Native American Indian Heritage Month: Mesoamerican Religions

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.

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

One of the great cultures of mesoamerica, Maya civilization extended throughout southern mexico and northern Central America.

Member of an American Indian people who migrated south into the valley of Mexico in about 1168.

Pre-Columbian empire, W South America.

From Chambers Dictionary of World Historyy
The term pre-Columbian civilizations denotes the cultures that developed in parts of Mexico and Central America (Mesoamerica) and western South America (Andean region) prior to European incursions into the continent from the 16c.

Name given to those people who built mounds in a large area from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mts.

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.

From Handy Answer: Native American Almanac
Cahokia in 1000 C.E. was the largest city in North America. Like Mesoamerican cities, the city featured pyramidlike mounds, wide plazas, and paved streets. Near present-day St. Louis, Cahokia centered on canals fed by the Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers. Trade items arrived by the tons in long canoes from the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, Ontario, and Yellowstone. Founded around 750 C.E. and inhabited until 1350, Cahokia spread for five square miles, contained 120 temple mounds, and was home to 15,000 people. The city was related to thousands of smaller Mississippian mound centers that spread along river valleys from Lake Superior to the Mississippi Delta and from the western Appalachian valleys to the Oklahoma prairie.

Inca site in Peru. The imposing city is one of the largest pre-Columbian sites found virtually intact.

When scholars use the term Mesoamerica, they are referring to a vast and geographically varied territory unified by a set of cultural traits not shared by peoples living immediately beyond its boundaries.

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.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Earthwork built by Hopewell Indians in the 2nd–1st centuries BC in Ohio, USA. It is 405 m/1,330 ft long, 1.3 m/4 ft high, and about 6 m/19 ft across and may have been constructed in the shape of a snake for religious purposes.

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 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.

In Milestone Documents of World Religions
The Popol Vuh (or Popol Wuj) is one of the most important examples of pre-Columbian literature to survive the Spanish conquest of the Americas. It is a work of epic poetry that tells the origin story of the Maya and, more specifically, the Quiché, a Mayan ethnic group that dominated the highlands of modern-day Guatemala during the postclassic period of Mayan history (925–1530 ce).

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

A form of culture that revolves around the central position of the shaman, a religious expert who acts as an intermediary between man in his environment and society and the forces and the spirits of the other world.

From Concise Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature
The Maya were the only people of America's high cultures who developed a glyph-writ language (a partly ideographic, partly phonetic mode of writing) capable of recording events.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Religions of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico and Central America, notably the Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Aztec. All religions of Mesoamerica were polytheistic. The gods had to be constantly propitiated with offerings and sacrifices. The religions also shared a belief in a multilevel universe that had gone through five creations and four destructions by the time of the Spanish conquest. Mesoamerican religions heavily emphasized the astral bodies, particularly the sun, the moon, and Venus, and the observations of their movements by astronomer-priests were extraordinarily detailed and accurate.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
There are two distinct architectural traditions that comprise Native American architecture. Tribal architectures are those buildings that manifest the identity of a particular tribe and differentiate that tribe from all other tribes and nontribal peoples. Intertribal architectures, on the other hand, are buildings that manifest the shared identity of Indian peoples and therefore differentiate Indians collectively from non-Indians.

In Milestone Documents of World Religions
The Popol Vuh (or Popol Wuj) is one of the most important examples of pre-Columbian literature to survive the Spanish conquest of the Americas. It is a work of epic poetry that tells the origin story of the Maya and, more specifically, the Quiché, a Mayan ethnic group that dominated the highlands of modern-day Guatemala during the postclassic period of Mayan history (925–1530 ce).

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Quipus or khipus (kē'pōz), groups of strings, knotted for tally, which were used by the Inca for keeping records and sending messages. The quipu, which is believed to have predated the rise of the Inca, was based on the decimal system. Small cords with knots in them were attached to a main cord or a top band; the color of the cord, its place, its size, and the knots in it were all of significance to the record or the message.