggests that the Olmec had already developed a writing system,

though it has not yet been deciphered.

After 1000 B.C.E., larger communities evolved in the Oaxaca valley of

South Mexico, with evidence of craft specialization, canal building, markets,

and writing. By 500 B.C.E., there existed a cluster of city-states, reminiscent

of 3rd-millennium Sumer. By 500 C.E., the region’s largest settlement, Monte

Alban, may have had 20,000 or more inhabitants; it is often thought of as

the ¿ rst large city of the Americas. Carved stone engravings found nearby