Chapter 13

Jade

Olmec artisits also made smaller, more portable jade and ceramic objects. Jade, available only from the Motagua River Valley in present day Guaatelamla. Prized for it's brilliant blue-green color and the smoot, shiny surfaces it could achieve with careful polishing. had is one of the hardest materials in Mesoamerica, and with only stone tools available, Olmec crafts makers used jade tools and powdered jade dust as an abrasive to carve and polish the sculptures.

Olmec

Other figurines were made out of softer and more malleable greenstones, like serpentine, which occur in many parts of Mesoamerica. Olmec ceramics, including decorated vessels and remarkably lifelike clay babies, also appear to have been prized far beyond the Olmec heartland. Olmec greenstone and ceramic objects have been found throughout Mesoamerica, evidence of the extensive reach and influence of Olmec art and culture.By 200 ce, forests and swamps had begun to reclaim Olmec sites, but since Olmec civilization had spread widely throughout Mesoamerica, it would have an enduring influence on its successors. As the Olmec centers of the Gulf Coast faded, the great Classic period centers in the Maya region and Teotihuacan area in the Valley of Mexico were beginning their ascendancy.

Great Pyramid (MesoAmerica)

has a height of 100 feet, was looked at as artifical sacred mountains, linked to creation stories and cultural cosmology.

Colossal Heads (Olmec)

huge basalt blocks or the large works of sculpture were quarried at distant sites and transported to San Lorenzoe, La Venta. height ranged from 5 to 12 feet. weighed from 5 to 20 tons. The heads portray adult males wearing close fitting caps with chin straps and large, round earspools The fleshy faces have almond shaped eyes. They represent specific individuals. this is all suggested that Olmec elite were interrested in commemorating rulers and historic events.

celt

A smooth, oblong stone or metal object, shaped like an axe-head.

Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent

At the southern end of the ceremonial center, and at the heart of the city, is the Ciudadela (Spanish for a fortified city center), a vast sunken plaza surrounded by temple platforms. One of the city's principal religious and political centers, the plaza could accommodate an assembly of more than 60,000 people. Early in Teotihuacan's history, its focal point was the PYRAMID OF THE FEATHERED SERPENT (FIG. 13-6). This seven-tiered structure exhibits the talud-tablero (slope-and-panel) construction that is a hallmark of the Teotihuacan architectural style. The talud (sloping base) of each platform supports a tablero (entablature), that rises vertically and is surrounded by a frame.

geoglyph

Earthen design on a colossal scale, often created in a landscape as if to be seen from an aerial viewpoint.

Jasaw Chan K'awiil

In the eighth century CE, the city of Tikal again flourished during the reign of Jasaw Chan K'awiil (nicknamed Ruler A before his name could be fully read; r. 682-734), who initiated an ambitious construction program and commissioned many stelae decorated with his own portrait. His building program culminated in the construction of Temple I (see FIG. 13-8), a tall pyramid that faces a companion pyramid, Temple II, across a large central plaza. Containing Jasaw Chan K'awiil's tomb in the limestone bedrock below, Temple I rises above the forest canopy to a height of more than 140 feet. Its base has nine layers, probably reflecting the belief that the underworld had nine levels. Priests climbed the steep stone staircase on the exterior to the temple on top, which consists of two narrow, parallel rooms covered with a steep roof supported

Teothihuacan

Located some 30 miles northeast of present-day Mexico City, the city of Teotihuacan experienced a period of rapid growth early in the first millennium ce. By 200 ce, it had emerged as Mesoamerica's first truly urban settlement, a significant center of commerce and manufacturing. At its height, between 300 and 650, Teotihuacan covered nearly nine square miles and had a population of at least 125,000, making it the largest city in the Americas and one of the largest in the world at that time (FIG. 13-4). Its residents lived in walled "apartment compounds," and the entire city was organized on a grid (FIG. 13-5), its orientation chosen both for its calendrical significance and to respond to the surrounding landscape.

The Maya

The ancient Maya are noted for a number of achievements. In densely populated cities they built imposing pyramids, temples, palaces, and administrative structures. They developed the most advanced hieroglyphic writing in Mesoamerica and perfected a sophisticated version of the Mesoamerican calendrical system (see "Maya Writing," above). Using these, they recorded the accomplishments of their rulers in sculpture, ceramic vessels, wall paintings, and books. They studied astronomy and the natural cycles of plants and animals, and used sophisticated mathematical concepts such as zero and place value. Maya civilization emerged during the Late Preclassic period (400 BCE-250 CE), reached its peak in the southern lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala during the Classic period (250-900 CE),and shifted to the northern Yucatan Peninsula during the Postclassic period (900-1521 CE). Throughout this time, the Maya maintained strong ties with other regions of Mesoamerica: They inherited many ideas and technologies from the Olmec, had trade and military interactions with Teotihuacan, and, centuries later, were in contact with the Aztec Empire.

Pyramid of the Sun

The largest of Teotihuacan's architectural monuments, the Pyramid of the Sun, located just to the east of the Avenue of the Dead, is slightly over 200 feet high and measures about 720 feet on each side at its base, similar in size to, but not as tall as, the largest Egyptian pyramid at Giza. It is built over a multi-chambered cave with a spring that may have been the original focus of worship at the site and its source of prestige. The pyramid rises in a series of sloping steps to a flat platform, where a small temple once stood. A monumental stone stairway led from level to level up the side of the pyramid to the temple platform. The exterior was faced with stone, which was then stuccoed and painted.

Tikal

The monumental buildings of Maya cities were masterly examples of the use of architecture for public display and as the backdrop for social and sacred ritual. Tikal (in present-day Guatemala) was one of the largest Maya cities, with a population of up to 70,000 at its height. Unlike Teotihuacan, with its grid plan, Maya cities, including Tikal, conformed to the uneven terrain of the rainforest. Plazas, pyramid-temples, ballcourts, and other structures stood on high ground connected by wide elevated roads, or causeways.

North Acropolis

Tikal was settled in the Late Preclassic period, in the fourth century BCE, and continued to flourish through the Early Classic period. The kings of Tikal were buried in funerary pyramids in the NORTH ACROPOLIS, which was separated by a wide plaza from the royal palace to the south. Tikal suffered a major upheaval in 378 CE, recorded in texts from the city and surrounding centers, when some scholars believe the arrival of strangers from Teotihuacan precipitated the death of Tikal's king and the installation of a new ruler with ties to Central Mexico. Art from this period shows strong Teotihuacan influence in ceramic and architectural forms, though both were soon adapted to suit local Maya aesthetics. The city enjoyed a period of wealth and regional dominance until a military defeat led to a century of decline.

earspool

cylindrical earrings that pierce the earlobes) kinda like gauges

The La Venta Pyramid

stands at the south end of a large, open plaza arranged on a north-south axis and defined by long, low earth mounds, platforms, and central open spaces along an axis that was probably determined by astronomical observation.