Mesoamerica Ecological Characteristics

Mesoamerica: The Calendar's Significance

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To understand calendrical systems, one must understand the worldviews underlying them. Mesoamerican cosmoses were inhabited by a huge variety of beings. Everything—deities, people, animals, plants, even cities, mountains, and ages—was considered alive because everything embodied multifarious powers that animated existence, giving each being its particular identity and purpose. Calendars ordered and controlled the motions of these embodied powers according to a logic born from life itself. If things are alive, they move; if they move, they are timed; and if they are timed, they can be calculated. Calendars shaped existence because, by carefully calculating the motions of the cosmos's living things, one could account for and, with some skill and luck, even control life.
Transformative change governed much of existence. Beings were born, grew, aged, died, and decayed; all these temporal transformations created new moments and circumstances. Calendrical systems helped control such transformative changes. Hence everything from the changes a birth thrust upon a family to the transforming of a dead ruler's power into that of his successor was shaped by calendrical forces. Calendars gave people a way to manipulate life's events.
As the tools that controlled transformation, calendars served multiple purposes. These ranged from a farmer's need to calculate the seasons to a ruler's desire to manipulate the most propitious moments for battle or diplomacy. Events both large and small—birth, illness, death, earth's fertility, the sky's motions—all were calculated and ordered by calendrics. People's personal identities were tied to these temporal calculations, for a calendrical name given at birth gave a child positive and negative personality-forming powers. Need research paper written? Get research paper services! Qualified writers deliver original research papers! These powers could be altered by numerous forces, including the child's own deeds, things that happened to the child on certain potent days, and various calendrically linked rituals that might enhance the child's abilities.
A special sense of historical time also was calendrically manipulated. Sequential year counts kept track of a city's official history. Such records were tied directly to elite ancestry and began with deities who created and blessed the line, giving it special powers. Sometimes, a history was not recorded when another city controlled it; such was the case with the Maya Long Count. This count recorded Maya mythic origins, elite ancestry, their deeds, and cities' events. All Long Counts disappeared when those cities collapsed at the end of the Classic period ( a.d. 250-900); they no longer were needed, for the calendrical powers of royal lineages also had collapsed.
Computing time could control tremendous powers affecting existence. One used calendrics to structure a child's future. If Maya royal lineages could not record their history, they could not draw on the calendrical forces animating their hegemony. Mexica royalty rewrote their history by reformulating their calendar; they did this to manipulate calendrical powers better. This was more than checking past calculations; by changing how they coordinated historical with celestial events, they altered their past, present, and future realities.

Mesoamerican Calendrics

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A complex calendrical system was one of the most central features of early Mesoamerican culture, continuing even today. Its importance cannot be overemphasized. Calendrical specialists still live in many parts of Mesoamerica, calculating the needs of their patrons with a system that is probably over 26,000 years old. In earlier times, the calendrical system calculated more than the passing days; it also ruled much of life. Reliable assistance with papers. Request college term papers right here!Trusted term paper writers work right here! One did almost nothing important without first determining its calendrical meaning; the system calculated every ritual, major and minor, and helped shape one's actions, even one's personality. Calendrical calculations wove the fiber of existence.
The earliest recorded calendrical date may be an Olmec glyph from Cuicuilco (Valley of Mexico), which in the Julian calendar probably is September 2, 679 b.c. Other early dates from the sixth century b.c. have been found in the Zapotec area (Oaxaca), and the Maya Long Count may have been inaugurated by the Olmec (in the Gulf region) in 355 b.c. All these dates must be considered provisional, since correlating Mesoamerican calendars with European is made problematic by an often incomplete record; such correlations are hotly debated for good reason.
From these very early beginnings, several basic calendrical patterns emerged. All were based on a count of 20 days, although each had many local variations. Every city or area developed its own version because the calendar was governed by the movements of celestial objects as they appeared above the distinctive geography of an area's horizon. The conquering Spanish destroyed certain calendrical rounds because they regulated state rituals; local versions remained in use in communities across Mesoamerica, allowing many to function today. Briefly exploring the calendar's significance and mechanics will help weave an introduction to this amazingly intricate tapestry.

Environmental Alteration in Mesoamerica

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All of the agricultural systems previously mentioned represent intentional modifications of the natural landscape and the biological habitats originally present. It is difficult, however, to evaluate the degree of alteration attribu to preHispanic Mesoamerican societies, particularly in the central highland region, mainly because of the significant impact on the landscape that resulted from the introduction of more technologically advanced agricultural techniques after the Spanish Conquest.
During the three centuries of the colonial period, indigenous Mesoamerican society was completely transformed. In spite of the persistence of certain traits tightly linked to pre-Hispanic culture, sooner or later the native population adapted to a new form of organization dictated by the interests of the Spanish Crown and its representatives in the New World. This included the substitution of the native subsistence economy by new crops and agricultural techniques, the introduction of extensive cattle herding, changes in architectural forms, and, especially, different settlement patterns. Colonial authorities did not perceive indigenous practices as logical consequences of adaptive processes, such as plant cultivation and domestication, and intensification on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of the biological relationships among plants (such as the exchange of nutrients among certain cultigens and the symbiotic relations resulting from millennia of associations first as wild species and later as cultigens). Need research paper done? Buy research paper services! Educated writers deliver original research papers! The indigenous agricultural systems were overrun in the face of the Spaniards' commercial interests and specific food preferences. New forms of cultivation and distribution of the fruits of the land led to the transformation of the landscape. Many plant species unable to compete with new cultigens or cattle were eliminated, and wild fauna was reduced greatly as a result of the destruction of their habitat.
There is no way of knowing whether indigenous agricultural activities would have ultimately had a similar effect on the landscape in the long run. The difference probably rests in the velocity and, above all, the apparent lack of consciousness on the part of the Spaniards of the impact of colonial modes of exploitation and use of natural resources. The intimate man-nature relationship that characterized the preConquest world, together with the absence of more sophisticated technology (such as metal plows and draft animals) and reinforced by ideology, provided the means by which potentially abusive exploitation of the natural environment was held in check.

