Physical Religious Artistic Economic Social Photographs of Mexico and Guatemala, William Lende, photographer.
	PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT very type of geography can be found in Mesoamerica, requiring societies to adapt to widely different environments. The Mesoamerican region includes cool, dry highlands and hot, humid lowlands covered with dense forests. Farmers responded to these environments by using special farming techniques. They terraced slopes, raised fields in swamps and lakes, and practiced the slashing and burning of forest cover to plant crops in the fertile ashes left behind. Dynamic trade networks were developed to exchange raw and finished materials. People in the “cool lands,” for example, prized the cotton, cacao beans, and exotic feathers that came from the “hot lands.”