Late Formative Period (300 bc–ad 100)
Probably the most significant features of the Late Formative are (1) the transformation of Olmec civilization in southeastern Meso-America into something approaching the earliest lowland Maya civilization and (2) the abrupt appearance, toward the end of the Late Formative, of fully urban culture at Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. Most of the distinctive cultures that were to become the great Classic civilizations began to take shape at this time. There was no unifying force in the Late Formative comparable to the earlier Olmec; rather, regionalism and local cultural integration were the rule. There were, however, horizon traits, particularly in pottery, that were almost universal. Ceramics became elaborate in shape, often with composite or recurved outlines, hollow, bulbous feet, and flangelike protrusions encircling the vessel. The use of slips of a number of different colours as pottery decoration at times approached the elaborate polychromes of Classic times.
The idea of constructing temple-pyramids was probably also a general trait. It was a Meso-American custom to bury a dead person beneath the floor of his own house, which was often then abandoned by the bereaved. As an elite class of noble lineages became distinguished from the mass of the people, the simple house platforms serving as sepulchres might have become transformed into more imposing structures, ending in the huge pyramids of the Late Formative and Classic, which surely had funerary functions. The deceased leader or the gods from which he claimed descent, or both, would then have been worshiped in a “house of god” on the temple summit. These pyramids became the focal point of Meso-American ceremonial life, as well as the centres of settlement.
Valley of Mexico
The Cuicuilco-Ticomán culture succeeded the Middle Formative villages of the valley but retained many of their traits, such as the manufacture of solid handmade figurines. Of considerable interest is the type site of Cuicuilco, located on the southwestern edge of the valley. Lava from a nearby volcano covers all of Cuicuilco, including the lower part of the round “pyramid” for which it is best known. Ceramic analysis and radiocarbon dating have proved that the flow occurred at about the time of Christ. Rising up in four tiers, the Cuicuilco pyramid has a clay-and-rubble core faced with broken lava blocks. The summit was reached by ramps on two sides. Circular temples were traditionally dedicated in Meso-America to Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent, and he may have been the presiding deity of Cuicuilco.
In the Valley of Teotihuacán, a kind of side pocket on the northeastern margin of the Valley of Mexico, Cuicuilco-Ticomán culture eventually took on a remarkable outline, for there is evidence that by the beginning of the Christian Era a great city had been planned. There is little doubt that by the Proto-Classic stage (ad 100–300) it had become the New World’s first urban civilization (see below Teotihuacán).
Valley of Oaxaca
Occupation of the Monte Albán site continued uninterrupted, but ceramic evidence for Monte Albán II culture indicates that cultural influences from southeastern Mexico were reaching the Zapotec people. On the southern end of the site’s main plaza is a remarkable stone structure called Building J, shaped like an arrow pointing southwest and honeycombed with galleries. Some believe it to have been an astronomical observatory. Incised slabs are fixed to its exterior; these include some older danzantes as well as depictions of Zapotec place glyphs from which are suspended the inverted heads of dead chiefs—surely again the vanquished enemies of Monte Albán. Dates are given in the 52-year Calendar Round, with coefficients for days and months expressed by bar-and-dot numerals, a system that is first known for Monte Albán I and that became characteristic of the Classic Maya. Throughout its long Formative and Classic occupation, the dominant ware of Monte Albán is a fine gray pottery, elaborated in Monte Albán II into the usual Late Formative shapes.
Veracruz and Chiapas
La Venta suffered the fate of San Lorenzo, having been destroyed by violence around 400 bc. Olmec civilization subsequently disappeared or was transformed into one or more of the cultures of the southeastern lowlands.
One centre that retained a strong Olmec tradition, however, was Tres Zapotes, near the Tuxtla Mountains in the old Olmec “heartland.” Its most famous monument, the fragmentary Stela C, is clearly epi-Olmec on the basis of a jaguar-monster mask carved in relief on its obverse. On the reverse is a column of numerals in the bar-and-dot system, which was read by its discoverer, Matthew W. Stirling, as a date in the Maya calendar corresponding to 31 bc; this is more than a century earlier than any known dated inscription from the Maya area itself. Thus, it is highly probable that this calendrical system, formerly thought to be a Maya invention, was developed in the Late Formative by epi-Olmec peoples living outside the Maya area proper.
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Principal sites of Meso-American civilization.
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Olmec colossal basalt head in the Museo de la Venta, an outdoor museum near Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico.
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Vessel in the form of a shark, slip-painted ceramic, Colima, Mexico, 200 bce–500 ce; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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hacha"/> Totonac axe (hacha) made of andesite, from Veracruz, Mexico, 700–900 ce; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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Ruins of one of the main buildings of the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá, south-central Yucatán state, Mex.
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Mayan vessel with mythological scene, ceramic, Guatemala, 8th century; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
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The corn god (left) and the rain god, Chac, drawing from the Madrid Codex (Codex Tro-Cortesianus), one of the Mayan sacred books; in the Museo de América, Madrid.
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Handicrafts of the Tarasco Indians on display in Tzintzuntzan, Mex.
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Siguense veynte y seis addiciones desta postilla (1560–79; “A Sequence of Twenty-six Additions to the Admonitions”) by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún. The 26 additional admonitions to the appendix of Sahagún’s doctrinal writings exhort the Aztecs to pursue Christian virtues. The writings preserve a record of the Aztec culture and Nahuatl language.
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An illustration from a reproduction of the Codex Magliabecchi depicting an Aztec priest performing a sacrificial offering of a living human heart to the war god Huitzilopochtli.