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33-519: The Jaguar Temple (officially known as Lamanai Structure N10-9 ) is a stepped-pyramid structure at the Maya archaeological site of Lamanai , located in present-day Belize. The structure is twelve feet shorter in exposed height than the High Temple , however a significant amount of this temple is under the ground, having been covered by dirt on its front side, and jungle roughage on its left side (when facing

66-506: A charm and sensibility unprecedented in other, more formal cultures". Remojadas style figurines, perhaps the most easily recognizable, are usually hand-modeled, and often adorned with appliqués . Of particular note are the Sonrientes (smiling faces) figurines, with triangular-shaped heads and outstretched arms. Nopiloa figurines are usually less ornate, without appliqués, and often molded. The Classic Veracruz culture produced some of

99-414: A flux between a plethora of Mesoamerican cultures, somewhere between 1150 BCE and 850 BCE, in which a continued diffusion of culture occurred . This evidence suggests multidirectional influence in regards to the dissemination of pyramid architecture amongst Mesoamerican civilizations. Classic Veracruz culture Classic Veracruz culture (or Gulf Coast Classic culture ) refers to a cultural area in

132-529: A segment in ongoing cultural diffusion in Mesoamerica. Further progression of the debate has evolved into costly signaling theory which argues that Mesoamerican cultures were influenced by prestigious displays which manifested, amongst other things, in their architecture. Another key facet of the debate questioned the application of the term "Mother culture" and argues that contemporary Mesoamerican civilizations were functional without Olmec influence and describing

165-597: A stair-stepped design. Many of these structures featured a top platform upon which a smaller dedicatory building was constructed, associated with a particular Maya deity . Maya pyramid-like structures were also erected to serve as a place of interment for powerful rulers. Maya pyramidal structures occur in a great variety of forms and functions, bounded by regional and periodical differences. The Olmecs were an ancient group of indigenous peoples that occupied territory in Mesoamerica stretching from Veracruz to Tabasco around 1300-400 BCE. The Olmec Great Pyramid of La Venta

198-448: Is 70 km/40 mi northwest of modern day Mexico City. When the city of Tula was in its prime it had around 40,000 people living in it and the city flourished from 900 to 1100. The city of Tula had a main plaza surrounded by 2 pyramids and a ritual ball court. The most popular pyramid on this site (pyramid b) is the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl which is a five-tiered pyramid with four giant carved pillars on top. The pyramid of Quetzalcoatl

231-644: Is argued to be one of the earliest and most complex settlement and ceremonial sites that can be found amongst Mesoamerican civilizations. The Tarascan state was a pre-columbian culture located in the modern day Mexican state of Michoacán . The region is currently inhabited by the modern descendants of the Purépecha . Purépechan architecture is noted for T-shaped step pyramids known as yácatas . The Teotihuacan civilization, which flourished from around 300 BCE to 500 CE, at its greatest extent included most of Mesoamerica. Teotihuacano culture collapsed around 550 and

264-485: Is rendered with extensive and convoluted banded scrolls that can be seen both on monumental architecture and on portable art, including ceramics and even carved bones. At least one researcher has suggested that the heads and other features formed by the scrolls are a Classic Veracruz form of pictographic writing. This scrollwork may have grown out of similar styles found in Chiapa de Corzo and Kaminaljuyu . In addition to

297-634: The Chalchihuites culture or that of the neighboring Malpaso culture. Modern archaeological scholarly thinking has been revising the concept of the Olmecs as diffusing the majority of cultural influence in regards to architectural similarities between various Mesoamerican pyramids . The origin of the term mother culture , in regards to Mesoamerica , entered into the Mesoamerican historiographical lexicon in 1942 from archaeologist Alfonso Caso denoting that

330-456: The OImecs were the " cultura madre". The mother culture model argues that there was one defining culture, the Olmecs, from where therein coexisting Mesoamerican societies derived a significant portion of fundamental societal and cultural facets. The sister culture model argues that the Olmecs were not the sole undeviating source of cultural diffusion for other Mesoamerican civilizations , but rather

