32 INTRODUCTION
between cultures. Studies of particular cultural divergences are referred to as “spe-
cific evolution,” whereas examples of cultural convergence—demonstrated by com-
paring different cases of adaptation around the world—are termed “general
evolution.”
An important early application of the cultural evolutionary approach to aborig-
inal Mesoamerica was carried out by the American anthropologist Julian Steward
(1949). Steward presented an evolutionary sequence for Mesoamerica consisting of
the following developmental stages:Hunting and Gathering.Simple food-gathering technology gives rise to bands of hunters
and gatherers.
Incipient Agriculture.Domestication of plants lays the foundation for settled village life.
Formative.Increasingly intense farming provides the basis for the growth of villages into towns.
Regional Florescence.Complex irrigation works promote population growth, cities, and
highly stratified society.
Cyclical Conquests.The use of metals and an increase in trade lead to conditions that pro-
mote endemic warfare between societies.Steward compared the specific Mayan and Central Mexican evolutionary se-
quences in Mesoamerica with similar sequences in other regions of the world where
ancient civilizations had developed, and he argued for their convergent evolution.
He found the explanation for evolutionary convergences in the development of
similar irrigation and other advanced subsistence technologies within similar eco-
logical conditions. In particular, he applied his theory to the semiarid river valleys
of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Peru, and Mexico. The Mesoamerican civilization,
then, was defined not in terms of shared cultural traits but rather as a series of evolv-
ing evolutionary stages resulting from adaptive responses to a particular environ-
mental setting.
Following Steward’s lead, the evolutionary approach has been widely adopted in
the study of Mesoamerican cultures. For example, whereas the Culture Historians had
defined the aboriginal lowland Mayas as virtually unique in their cultural patterns and
historical development, Cultural Evolutionists like William Sanders and Barbara Price
(1968) argued that far from being unique, the Mayan advances were actually based
on ecological adaptations common to Mesoamerica as a whole. Specifically, popula-
tions in Central Mexico had adapted to the semiarid conditions of the Teotihuacan
Valley by constructing an elaborate irrigation system, and upon this material foun-
dation the powerful, urban Teotihuacan civilization was constructed. Evolutionarily
advanced Teotihuacán then became the material base for the development of ad-
vanced cultural features by the interconnected lowland Mayas located far to the
south. The subsequent collapse of the Teotihuacan civilization around A.D. 700, fol-
lowed by a transition to a new evolutionary stage in Central Mexico, was again used
to explain the dramatic Mayan cultural collapse 200 years later in the southern low-
lands. Sanders and Price concluded that without the evolutionary developments of
Teotihuacan, Mayan cultural evolution would have remained at a chiefdom stage,
which is precisely what happened to many of the peoples falling outside the
Mesoamerican regional sphere.