Art history test 4

2. What culture was known as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica?

Olmec

11. Name the major feathered god.

Quetzalcóatl

4. What is a celt?

The Olmec also carved in jade, a much-cherished stone. Ax-shaped polished forms called celts were buried as votive offerings. 14-2 shows a celt carved in relief with incising to show a Jaguar-human form. Such figures may represent shamans "transforming to harness supernatural forces for the community's good"

16. What is the Popol Vuh? What stories does it tell? How did the Popol Vuh come down to us (how was it saved from being lost with the destruction of the Spanish conquest).

The Popol Vuh is a collection of mythic narratives on the origins of the ancient Maya. Like the Dresden codex, the book was originally written in glyphs on fig bark pages; however, it is known today through a Post-classic copy saved from destruction during the Spanish conquest only because a Quiche (of Maya descent) noble discretely transcribed it using the Latin alphabet. Since the Spaniards strictly prohibited the use of Maya glyphs, they would have otherwise destroyed it. A Spanish priest found the copy in 1702 and, surprisingly, didn't destroy it but translated it to Spanish. The Popol Vuh reflects the ancient beliefs and ritual practices of the Maya.

17. Describe how the Mayan gods first attempted to make humans; what materials did they use and what became of the first two attempts?

The Popol Vuh recounts the creation of the first humans, the Maya's ancestors. Two times the Gods unsuccessfully created people. The first time the gods gathered, conferred, brainstormed, and worried and then made the first humans of mud. But the mud people were soft, shapeless, and without hearts or minds. When stupidly they did not thank their creators and makers, the gods allowed them to sink back into the earth as a rough draft of an idea. In the second attempt, the gods fashioned humans from wood. The wood people multiplied and spread over the earth, but they were stiff, dry, brittle, and also stupid. So the gods swept them away with a rain of resin in a great deluge that flooded the world, wiping out another rough draft. In the Popol Vuh's final section, the gods convened a third time, and when they puzzled over the material to use, and the maize god suggested yellow and white corn. The corn was found in a cleft/cave of a sacred mountain to the north. The maize god ground the yellow corn and with it modeled the humans' flesh; with the white corn the god made a drink that became humans' blood. The first four people made with flesh and blood of corn were the jaguar men. When they awoke they found the gods had provided them wives, and they were happy and multiplied. These first ancestors of the Maya were perfect with limitless knowledge, and wisely they thanked their creators and makers for their existence and vowed to please the gods always. The descendants of the Maya continued to honor the gods by giving them blood, the necessary life force that kept the cosmos ordered and vital.

5. What Mesoamerican city, near Mexico city, had a central hub for civic, economic, and religious activities?

The Pre-classic temple-pyramid-plaza arrangement expanded to an impressive city at Teotihuacán, a central hub for civic, economic, and religious activities in the region.

6. What is significant about the city of Teotihuacan?

The carefully planned area was "laid out in a grid pattern achieved by sophisticated surveying" and "the city's orientation and the placement of some of its key pyramids may have been related to astronomical phenomena" (385). The city's cosmopolitan status added to its importance as a religious center.

13. What is a glyph? What is a codex?

The glyphs represent sounds, and since colonial texts recorded Maya languages, most of which are still spoken today, many glyphs have been translated (387). Inscriptions on stelae and architecture provide much information about the Maya rulers, historical and astronomical events, and religious rituals. codex: There are almanacs and day counts for worship and prophecies; two astronomical and astrological tables, one dealing with eclipses and the other Venus; and katún (a 20-year period) prophecies. It contains references and predictions for time and agriculture, favorable days for predictions, as well as texts about sickness, medicine, and seemingly, conjunctions of constellations, planets and the Moon.

7. Describe key features of the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihaucan.

The shapes of the monumental structures at Teotihuacán echo the surrounding mountains (385). The pyramids consist of stacked squared platforms diminishing in perimeter from the base to the top. "Ramped stairways ascend to crowning temples."

8. What is the pyramid at Teotihuacan built to resemble/symbolize?

The sun

1. Define Mesoamerican in terms of geographic location, time frame, and cultures.

The term Mesoamerica refers geographically to the area between North and South America from Mexico, the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. The climate and geography varies greatly from highlands to plateaus, forested mountains to tropical rain forests. As an adjective, Mesoamerican refers to that region's native civilizations, which flourished before European conquest (Pre-Columbian) including the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, people of Teotihuacán, Toltec, and Aztec. Although they spoke diverse languages, Mesoamericans shared common cultural features including "maize cultivation, religious beliefs and rites, myths, social structures, customs, the arts" (382).

15. Why was the Mayan ritual calendar important?

They developed an accurate 365-day solar calendar divided into 18 months with 20 days and 1 month with 5 days. Their ritual calendar was more important: it contained only 260 days and was used to find out propitious days for sacred, agricultural or military activities. The Maya "established the genealogical lines of their rulers, and created the only true written history in ancient America"

19. Mayan temples were portals to connect ________ and _______; portals between ________ and _______.

Underworld earth and Earth overworld and the thresholds between mayas ancestors and gods

3. At LaVenta, the Olmec built what?

early temple-pyramids of clay and earth on a ceremonial plaza complex aligned on a north-south axis. The Olmec are most famous today for 10-ton colossal basalt heads, 6 and 10 feet tall (383). Their "individualized features . . . suggest that the Olmec heads portray rulers rather than deities"

14. True or false- Mayans were united in a peaceful empire.

false

9. True or false- Teotihuacan was built over a sacred spring.

false

10. Which structure came first, The Pyramid of the Sun or The Pyramid of the Moon?

pyramid of the sun

20. True or false- the pyramids of Tikal, Guatemala were blood red.

true