363-521: The Preclassic Maya (1000 B.C., approximately 3,000 years ago) they were building pyramidal-plaza ceremonial architecture. The earliest monuments consisted of simple burial mounds , the precursors to the spectacular stepped pyramids from the Terminal Pre-classic period and beyond. Mayan temples have a pyramid-like structure. These pyramids relied on intricate carved stone in order to create

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396-780: The Pánuco River on the north and the Papaloapan River on the south. The Classic Veracruz culture is sometimes associated with the Totonacs , who were occupying this territory at the time of the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire . However, there is little or no evidence that the Totonacs were the originators of the Classic era culture. Burials, monumental sculpture, relief carvings, and

429-529: The Aztec cihuateteo . The ball court reliefs of El Tajin prominently depict a death god, a rain god and what may be a sun god and are important for their narrative quality perhaps related to the origin of pulque . Hachas commonly show the head of an aged god probably connected to earth and water. An earth monster was likely inherited from the Olmecs . Many ceremonially clad ceramic figurines have been found that testify to

462-400: The Aztec, Mixtec, and Maya. Only some of the many deity figures known from these religions have been recognized with any certainty. Large ceramic figures show a stooped, very old man representing the Mesoamerican fire god. Equally large ceramic statues show female earth goddesses with snake girdles connected to the site of El Zapotal . Based on their closed eyes and wide open mouths, and also on

495-488: The Classic Veracruz culture is the presence of stone ballgame gear: yokes, hachas , and palmas . Yokes are U-shaped stones worn about the waist of a ballplayer, while the hachas and palmas sit upon the yoke. Palmas were fitted to the front of a yoke and were elongated sculptures often of effigies of birds—like turkeys—or realistic scenes. Hachas were thin stone heads that were markers that were typically placed in

528-461: The East Ballcourt at El Tajin are lined with carved murals showing human sacrifice in the context of the ballgame (see photo above). The culmination of these murals is a tableau showing the rain god, who pierces his penis (an act of bloodletting ) to replenish a vat of the alcoholic, ritual drink pulque , the apparent desired result of the ballgame ritual sacrifice. A defining characteristic of

561-402: The Olmecs as the "mother culture" robs the Olmecs and the other civilizations of their agency. In 2013, archaeological research done on the ancient Mayan city of Ceibal have hypothesized that the Olmecs had significantly lesser prominence in regards to shared architectural characteristics. This is supported by evidence, in the form of radiocarbon dating , that was found at Ceibal pointing to

594-449: The calendar (like the monthly feasts of the Aztec and Maya). The Classic Veracruz culture was seemingly obsessed with the ballgame . Every cultural center had at least one ballcourt, while up to 18 ballcourts have been found at El Tajin. It was during Late Classic here in north-central Veracruz that the ballgame reached its height. The ballgame rituals appear throughout Classic Veracruz monumental art. The walls of largest ballcourt,

627-406: The court to score the game, but could be worn on the yoke. Archaeologists generally suppose that the stone yokes are ritual versions of leather, cotton, and/or wood yokes, although no such perishable artifacts have yet been unearthed. While the yokes and hachas have been found from Teotihuacan to Guatemala, the palmas seem peculiar to what is today northern Veracruz. The art of Classic Veracruz

660-543: The distribution of architecture within the regional centers all point to a stratification of Classic Veracruz society, including the presence of an elite rank as well as craft specialization. Elite hereditary rulers held sway over these small- to medium-sized regional centers, none over 2000 km , maintaining their rule through political and religious control of far-flung trade networks and legitimizing it through typical Mesoamerican rites such as bloodletting, human sacrifice, warfare, and use of exotic goods. Much or most of

693-630: The earliest Mesoamerican cultures and held sway over the Valley of Oaxaca region from the early first millennium BCE to about the 14th century. Historians divide the Lenca chronology into two, the Preclassic Proto-Lencas and the later Lencas as we known today. The following site is from the modern-day state of Zacatecas , built by cultures whose ethnic affiliations are unknown: A great quantity of buildings were constructed on artificial terraces upon

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726-426: The front of the temple). Angular (blocky) jaguar heads adorn the front in the same style as the other temples in this site. This article related to indigenous Mesoamerican culture is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Mesoamerican pyramid The Aztecs dominated central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Their capital was Tenochtitlan on the shore of Lake Texcoco –

