Archaic period in Mesoamerica facts for kids
The Archaic period was a long time in Mesoamerica when people slowly changed how they lived. It started around 8000 BCE and ended about 2000 BCE. Before this, people were mostly hunter-gatherers who moved around a lot. After the Archaic period came the Preclassic period, when people started living in bigger villages and farming more.
It's hard for scientists to know exactly when the Archaic period began or ended. It's linked to big changes in the climate, like when the Ice Age ended. During this time, people started to grow their own food and settle down in one place. This was a very important step for the big societies that came later in Mesoamerica.
Most places from the Archaic period are hard to find and study. This means we don't know about many sites. But some important ones, like Guilá Naquitz and Colha, have been explored. Many known Archaic sites are in the mountains or along the coasts.
Contents
How People Started to Settle Down
During the Archaic period, people in Mesoamerica slowly stopped being nomads who hunted and gathered. Instead, they began to live in one place for longer times, or even permanently. This change happened gradually and was different in various regions.
Scientists think people started building permanent villages between 3000 and 1800 BCE. These early villages had simple homes, used farming, and traded things like obsidian. The very first examples of people settling down were in temporary shelters, like Guilá Naquitz. This was a rock shelter in the Valley of Oaxaca where people stayed for short times between 8000 and 6500 BCE. Another rock shelter, El Gigante in Honduras, was used seasonally.
Some of the first known villages were built along the coasts. This was probably because there was plenty of food from the sea and lagoons. These areas could support people living there all year. One early coastal site is Cerro de las Conchas, from 5500 to 3500 BCE. It seems people used it to collect and prepare seafood.
More permanent sites started appearing around 3000 BCE. For example, at Zohapilco by Lake Chalco in Mexico, people lived all year round before a volcano erupted around 3000 BCE. The site of Colha in Belize also shows signs of permanent settlement by 3000 BCE. Later, by 2000 BCE, permanent villages appeared in the Valley of Oaxaca. It seems people settled in places with lots of resources, like coasts or lakes, earlier than in dry areas. As farming grew, more people lived in these settlements.
The Rise of Farming
People didn't start farming all at once. It was a slow change to rely more on growing plants. Because Mesoamerica has many different types of land and weather, it took thousands of years for people to learn the best farming methods. This change began after a cold period, when the climate became more stable.
The wild foods that hunter-gatherers found probably changed with the climate. This made people look for new ways to get food. While climate change helped, many things led people to start growing plants and developing agriculture. Archaic people used more domesticated plants, but they still gathered wild plants and hunted wild animals for most of their food.
Early Farming Methods
The first types of gardening probably happened in small plots near people's homes. This was called "dooryard horticulture." People would plant and care for different kinds of plants there. As farming became more important, people started using slash-and-burn farming. This meant they would cut down and burn trees to clear large areas of land for crops.
Tools found by archaeologists, like stone adzes, show that people were cutting down trees and digging. This suggests they were clearing forests to farm. Evidence from ancient plant remains and charcoal shows that corn and other crops were grown using slash-and-burn as early as 7300 BCE in the Central Balsas region of Mexico. Similar evidence of forest clearing is seen around 5200 BCE on the Gulf coast. Later in the Archaic period, people started using other farming methods like terracing (making flat steps on hillsides) and crop rotation (changing crops in a field).
How Plants Became Domesticated
Mesoamerica is one of the few places in the world where people first started growing their own plants. As people settled down more, they relied on certain plants. They learned to pick the best seeds to plant and store. Archaic people chose plants that were easy to store and change genetically. These included maize (corn), chili peppers, squash, and beans. Growing these domesticated plants gave people more food and a more reliable food supply. This helped populations grow and more settlements appear.
Corn was one of the most important crops. It was very productive, easy to store, and healthy. Scientists have found that a wild grass called teosinte is the ancestor of corn. Corn was first grown in the Balsas region and then spread to other areas. Some of the earliest corn found dates back to 4300 BCE in the Guilá Naquitz rock shelter. Corn then spread to the Chiapas coast by 3000 BCE, likely through trade.
Like corn, squash was also domesticated once and then spread. But other crops seem to have been domesticated many times by different groups. Squash was grown by 8000 BCE, based on remains found in Guilá Naquitz. Bottle gourd was also domesticated around this time, but it was used for containers, not food. Stone tools from Belize show that corn, squash, beans, manioc, and chili peppers were being grown by this time.
