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OLMEC – MAYA –TEOTIHUACANTOLTEC - AZTEC
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The Olmecs were the first real
civilization in the Americas.
Beginning around 1200 BCE, they
lived in the Gulf Coast of southern
Mexico.
Olmec society was based on
agriculture and had two groups:
 The elite group lived in small urban
centers. They were priests and also
traded in luxury items
 The commoners lived in rural areas and
were primarily farmers.
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Around 300 BCE, the Olmecs
vanished and no one knows why.
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The Olmec are famous for carving huge
stone heads.
Archeologists believe the heads were of
Olmec kings.
The Olmec were the first main group in
the history of Mesoamerican culture.
The map shows their location.
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The Maya lived from 300AD to
900AD in urban religious centers.
In about 900AD, they left their
great stone cities and went back
into the jungle. They are still there
today.
The Maya lived in central Mexico,
in the Yucatan peninsula and into
Guatemala and Honduras.
They were farmers and warriors,
and were unusual for having a
society in tropical rainforest.
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The Maya were a very advanced and
sophisticated people:
 As mathematicians, they invented zero.
 As astronomers, they had a very complex and
accurate calendar, as accurate as anything we
have today.
 They had a written, hieroglyphic alphabet,
much like the ancient Egyptians.
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Many historians consider them to be
quite similar to the ancient Greeks.
The Mayan language is still spoken
widely in central America.
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Teotihuacan is the name of a great city
very close to modern Mexico City, it is not
the name of a tribe.
It is an Aztec word that means “the place
where men become Gods.”
It’s culture started in 200 BC and lasted
almost 1000 years
Most of the people were farmers, who
were ruled by a priest class.
At its height, it had 100,000 people and
was the greatest civilization in
Mesoamerica. Its pyramids are famous
today all over the world.
Around 700AD, the people vanished;
scholars think the city was invaded for
there is much evidence of fire.
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The Toltec were warriors. Their
culture began in 950AD, two
centuries after the fall of
Teotihuacan and lasted till
1200AD.
The Toltec conquered much of
central Mexico, the Yucatan and
Guatemala.
They spread the culture of
Teotihuacan throughout the areas
they conquered.
They expanded the mythology
and worship of Quetzalcoatl (the
sovereign plumed serpent).
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The Toltecs conquered large
areas controlled by the Maya.
The most famous Mayan-Toltec
city is Chichen Itza on the
Yucatan peninsula.
Both the Maya and the Toltec
practiced human sacrifice to
please the gods.
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The Aztec legend says they came
from the north, from Aztlan.
About 1168, the Sun God told them
to go south until they found an
eagle, perched on a cactus, killing a
snake. This is the symbol on the
Mexican flag
Here, on lake Texcoco, they built
the great city of Tenochtitlan which
was the capital of the Aztec
empire, the greatest of all the
empires in Mesoamerica.
They did not call themselves Aztec, they
were called the Mexica (hence the name
Mexico.)
 If the Maya were the Greeks of
Mesoamerica, then the Aztec were the
Romans.
 They were farmers, traders, skilled
engineers, and fierce warriors who
conquered all of the tribes around them
and made them pay tribute, which did not
make them popular with their neighbors,
and this led to their downfall.
 In 1519AD, Hernan Cortez and a group of
Spanish Conquistadores contacted the
Aztec.
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The Spanish soldiers had never seen a city
as beautiful as Tenochtitlan, they were
awed by it.
But they were horrified by the Aztec
practice of human sacrifice. Thousands of
victims were sacrificed in a single day.
This, and their quest for gold, led the
Spanish to join with the tribes the Aztec
had conquered and whom hated the
Aztec, and defeated the Aztec and
destroyed Tenochtitlan. The Aztec had
never seen horses or guns and cannons.
By 1522, the Aztec were gone as a power
in Mexico
The ruins of Tenochtitlan are still being
discovered under Mexico City.