Mesoamerica: Perception of the Natural Environment

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Archaeological evidence is insufficient for providing a clear view of how prehistoric societies perceived the natural environment, primarily as a source of sustenance but also in more profound ideological terms. With reference to Mesoamerica and, particularly, the central highland region, sixteenth-century historical records document some aspects of this relationship, at least insofar as it was expressed by the Mexica (Aztecs) just prior to the Spanish Conquest. Although these views and associated practices cannot be simply attributed to earlier societies, they probably reflected a long period of cultural development.
Several interrelated beliefs contributed to the perception of humans as an integral part of nature, while simultaneously establishing a sense of recognition and maintenance of an appropriate position with respect to other beings. Every being, animate or inanimate, was believed to possess an essence or internal albeit invisible force. All human action that involved the use of or interaction with other beings or materials invoked their participation as though they, too, were persons. This essence or invisible force, akin to will, possessed by each object or being was personified and viewed as a deity. Thus the relations of humans to other beings and objects constituted an order that guided their conduct toward nature and the rest of society. It was believed that the will of each being or object could be influenced. Therefore offerings, pleas, and prayers were directed to these deities in order to obtain their favor—rain, fertility, fortune, etc. Human perception of all facets of the surrounding environment was based on this order.
Prehistoric populations recognized their dependence upon the products of the earth through their religious beliefs. Agriculture and, particularly, rainfall were major elements of Mesoamerican religion. Original essay writing online.Get help by Custom essay writers. Custom essays of academic quality! Many of the agricultural rites mentioned in historical sources attest to a firm recognition of the basic role of domesticated plants (in creation myths, for example), mediated via sacrifices and other offerings to a complex pantheon of deities whose function was to provide fertility and rain and to protect the crops from harm (such as by pests). Similar traditions persist among some modern indigenous groups in Mexico, who associate their ethnic identity with the earth that provides their sustenance through the crops that they tend, and who take great care to offer sacrifices to the appropriate spirits at different stages of the agricultural cycle.

Mesoamerica Ecological Characteristics of Agricultural Systems: Irrigation

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Irrigation was employed in Mesoamerica as a means of intensifying agricultural production as early as the Formative period (1500 b.c.-a.d. 250). Irrigation took many forms. Its manifestations during pre-Hispanic times varied from the simplest technique that involved directly watering individual plants using jugs filled from wells dug in the fields in Oaxaca or the seasonal divergence of rainwater, to complex systems incorporating permanent canal networks with secondary channels and check dams. Need research paper done? Buy paper writing services! Educated writers deliver custom research papers! Irrigation techniques were dependent upon available water sources including the presence of permanent or seasonal streams, soil characteristics, requirements of particular crops, and the population's needs.
The development of complex irrigation systems in Mesoamerica has been attributed to the need to increase food production as a response to population growth, the need to sustain increasing numbers of nonagricultural specialists in complex societies, and the need to provide surplus agricultural produce to be redistributed as deemed sui by the society's authority. However, the most important consequence of irrigation is the increase in crop productivity that goes hand in hand with a reduction in the risk of crop loss. In some cases irrigation only provided supplemental humidity for the timely germination of seed, with seasonal rains providing the complement during growth. In other cases, it was employed to facilitate multiple harvests of short-term crops.
Other forms of humidity control, often employed to manage an overabundance of water, also were employed, such as raised fields or drained plots. The "chinampas" in the southern Basin of Mexico are one of the most highly specialized examples of humidity control. These rectangular plots at the edges of the lakes were constructed by building up alternating layers of mud and aquatic vegetation from the lake bed itself, anchored by willow trees around the perimeter. The development of several agricultural systems by prehistoric Mesoamerican groups, intensive as well as extensive, reflected a profound familiarity with the natural environment and its diversity. Extensive practices such as slash-and-burn cultivation in the tropical lowlands or its highland variants were used widely throughout the culture area. Intensification took the form of terraces, raised fields, drained fields, and different forms of irrigation adapted to specific regional conditions. The survival of many of these techniques to the present time is a testimony to their success in ecological terms, although their effectiveness has been compromised seriously by socioeconomic factors not directly related to the agricultural systems themselves.
The agricultural techniques developed by pre-Hispanic populations reflect careful management of the components that together constitute the ecological balance of the different regions that were exploited. Although some indications exist of possible overexploitation or inappropriate exploitation of natural resources, their cultural consequences can only be hypothesized. However, most of the available archaeological, ecological, ethnohistorical, and historical data suggest that prehistoric agriculturalists managed to expand and intensify production within the rational limits of total ecological potential, based on their level of technological development.