Mesoamerica is the only place in the Americas where indigenous writing systems were invented and used before European colonization.

The region was one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented ( it being the first ), along with the Nile valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent, and Yellow River valley in China ( although writing is also known to have arisen independently in Mesoamerica ).

Cultivation spread as far as Mesoamerica, where the Spanish conquistadors found the tlalcacahuatl ( Nahuatl = " peanut ", whence Mexican Spanish, cacahuate and French, cacahuète ) being offered for sale in the marketplace of Tenochtitlan ( Mexico City ).

In the Americas where there were few native animals of burden all goods were carried by porters called Tlamemes in the Nahuatl language of Mesoamerica.

Even so, some evidence of genuine trepanation in Mesoamerica ( i. e., where the subject was living ) has survived.

Later, the lack of pellagra outbreaks in Mesoamerica, where maize is a major food crop, led researchers to investigate processing techniques in that region.

While the lawyers he hired sorted it out, Maler lived in Paris, where he gave lectures on Mexican antiquities and studied and read everything about Mesoamerica he could find in the city.

Mesoamerica can be divided into smaller linguistic subareas wherein linguistic diffusion has been especially intense, or where certain families have extended to become predominant.

Mesoamerica is one of the relatively few places in the world where writing has developed independently throughout history.

This has resulted in Mesoamerica evolving into a linguistic area of diffusion, a " Sprachbund ", where most languages, even though they have different origins share some important linguistic traits.

The Indians, again with friendly aspect and manner, brought them to their village, where once more they could see solid constructions and many idols ( Bernal alludes to the busts of serpents on the walls, so characteristic of Mesoamerica ).

The phenomenon of giving a high value to ancient artifacts is found in other cultures, notably China, where Chinese ritual bronzes, three to two thousand years old, have been avidly collected and imitated for centuries, and the Pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, where in particular the artifacts of the earliest Olmec civilization are found reburied in significant sites of later cultures up to the Spanish Conquest.

The effects of waterway transformation were particularly evident in Mesoamerica, where agricultural practices ranged from swiddening to multicropped hydraulically transformed wetlands.

The ancient process of nixtamalization was first developed in Mesoamerica, where maize was originally cultivated.

Outside of Mesoamerica, Arturo Warman forwarded the hypothesis that the verses sung by the Yaquis and Mayo musicians during the performance of the Danza del Venado have their origin in pre-Columbian times and have survived to this day with very little change since then.

Melendez ’ hypothesis fits the known Spanish pattern of direct superimposition of Catholic politico-religious structures on pre-existing indigenous structures such as pyramids in Mesoamerica and Andean South America, or kiva structures in the U. S. Southwest.

The Olmecs were the first Mesoamerican culture to produce an identifiable artistic and cultural style, and may also have been the society that invented writing in Mesoamerica.

Mesoamerica saw the rise of early urbanism in several cultural regions, including the Preclassic Maya, the Zapotec of Oaxaca, and Teotihuacan in central Mexico.

The Guatemalan region of Mesoamerica was dominated by the Maya civilization ( 2, 000 BC – AD 250 ), before the Spanish arrived in the 16th century ; although most of the great, Classic-era ( AD 250 – 900 ) Maya cities of the Petén Basin region, in the northern lowlands of Guatemala, had been abandoned by the year AD 1, 000 ; however, the states in the Guatemalan central highlands, flourished until the arrival of Pedro de Alvarado, the Spanish Conquistador who began subjugating the Indian states of Guatemala in 1525.

The San Bartolo murals of the Maya civilization in Guatemala, are the oldest example of this art in Mesoamerica and are dated at 300 BC.

Although it is a subject of debate whether Teotihuacan was the center of a state empire, its influence throughout Mesoamerica is well documented ; evidence of Teotihuacano presence can be seen at numerous sites in Veracruz and the Maya region.

Since the late twentieth century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in Mesoamerica.

In the ancient Maya civilization of Mesoamerica more than a thousand years ago, prisoners of war were paraded before the king and his royal court and subjected to ritual humiliation and torture.

* The Maya civilization in Mesoamerica begins ( approximate date ).

Although it is a subject of debate whether Teotihuacan was the center of a state empire, its influence throughout Mesoamerica is well documented ; evidence of Teotihuacano presence can be seen at numerous sites in Veracruz and the Maya region.

The nature of political and cultural interactions between Teotihuacan and the centers of the Maya region ( as well as elsewhere in Mesoamerica ) has been a long-standing and significant area for debate.

The art and architecture at these sites emulates Teotihuacan forms, but also demonstrates an eclectic mix of motifs and iconography from other parts of Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya region.