Stone Tools and Trade
Stone tools changed a lot during the Archaic period. People learned to make different kinds of tools and use new materials. In Northern Belize, around the site of Colha, a very good quality stone called chert was used. This "Colha chert" became very important for tools starting around 3000 BCE.
At Colha, archaeologists found special workshops where people made tools. This shows that some people specialized in making tools. A common tool was the constricted adze, used for cutting wood and digging. These tools were likely used to clear forests and farm. Other tools, like Lowe and Sawmill points, were probably used for hunting, fishing, or as knives. Archaic people used many different ways to shape stone, almost all the techniques used in later times. Plant remains on tools show they were used for cutting and grinding plants.
Not much is known about trade during the Archaic period. But some evidence suggests that local trade networks existed, and maybe even some long-distance trade. For example, obsidian (a volcanic glass) found at a site on the Chiapas coast seems to have come from the highlands of Guatemala. This suggests people were trading for it. Colha chert has also been found outside the Colha region, showing that trade networks might have grown around this important material.
Important Archaic Sites
Many important Archaic sites are in the highlands of Mexico. This is partly because early research into this period happened there.
Highland Sites
- Tehuacán Valley: This valley has been lived in for over 10,000 years. Robert MacNeish and his team explored it in the 1960s. While their discoveries were key to studying the Archaic period, some of the dates they found are debated by scientists today. One major site here is Coxcatlan Cave. It had many Archaic tools and early remains of corn, squash, chili peppers, beans, and bottle gourd.
- Valley of Oaxaca: Like Tehuacán, this valley has also been lived in for over 10,000 years. Archaeologists Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus have done a lot of work here.
- Guilá Naquitz: This rock shelter is the earliest site in the valley. It was used temporarily six times between 8000 and 6500 BCE. It has many stone tools and some of the earliest known remains of domesticated corn, squash, and bottle gourd.
- Gheo-shih: This is a large open-air site occupied from around 5000 to 4000 BCE. It's known for many stone tools and circular rock features that might have been houses or a dance ground.
- Zohalpico: This site is by Lake Chalco in the Valley of Mexico. People lived here all year round, using wild plants and animals, as well as domesticated corn. A volcanic eruption covered the site around 3000 BCE, but people moved back within a century. After the eruption, there was much more corn pollen, and beans and pumpkins appeared.
- El Gigante rock shelter: Located in the southern highlands of Honduras, this site has very well-preserved organic remains. It was used seasonally and had storage pits. It contains remains of wild plants and animals, and domesticated squash, but not corn.
Lowland Sites
- Chiapas coast: Six large shell mounds along the coast are some of the earliest sites in this region.
- Cerro de las Conchas: This is the earliest shell mound, dating between 5500 and 3500 BCE. It was used to collect and process seafood, especially clams and shrimp.
- Tlacuachero shell mound: Another shell mound used seasonally for seafood. Obsidian flakes found here suggest trade with highland Guatemala.
- Colha: Colha and nearby sites in Northern Belize are important for their chert stone, which was used for tools from the Archaic period onwards. The first permanent settlements at Colha began around 3000 BCE. Colha helps us understand how the Archaic period changed into the Preclassic.
- Actun Halal: This rock shelter in Western Belize was used from around 2400 to 1210 BCE. Archaeologists found constricted adzes and evidence of corn and cotton farming.
How the Archaic Period Led to the Maya Preclassic
It's not completely clear when the Archaic period ended and the Preclassic period began. There isn't a sharp change in how people got food or the tools they used. The shift happened roughly between 1200 and 800 BCE, and it varied by region. It's often marked by the appearance of Maya pottery at important Preclassic sites.
One big question is whether the people living in the Maya region during the Archaic period were the same people who became the early Maya. Some scientists think people speaking Mixe-Zoque languages moved into the lowlands. Others suggest that people speaking early Mayan languages moved from the highlands.
However, some evidence points to the idea that the Archaic people in the lowlands themselves learned how to make pottery and became the first Maya. Also, ancient Maya stories from later periods connect their beginnings to a date in the Archaic period (3114 BCE). This date is similar to when farming and plant domestication started in the lowlands, suggesting the Maya themselves might have believed their origins were in the Archaic period.
See Also
