50 Fun Facts About Mesoamerica

Which Aztec capital, built on an island in Lake Texcoco, lies beneath the centre of modern Mexico City?

Tenochtitlan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas at its peak, tied to the lakeshore by causeways whose bridges let canoes pass.

Which seeds, brewed into an elite drink by the Maya and Aztecs, also served as small change in Mesoamerica?

Cacao beans were a common currency before the Spanish conquest, handed over for small purchases such as tamales.

Which material, tapped from Gulf Coast trees, gives the Olmec their name in the Aztec language?

Rubber people is what Olmec literally means, though the Aztecs used the name for Gulf Coast neighbours who lived some 2,000 years after the ancient culture ended.

Which number did Maya scribes write as a shell, alongside dots for ones and bars for fives?

Zero let Mesoamerican scribes write dates with place values, and the eight earliest such dates lie outside the Maya homeland, so the idea may be older than the Maya.

Which modern confection was long made from chicle, a tree sap that both the Maya and the Aztecs knew well?

Chewing gum makers relied on chicle until the 1960s, when most switched to a cheaper synthetic base; Spanish speakers still call the sweet chicle.

Which farmyard bird, domesticated in Mesoamerica at least 2,000 years ago, did the Spanish take to Europe?

Turkey was raised by ancient Mesoamericans for meat, eggs and decorative feathers, and the main farm varieties of today descend from the birds of central Mexico.

Which bird, perched on a cactus in the Aztec founding legend, sits at the centre of Mexico's flag?

Eagle and cactus marked the spot where the wandering Aztecs should build their city; the snake in its beak is absent from the earliest Aztec versions of the legend.

At which Maya city in Yucatán does the pyramid El Castillo cast a snake-like shadow around each equinox?

Chichen Itza draws crowds for the effect, yet it can be seen for several weeks around each equinox, so it is unlikely the builders meant it to mark the exact day.

Which Spanish conquistador scuttled his own ships on the Gulf coast before marching on the Aztec Empire?

Hernán Cortés sank the fleet to rule out any thought of retreat, after men loyal to Cuba's governor plotted to seize a ship and sail back.

Which Old World disease killed much of the Aztec leadership shortly before the final Spanish siege?

Smallpox reached the Valley of Mexico while the Spanish were regrouping; having lived with it in Spain for centuries, they were affected relatively little.

Which language of the Aztec Empire gave English the words avocado, coyote and tomato?

Nahuatl still has well over a million speakers, and its first grammar was finished in 1547, almost forty years before the first grammar of English.

Which ruined city, crossed by the Avenue of the Dead, did the Aztecs name centuries after it fell?

Teotihuacan may have held 100,000 people at its height, yet the name its own builders used is unknown; the Aztec one is glossed as birthplace of the gods.

Which dark volcanic stone, traded across Mesoamerica, was flaked into razor-sharp blades?

Obsidian is a natural glass that breaks in predictable ways, so a skilled knapper could press one thin blade after another from a single core.

Which green stone from Guatemala's Motagua valley did the Olmec and Maya carve into prized pendants?

Jade echoed the colour of water and growing plants, so it stood for life itself, and beads of it were placed in the mouths of the Maya dead.

Which Aztec god, whose name means feathered serpent, was linked with wind, learning and the priesthood?

Quetzalcoatl was patron of the Aztec priesthood, and worship of a plumed snake in central Mexico goes back more than a thousand years before the Aztec Empire.

Which Aztec emperor, ruling when the Spanish arrived, died in his own capital in circumstances still disputed?

Moctezuma II was killed in 1520, by Spaniards or by his own subjects depending on the account, and the two rulers who followed him reigned only briefly.

Which artificial islands did Aztec farmers stake out with reeds in the shallow lakes of the Valley of Mexico?

Chinampas are often called floating gardens, but they never floated: farmers wove underwater fences and filled them with rich mud from the lakebed.

Which Mesoamerican calendar completed a cycle of over 5,000 years in 2012, prompting doomsday predictions?

Long Count dates tally the days since a mythical creation in 3114 BCE, and scholars pointed out that no ancient Maya text forecast doom for 2012.

In the Mesoamerican ballgame, which part of the body did players mainly use to strike the heavy solid ball?

Hips took the blows from a ball that could weigh as much as 9 pounds, and ulama, a descendant of the game still played in Mexico, keeps the same rule.

Which crop joined maize and beans in the Three Sisters, a planting system that originated in Mesoamerica?

Squash was the first of the three to be domesticated, roughly 10,000 years ago, and its broad leaves shade the soil and keep weeds down.

Which big cat gave its name to an elite Aztec warrior order whose members had to capture four enemies?

Jaguar warriors were treated as nobles once they reached the rank, and one of their tasks in battle was seizing prisoners for sacrifice.

Which former British colony on the Caribbean coast holds Caracol, a Maya city of perhaps 140,000 people?

Belize is the only Central American country with English as its official language, though Mayan languages are still widely spoken there.