Tohil ( also spelt Tojil ) was a deity of the K ' iche ' Maya in the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica.

Historical examples include the oldest known Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia and Ur, the Phoenician cities of Canaan ( such as Tyre and Sidon ), the Berber city-states of the Garamantes, the city-states of ancient Greece ( the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth ), the Roman Republic which grew from a city-state into a great power, the Maya of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica ( including sites such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Palenque and El Mirador ), the central Asian cities along the Silk Road, Venice, Croatian city-state of Ragusa ( Dubrovnik ) and many others.

The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and in many modern communities in highland Guatemala and in Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico.

During this time, the city dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily, while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica such as the great metropolis of Teotihuacan in the distant Valley of Mexico.

While it might have been the largest city in Mesoamerica at the time, some Maya sites in the Yucatán may have rivaled its population during this period.

Becan ( Spanish: Becán ) is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

* Petén Basin, the geographical / archaeological region of Mesoamerica and a center of the Maya civilization

In Mesoamerica these tutelary power animals are called Nagual in the Aztec language and Uay in the Maya language.

Decorated ceramic incense burners were in general use in Mesoamerica, particularly in the large Central-Mexican city of Teotihuacan ( 100-600 AD ) and in the many kingdoms belonging to the Maya civilization.

Mayan ceramics are important in the study of the Pre-Columbian Maya culture of Mesoamerica.

It has been suggested that Spearthrower Owl was a ruler of Teotihuacán at the start of height of its influence across Mesoamerica in the 4th and 5th century, and that he was responsible for the introduction of Teotihuacán-related cultural traits in the Maya area.

Pakal ( also spelled Pacal ; meaning " shield " in several Maya languages ) forms the ( common ) name or part of the full name of several pre-Columbian Maya personages identified in the monumental inscriptions of sites in the Maya region of Mesoamerica.

By the 15th century, the Aztecs gained control of a large part of Mesoamerica, and adopted cacao into their culture.

While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level.

It has also been suggested that the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica influenced the history of the botanical garden as gardens in Tenochtitlan established by king Nezahualcoyotl, also gardens in Chalco and elsewhere greatly impressed the Spanish invaders, not only with their appearance but also because the indigenous Aztecs employed many more medicinal plants than did the classical world of Europe.

Huastec people lived north of Totonacs in the northeastern corner of Mesoamerica, which helped their influence with distinct style of art.

While the extent of Olmec control over the areas beyond their heartland is not yet known, Formative Period figurines with Olmec motifs were widespread in the centuries from 1000 to 500 BCE, showing a consistency of style and subject throughout nearly all of Mesoamerica.

Maize became vital to the survival of the people of Mesoamerica, and that is reflected in their origin, myths, artwork, and rituals.

As horses were not native to the Americas and peoples of Mesoamerica had no beasts of burden of their own, Tecún Umán assumed they were one being and killed Alvarado's horse.

This group were the Mexica who during the next 300 years became the dominant ethnic group of Mesoamerica ruling from Tenochtitlan their island capital.

In 1521 Cortés defeated the Aztec empire in Mesoamerica, which was followed by a large influx of Spanish clergy, whose writings provide most of information about pre-conquest Aztec life and customs largely assembled from interviews with those who survived the invasion and subsequent epidemics, and their descendents.

Maztica, called by its inhabitants The True World, is a fictional continent that parallels the American continents in the time of their discovery by Christopher Columbus, more exactly Mesoamerica, albeit confused with the whole “ western lands ” ( like the Americas ).

Throughout the history of Mesoamerica, an unknown number of languages and language families became extinct and left behind no evidence of their existence.

Three large language families are thought to have had their most recent common homelands within Mesoamerica.

Uto-Aztecan languages were still outside of Mesoamerica during the Preclassic, their speakers living as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers on the northern rim of the region and co-existing with speakers of Coracholan and Oto-Pamean languages.

Probably as a result of their isolationist policy the P ' urhépecha language is the only language of Mesoamerica to not show any of the traits associated with the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.

They were attacked by a multitude of Indians, armed with pikes, bucklers, slings ( Bernal says slings ; Diego de Landa denies that the Indians of Yucatán were familiar with slings ; he says they threw stones with their right hand, using the left to aim ; but the sling was known in other parts of Mesoamerica, and the testimony of those at whom the stones were aimed seems worth crediting ), arrows launched from a bow, and cotton armor.

Between 1575 and 1577 a smallpox ( matlazahuatl ) epidemic decimated the population, it is estimated that two million people lost their lives in Mesoamerica, the city was totally abandoned, and the few survivors moved to the city of Xalapa, eventually fell into oblivion, until archeologist Francisco del Paso and Troncoso rediscovered it.