MEXICO: PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY

The first inhabitants of the Americas came from Siberia during the last Ice age in migrations that began about 50,000 BC and lasted until around 8000 BC. They came across a land bridge now submerged beneath the Bering Strait. The earliest human traces found in Mexico date from about 20,000 BC. Around 6500 BC people were planting seeds of chilli pepper and squash, and between 5000 and 3500 BC they started to plant mutant forms of a tiny wild maize and to grind it into meal. After 3500 BC a much better variety of maize, and also beans, enabled people to live semipermanently in villages and spend less time in seasonal hunting camps. Mexico's earliest year-round villages were probably coastal, subsisting by a combination of agriculture and fishing. There is evidence of such settlements on the Pacific coast of Chiapas from about 1500 BC, and it is likely that there were similar places on the Gulf coast.

The Olmecs

The first-known Olmec centre, San Lorenzo, near Acayucan in Veracruz, flourished from about 1200 to 900 BC. San Lorenzo is a plateau about 1.25km long and 50m high, at least partly human-made, that served chiefly as a political and religious centre. The second great Olmec centre was La Venta in Tabasco, lasting from about 800 to 400 BC. Several tombs have been found here. The Olmecs were Mexico's ancestral civilisation. Their art and religious beliefs strongly influenced the civilisations that followed. Olmec gods included fire and maize deities and the feathered serpent, all of which persisted throughout the pre-Hispanic era.

Olmec sculpture, Xalapa (9K)

Although the Olmec centres declined, cities in other areas began to expand. By 300 BC, settled village life, based on agriculture but supported by hunting, had developed throughout the southern half of Mexico. Monte Albán, the hilltop centre of the Zapotec people of Oaxaca, had grown into a town of perhaps 10,000, and at Izapa, near the Pacific coast of Chiapas, a large temple centre flourished from about 200 BC to 200 AD.

Teotihuacán

During the 1st century AD, the great city of Teotihuacán emerged in a valley about 50km north-east of the centre of modern Mexico City. Teotihuacán grew into Mexico's biggest pre-Hispanic city, with an estimated 200,000 people during its heyday in the 6th century AD. The greatest of its buildings was the Pyramid of the Sun, the third biggest in the world, which was constructed within the first 150 years AD. The rest of the city was built between about 250 and 600 AD.

Quetzalcóatl head, Teotihuacán (16K)

Teotihuacán was a true city in that many classes of people lived and worked there. Its people were literate, and used the bar-and-dot number system and the 260-day sacred year. Teotihuacán became an imperialistic state after 400 AD. At its peak it may have controlled the southern two-thirds of Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and bits of Honduras and El Salvador. But it was an empire geared to tribute-gathering in order to feed the mouths and tastes of Teotihuacán's big population, rather than a full-scale occupation. In the 7th century, the heart of Teotihuacán was put to the torch and the city was plundered and largely abandoned. It is likely that the state had already been economically weakened - perhaps by the rise of rival powers in central Mexico, by a drying-up of the climate or by desiccation caused by the denuding of the surrounding hillsides for wood. Teotihuacán's influence on Mexico's later cultures was huge. Many of its gods, such as the feathered serpent Quetzalcóatl, an all-important symbol of fertility, and Tláloc, the rain god, were still being worshipped by the Aztecs a millennium later.

The Classic Maya

From the lowlands of the Yucatßn Peninsula, the Petén forest of northern Guatemala and adjacent lowlands in Mexico and Belize emerged Mexico's greatest pre-Hispanic civilisation - the Classic Maya (250-900 AD). Mayan 'cities' were ceremonial, political and market centres for groups of farming hamlets. The rulers and artisans are thought to have lived close to these centres. The impossibility of intensive agriculture amid forests made large settlements unlikely, but the ceremonial centres and their associated settlements constituted city states. The Maya had a very complex writing system, with 300 to 500 symbols, and they also refined the calendar possessed by other pre-Hispanic peoples into a tool for recording earthly and heavenly events. They could predict eclipses of the sun and the movements of the moon and Venus. Religion permeated every facet of Mayan life. The Maya believed in predestination and were fervent astrologers, but they also carried out elaborate rituals to win the gods' favours.

