Day of the Dead - Dia de los Muertos: Mesoamerican Religions

Indian people dominating central Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. Their language belonged to the Nahuatlan subfamily of Uto-Aztecan languages.

Pre-Columbian empire, W South America. The name Inca may specifically refer to the emperor, but is generally used to mean the empire or the people.

Mesoamerica, Maya civilization extended throughout southern mexico and northern Central America.

From Environmental History and Global Change: A Dictionary of Environmental History
Civilization on coast of Peru which flourished between AD100 and AD800.

Term denoting the culture of ancient Mexican natives inhabiting the tropical coastal plain of the contemporary states of Veracruz and Tabasco, between 1300 and 400 B.C.

Member of an ancient American Indian people who ruled much of Mexico and Central America in the 10th-12th centuries, with their capital and religious centre at Tula or Tollán, northeast of Mexico City.

Indigenous people of Mexico, primarily in S Oaxaca and on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Sun god of the Incas, from whom they believed they were descended. He was represented by the disc of the Sun with a human face, or as a trinity.

From Encyclopedia of Archaeology
In Inca religion, Mama Quilla, the moon goddess, was the wife of Inti, and was served by priestesses.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Legendary founder of the Inca dynasty of Peru. According to the most frequently told story, four brothers, Manco Capac, Ayar Anca, Ayar Cachi, and Ayar Uchu, and their four sisters, Mama Ocllo, Mama Huaco, Mama Cura (or Ipacura), and Mama Raua, lived at Paccari-Tampu [tavern of the dawn], several miles distant from Cuzco.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Aztec deity, the Lord of Duality or Lord of Life. With his female counterpart, Omecíhuatl (Lady of Duality), he lived in Omeyocan, the 13th and highest Aztec heaven. He was represented by symbols of fertility, and his image was adorned with ears of corn. He was the only Aztec god to have neither a temple nor a formal cult. Seeing him as remote in the heavens, the Aztecs assumed he would never interact with them directly, but they felt his presence in rituals and in the rhythms of nature.

A chief Toltec and Aztec god identified with the wind and air and represented by a feathered serpent.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Ancient deity of the Toltec in Mexico. Identified with the night sky, the moon, and the stars, and associated with the forces of evil and destruction, Tezcatlipoca shared dominion over humanity with Quetzalcoatl, the god of light and good. Of the various legends surrounding their continual feud, one of the most important tells of Quetzalcoatl's expulsion from Tula, the Toltec capital.

From Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology
Tlaloc was worshiped by the Aztecs as a god of rain and fertility. He could bring drought, floods, and disease, as well as new life. Tlaloc was an ancient god of Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) whom the Aztecs incorporated into their pantheon to add legitimacy to their empire.

Toltec city situated among the Maya city-states of the Yucatán peninsula, Mexico. Built on the site of an earlier Maya settlement, the city was at its height from around AD 980 to 1220 (the Classic and Post-Classic periods), after Toltec peoples from central Mexico settled here.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Ruined city of the Maya, W Honduras, in a small river valley of the same name. Copán is noted for its fine sculptured stele and majestic architecture.

Inca site in Peru, about 50 mi (80 km) NW of Cuzco. It is perched high upon a rock in a narrow saddle between two sharp mountain peaks.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Town in the north of the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, 150 km/93 mi southeast of Villahermosa; population (2005) 37,300. A few kilometres from the city are the ruins of a series of Maya temples dating from about the 4th century AD.

Ancient commercial and religious center in the central valley of Mexico. The largest (c.7 sq mi/18.1 sq km) and most impressive urban site of ancient America.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Ancient Maya city, northern Guatemala. First occupied as a small village in a tropical rainforest (c. 900–300 bc), it grew into an important ceremonial centre.

In Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary
A hallucinogenic beverage that is prepared from the bark of a South American woody vine (Banisteriopsis caapi of the family Malpighiaceae) typically in a mixture with other psychoactive plants.

From Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World
For about 100 years the Aztecs ruled much of Mexico until the invasion of the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes and his troops in 1521.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Town, SW Guatemala. In the heart of the highlands, Chichicastenango was a trading town in ancient times. It became the spiritual center of the Quiché after their defeat (1524) by Pedro de Alvarado.

From Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World
The Inti Raymi Festival, also known as the Inti Raymi Pageant, Sun Festival, or Feast of the Sun, is an ancient Winter Solstice festival celebrated by the Incas in Peru on June 24.

From Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World
Among the ancient Aztec people of what is now Mexico, the year was divided into 18 months of 20 days each, plus a five-day “unlucky” period.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
sacred book of the Quiché. The most important document of the cosmogony, religion, mythology, migratory traditions, and history of the Quiché.

A type of religious offering, or gift to a superior or supreme being, in which the offering is consecrated through its destruction.

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
The term ‘totamism’ first appeared in print in 1791. The trader James Long related how an Ojibwa hunter, having ‘accidentally’ killed a bear, was accosted by an avenging bear who demanded an explanation.