Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south to the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before the European discovery of the New World by Columbus. Mesoamerican is the adjective generally used to refer to that group of Pre-Columbian cultures. This refers to an environmental area occupied by an assortment of ancient cultures that shared religious beliefs, art, architecture, and technology that made them exceptional in the Americas for three thousand years.

Bibliography

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• Kirchhoff, Paul. "Mesoamérica." Acta Americana, 1 (1943):92-107.
• Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. C. H. Dibble and A. J. O. Anderson, trans., Santa Fe: School of American Research and the University of Utah Press (1950-).
• Wauchope, Robert, ed. Handbook of Middle American Indians. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.
• Weaver, Muriel Porter, The Aztecs, Maya, and Their Predecessors, Third Edition. New York: Academic Press, 1993.
• West, Robert C. and John P. Augelli. Middle America: Its Lands and Peoples, Third Edition. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1989.