2. The 2 Great Civilizations
• In 1491, two great civilizations ruled large parts
of the New World: the Incas in the Andes
Mountains of Peru and the Mexica, or the
Triple Alliance, in Mesoamerica, a region
running from Central Mexico south to
Honduras.
• These cultures both had strong leaders driven
to expand their empires, had swiftly conquered
neighboring lands, and had built large, beautiful
capitals to reflect their power and grandeur.
3. Dominance
• As the Incas and the Mexica
were in 1491, they had only
become pre-eminent in the
century before Columbus.
• They were the latest in a 4000-
year long line of cultures that
arose, reached their peaks, and
declined or disappeared as a
result of conquest, changes in
climate and weather
conditions, destruction of their
environments, or internal
divisions.
4. The Ways of the Ancients
• From Norte Chico, the first urban
complex in the Americas, begun around
3000 BC, to the Olmecs (1200 - 200
BC) who created the first cities in
North America and the Zapotec (600
BC - 800 AD) who developed writing
around 600 BC , a number of
civilizations were long gone by the time
the Spanish landed.
• In their wake, these societies left
tantalizing clues to their lifestyles and
belief systems: great pyramids,
enormous earthen mounds, and ruins of
sophisticated aqueducts and ritual
centers that would not be discovered
or begin to be scientifically analyzed
until the 20th century.
5. The Heart of Invention
• Since 1800 BC, Mesoamerica was the homeland of a
series of developing cultures responsible for significant
advances in agriculture, architecture, and
communications.
• The Olmecs, Zapotecs, Toltecs, and Teotihuacan were
just a few of the civilizations that flourished there as
people abandoned pure hunter/gatherer lifestyles and
began to live communally in villages and cities.
• They created pottery, artwork, and spiritual belief sets;
developed intricate political and religious structures;
established markets and trade; and domesticated plants
and cultivated crops.
• They also invented writing, one of only two indisputable
times in human history that writing was invented
independently. T
• The people of Mesoamerica created many systems of
pictorial writing and at least two full writing systems.
