A very succinct history of ancient Mexico
More than 2,000 years of human highlights in a glimpse.
The first known civilization in today’s Mexico area was the Olmec, which means people from the land of rubber. From 2,500BC to 400BC, they were the first to establish hamlets, practice organized agriculture and built the first pyramids. Their greatest landmarks are the colossal heads, weighting from 6 to 40 tons, and the divine jaguar. For unknown reasons, the Olmec scattered all over the Mexican Gulf area, and over central Mexico, and helped to start new cultures. Among them, the Teotihuacanos, which received the survivors from the Xitle eruption, created the greatest city ever in North America.
Teotihuacan, which means where men became gods, is said to have hosted over 250,000 people, from the elite to the slaves. From 100BC to 650AD, Teotihuacan flourished, around the year 700AD, large parts of the city were destroyed and their inhabitants fled. Their two main gods, Quetzalcoatl the feathered bird, and Tlaloc the lord of the rain, remained the main gods for centuries to come. The Mayans were the most complex, refined, scientifically advanced and powerful group from the Yucatan peninsula, southern Mexico and Central America. Their cities, palaces, pyramids, canals, roads, military force and social hierarchy, managed to last from early 2000BC to 800AD.
After political turmoil, their civilization collapsed and had a second golden age from 900 to 1500AD, Chichen Itza was their main city. As the Spaniards arrived by the 16th century, Mayans were still a powerful tribe, and were defeated at the mid-17th century. The Mayan cities are among the most spectacular and beautiful examples of prehispanic architecture, even more for being in the jungle! Zapotecans lived in the area of the actual Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and part of Puebla. They worshiped jaguars and bats. Their main city, Monte Albán, is a dreamlike mesa on top of a hill, sometimes surrounded by clouds.
Lasted from 200 to 900AD, it has a ball game course, pyramids, and an observatory, like the Mayans. When the classic civilizations decayed, tribes coming from the north arrived and conquered the diminished remaining groups, like Mayas and Teotihuacans. The Toltecs (900–1521AD), started a series of conquest wars and melted their own beliefs with those who were conquered by them. Quetzalcoatl was then added to their gods, and its influence was taken from Tollan-Xicototitlan (today’s Tula) to Chichen Itza, in Yucatan. The Mixtecs influenced southern of Mexico from 1300AD to 1521, specially with the trade of grana cochinilla, a coveted red pigment.
The two last tribes to arrive at the central area of Mexico, where the Mexicas and the P’urhépechas or Tarascos. The Mexicas conquered the Texcoco lake tribes, and established their city, Tenochtitlan in 1325AD, by filling a lake area with rocks! Soon their influence expanded and they conquered the tribes from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean, except for the P’urhépechas. The P’urhépechas, who conquered and reigned over today’s Michoacán state, built three main cities and worshiped a fire obsidian god, Curicaveri. The Mexicas, also named Aztecs, worshiped a warrior hummingbird, Huitzilopochtli. The Mexicas tried to conquer Michoacán, but failed.
These two last cultures were the most influential and powerful at the time Spaniards arrived, and then, from 1521 onward, everything changed forever…