759-428: The importance of public ritual, while the ceramic figurines of persons with smiling and laughing faces (the so-called sonrientes ) seem to represent ritual performers; they may point to a cult similar to that of the much later Aztec deity Xochipilli . However, hardly anything is known about the interrelations of the deities mentioned above, their role in the religious feasts, and the possible connection of these feasts to

792-457: The nearby shrine of a death god and on the surrounding burials, the latter have been identified as deified women who died in child birth, more or less corresponding to the much later Aztec cihuateteo ('female gods') also known from the Codex Borgia . Otherwise similar ceramic statues of earth goddesses, however, standing or seated, do not have dead faces and should therefore not be compared to

825-514: The north and central areas of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz , a culture that existed from roughly 100 to 1000 CE, or during the Classic era . El Tajin was the major center of Classic Veracruz culture; other notable settlements include Higueras, Zapotal, Cerro de las Mesas , Nopiloa , and Remojadas , the latter two important ceramics centers. The culture spanned the Gulf Coast between

858-577: The population, however, lived in isolated homesteads, hamlets, or villages. Like the Epi-Olmec and Olmec cultures before it, Classic Veracruz culture was based on swidden , or slash-and-burn, agriculture, with maize an important component of the diet, supplemented with domestic dog, wild deer and other mammals, and fish and shellfish. Cotton was also an important crop. Little is known concerning Classic Veracruz religion and inferences have to be made from better-known Mesoamerican religions such as those of

891-467: The scrollwork, the architecture is known for its remarkable ornamentation, such as that seen on the Pyramid of Niches at El Tajin. This ornamentation produces dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, what art historian George Kubler called a "bold chiaroscuro ". While Classic Veracruz culture shows influences from Teotihuacan and the Maya , neither of these cultures are its direct antecedents. Instead,

924-630: The seeds of this culture seems to have come at least in part from the Epi-Olmec culture centers, such as Cerro de las Mesas and La Mojarra . Until the early 1950s, the Classic Veracruz ceramics were few, little understood, and generally without provenance . Since then, the recovery of thousands of figurines and pottery pieces from sites such as Remojadas , Los Cerros, Dicha Tuerta, and Tenenexpan , some initially by looters, has expanded our understanding and filled many museum shelves. Artist and art historian Miguel Covarrubias described Classic Veracruz ceramics as "powerful and expressive, endowed with

957-412: The site of modern-day Mexico City . They were related to the preceding cultures in the basin of Mexico such as the culture of Teotihuacan whose building style they adopted and adapted. Sites involving Aztec pyramids include: The Maya are a people of southern Mexico and northern Central America ( Guatemala , Belize , western Honduras , and El Salvador ). Archaeological evidence shows that by

990-581: The slopes of a La Quemada . The materials used here include stone slab and clay. The most important structures are: The Hall of Columns, The Ball Court, The Votive Pyramid, and The Palace and the Barracks. On the most elevated part of the hill is The Fortress. This is composed of a small pyramid and a platform, encircled by a wall that is more than 800m long and up to six feet high. La Quemada was occupied from 800 to 1200. Their founders and occupants have not been identified with certainty but probably belonged to either

1023-469: The state of Mexico is one of the best preserved five-tier pyramids in Mesoamerican civilization. The ground plan of the site has two pyramids, Pyramid B and Pyramid C. The Toltec empire lasted from around 700 to 1100. Although the origin of the Toltec Empire is a mystery, they are said to have migrated Mexico's northern plateau until they set up their empire's capital in central Mexico, called Tula, which

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1056-512: Was followed by several large city-states such as Xochicalco (whose inhabitants were probably of Matlatzinca ethnicity), Cholula (whose inhabitants were probably Oto-Manguean ), and later the ceremonial site of Tula (which has traditionally been claimed to have been built by Toltecs but which now is thought to have been founded by the Huastec culture). The site called Tula , the Toltec capital, in

1089-525: Was named after a story of a legendary priest, also named Quetzalcoatl who was exiled from Tula around the year 1000. He is said to have ended warfare between Mayan city states and after that the Toltecs started worshiping Quetzalcoatl. The best known Classic Veracruz pyramid, the Pyramid of Niches in El Tajín , is smaller than those of their neighbors and successors but more intricate. The Zapotecs were one of

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