Palace, Palenque (25K)

Since the early Classic Maya were probably partly controlled by Teotihuacán, it is not surprising that the era of Teotihuacán's decline was also one of disturbances among the Maya, but in the 7th century Mayan life seems to have resumed much as before. By the early 10th century the central Mayan area was virtually abandoned, most of its people migrating to the northern area or the highlands of Chiapas. Population pressure, drought and ecological damage are considered likely causes of the collapse.

The Toltecs

The Toltec people were one of a number of semicivilised tribes from dry northern Mexico who moved into the Valley of Mexico area after the fall of Teotihuacán. Tula became their capital, probably in the 10th century, growing into a city of 30,000 or 40,000. It is particularly hard to disentangle myth and history in the Toltec story because the annals which form part of the evidence may be more legend than fact. Tula was abandoned about the start of the 13th century, seemingly destroyed by Chichimecs, as the hordes of barbarians who periodically raided from the north came to be known. Many later Mexican peoples revered the Toltec era as a golden age. Some rulers, including Mayan leaders and Aztec emperors, claimed to be descended from the Toltecs.

The Aztecs

Originally nomads from the north or west of Mexico, the Aztecs were led to the Valley of Mexico by their priests. They settled on the islands in the series of lakes which then filled much of the valley because it was there that they happened to spy an eagle standing on a cactus, eating a snake - the prophesied sign that this was the place to stop their wanderings. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán was founded on one of the islands in the first half of the 14th century. For half a century or more the Aztecs served the rulers of Azcapotzalco on the lake shore, which was gaining control over some of the dozens of rival statelets in the valley. Then, around 1426, the Aztecs rebelled against Azcapotzalco and became in turn the most powerful people in the valley.

In the mid-1400s, the Aztecs formed the Triple Alliance with two other valley states, Texcoco and Tlacopan, to wage war against Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo, outside the valley to the east. The prisoners they took formed the diet of sacrificed warriors that their god Huizilopochtli demanded to keep the sun rising every day. For the dedication of Tenochtitlán's Great Temple in 1487, the Aztec emperor Ahuízotl had 20,000 captives sacrificed. In the second half of the 15th century, the Triple Alliance, now led by Aztec emperors, brought most of central Mexico from the Gulf coast to the Pacific (though not Tlaxcala) under its control. The total population of the empire's 38 provinces may have been about five million. The empire's purpose was to exact tribute of resources absent from the heartland - such as jade, turquoise, cotton, paper, tobacco, rubber, expendable humans for sacrificial purposes, lowland fruits and vegetables, cacao and precious feathers - which were needed for the glorification of its elite and to support the many nonproductive servants of its war-oriented state. Like the Maya, the Aztecs believed they lived in a world whose predecessors had been destroyed by the death of the sun, wiping out humanity each time. Human sacrifices were designed to keep the sun alive.

The early 16th century

On the eve of the Spanish conquest, many Mexican societies, including the Aztecs, were structurally similar. Each was politically centralised and divided into classes, with many people occupied in specialist tasks, including professional priests. Agriculture was productive despite the lack of draft animals, metal tools and the wheel. Maize tortillas and maize gruel were staple foods. Beans provided important protein, and a great variety of other crops were grown in different regions, from squashes, tomatoes and chilis to avocados, peanuts, papayas and pineapples. Luxury foods for the elite included turkey, domesticated hairless dog, game and chocolate drinks. Exchange of foods between different regions was an important reason for trade. All peoples worshipped a variety of powerful gods (often shared with other cultures), some of which demanded human sacrifices. War was widespread, often in connection with the need to take prisoners for sacrifice.

Ancient Mexican civilisation, nearly 3000 years old, was shattered in two short years from 1519 to 1521. A tiny group of Spanish invaders destroyed the Aztec empire, brought a new religion and reduced the native people to second-class citizens and slaves. So mutually alien were the newcomers and Indians that each doubted whether the other was human. The Pope gave the Indians the benefit of the doubt in 1537.

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