About 2,800 years ago, people known as the Maya lived in farming villages on the Yucatan Peninsula and the highlands to the south. From about A.D. 250 to A.D. 900, they built city-states in Central America that included great pyramid temples and public plazas featuring huge stone columns that recounted their history. Excavations at Tikal, Guatemala, one of the greatest and oldest Maya centers, have revealed thousands of structures and artifacts. The findings include temples, pyramids, ball-playing courts, stone monuments, tools, ceremonial objects, and a great many pottery fragments.
The limestone of the Yucatan Peninsula was easily quarried and used for building and tool making. In the south, volcanoes stretched over the highlands and yielded valuable resources. The fertile volcanic soil allowed the people to grow crops.
Incan Civilization
Incan City Machu Picchu The Inca began settling in the Valley of Cuzco in the Andes Mountains of central Peru around the year 1200. Between 1440 and 1500, they expanded their empire until it extended nearly 2,500 miles from north to south and included as many as 16 million people. The lands they occupied included mountains, coastal desert, and low-lying jungle.
The Incan central government at Cuzco maintained a strong military and passed laws to create official customs and an official language and calendar. The Inca engineered 14,000 miles of roads, including tunnels and bridges, and built the great fortress of Sacsahuaman. They also developed highly advanced terracing and irrigation methods to allow farming in difficult mountain terrain.
Aztec Civilization
Ceramic Eagle WarriorThe center of the Aztec civilization was in the Valley of Mexico, a huge high-elevation basin in the Sierra Madre Mountains. This valley had a mild climate that was good for agriculture. The surrounding lowlands offered a hotter, wetter tropical climate and an abundance of natural resources.
Around 1325, the Aztecs settled on an island in Lake Texcoco, where they built their capital and largest city, Tenochtitlán. They called themselves the Mexica (pronounced me-shee-ka) and became accomplished corn farmers, warriors, and temple builders. The ceramic shown here is one of a pair of life-size statues discovered during the recent excavation of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán. The statues stood guard at the doorway of the meeting room of the Aztec warriors. The aggression and warrior skill of the Aztecs allowed them to conquer neighboring people. Eventually, the empire stretched over most of central Mexico and included millions of people.
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