Mesoamerican civilization: Did you mean...?

Kukulcan (pron. Koo-kool-kan) is the name of a feathered serpent god in the mythology and religion of Mesoamerica, in particular, the Yucatec Maya. He is also identified as the feathered serpent god Quetzalcóatl by the Toltecs and Aztecs...

Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, 'Dawn Lord,' was a Mesoamerican god who represented a menacing aspect of Venus, the morning star, and was one of the four gods which held up the sky. The people of the ancient Americas believed his rays could damage...

The term science comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning "knowledge". It can be defined as a systematic attempt to discover, by means of observation and reasoning, particular facts about the world, and to establish laws connecting facts...

Jade was a highly-esteemed material in many Mesoamerican cultures, making it a valued regional trade good and first choice for objects of religious and artistic value such as masks, ceremonial axeheads, figurines, and jewellery. Jade, because...

Chichen Itza, located at the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula of modern Mexico, was a Maya city which was later significantly influenced by the Toltec civilization. Flourishing between c. 750 and 1200 CE, the site is rich in monumental...

A map of the cradles of early civilization. The pathways toward early civilization between c. 12,000 and 1,000 BCE were neither uniform nor linear. In the wake of the last Ice Age, climatic change encouraged communities in different parts...

This map illustrates the extent and key urban centers of the Indus Valley Civilization (circa 3300–1300 BCE), one of the world’s earliest complex societies. Spanning parts of modern-day Pakistan and northwest India, this civilization was...

Teotihuacan, located in the Basin of Central Mexico, was the largest, most influential, and most revered city in the history of the New World. It flourished in Mesoamerica's Golden Age, the Classic Period of the first millennium CE. Dominated...

Tezcatlipoca (pron. Tez-ca-tli-po-ca) or 'Smoking Mirror' in Nahuatl was one of the most important gods in Postclassical Mesoamerican culture and particularly important for the Toltecs and the Aztecs, especially at Texcoco. He was an invisible...

A belief in an afterlife was central to every major civilization of the ancient world and this encouraged the recognition of the reality of ghosts as the spirits of the departed who, for one reason or another, either returned from the realm...