Which sacred text of the K'iche' Maya tells how the gods made humans from maize after mud and wood both failed?

Popol Vuh stories were passed down by word of mouth until about 1550, and the oldest surviving copy was written out by a Dominican friar around 1701.

Which city in Puebla holds the largest pyramid by volume in the world, a mound now crowned by a Spanish church?

Cholula's Great Pyramid grew in stages over a thousand years to far outstrip the volume of the taller Great Pyramid of Giza, and it was already overgrown when the Spanish arrived.

Which natural disaster, traced in Yucatán lake sediments, is the leading explanation for the Classic Maya collapse?

Drought gained ground as a theory after 1995, when a sediment record from Lake Chichancanab showed an intense dry spell in the 9th century, just as the cities emptied.

Which Maya city in Guatemala's Petén Basin stood in for a rebel moon base in the first Star Wars film?

Tikal was one of the largest Maya cities, and there is evidence that conquerors from distant central Mexico founded one of its ruling dynasties in the 4th century AD.

Which invention did Mesoamericans fit to small toys yet never put to practical use?

The wheel stayed a plaything partly because the Americas had no cattle or horses to pull a cart: bison were never tamed, and native horses had died out long before.

What name is given to the limestone sinkholes of the Yucatán that supplied the Maya with fresh water?

Cenotes take their name from a Yucatec Maya word for any place with reachable groundwater, and the Maya also cast offerings into some of them.

Which stone did the Olmec haul from the distant Tuxtla mountains to carve their colossal heads?

Basalt boulders became seventeen confirmed heads, each wearing its own distinctive headdress, and they are thought to be portraits of powerful individual rulers.

Which Central American country holds Copán, the Maya city that stood on the southeastern edge of Mesoamerica?

Honduras has the ruins in a fertile mountain valley near its border with Guatemala, where one king doubled the length of the great Hieroglyphic Stairway.

Which carved Aztec monolith, buried under Mexico City's main square until 1790, is popularly called a calendar?

The Sun Stone is not a working calendar at all; it weighs more than 24 tonnes and spent almost a century mounted on an outside wall of the cathedral.

Which enslaved woman, handed to the Spanish in Tabasco, became their interpreter in the conquest of the Aztec Empire?

La Malinche spoke both the Aztec language and a Maya one, which made her indispensable, yet historians still disagree about why she helped the invaders.

Which planet did Maya astronomers chart in the Dresden Codex, arranging battles to match its movements?

Venus was tied to war, and its first appearance as the morning star was treated as a time of danger that the tables were drawn up to warn of.

Which sun and war god, whose name is often translated as Left-Handed Hummingbird, was patron of the Aztecs?

Huitzilopochtli was also patron of the Aztec capital, and in the migration legend he guided the Aztecs on the long journey to the place where it was founded.

Which rival state, never conquered by the Aztec Empire, sent a large force to fight alongside the Spanish?

Tlaxcala had spent generations at war with the Aztecs and under their trade embargo, so after first fighting the newcomers its leaders chose to ally with them.

Which Aztec shrine complex in Mexico City, rebuilt six times, was rediscovered in 1978 by electricity workers?

Templo Mayor came back to light when the workers struck a carved stone showing the goddess Coyolxauhqui, and archaeologists then spent four years excavating the precinct.

Which name did the people now known as the Aztecs use for themselves, having never called themselves Aztecs?

Mexica was their own name; the word Aztec appears in their migration stories for the tribes who left the legendary homeland of Aztlan together.

Which Maya city in Chiapas held the tomb of Pakal the Great, found inside the Temple of the Inscriptions?

Palenque's most famous king ruled from 615 to 683, and when his tomb was opened it was the richest scientifically excavated burial then known from the ancient Americas.

Which Zapotec capital sits on an artificially levelled ridge above the Valley of Oaxaca?

Monte Albán was one of the earliest cities in Mesoamerica and stayed the leading Zapotec centre for nearly a thousand years.

Which Maya underworld, whose K'iche' name roughly means place of fright, was ruled by twelve death lords?

Xibalba's lords worked in pairs, each pair dealing out its own form of human suffering, and Yucatec speakers knew the same realm as Mitnal.

Which pact, sealed after the defeat of Azcapotzalco in 1428, formed the core of the Aztec Empire?

The Triple Alliance was born of a civil war between a city and its former subject provinces, and its three partners ruled the Valley of Mexico until 1521.

Which sixteenth-century study of Aztec life did the friar Bernardino de Sahagún compile with indigenous elders?

The Florentine Codex is named for the library in Florence, Italy, that holds the best-preserved manuscript; its author titled it a general history of the things of New Spain.

What were the ritual battles called that the Aztecs fought on and off with rival states to win captives?

Flower wars began, by one account, after a famine in the 1450s, when priests said the angry gods needed a regular supply of victims.

Which Olmec centre in Tabasco, built of earth and clay for lack of local stone, rose as San Lorenzo declined?

La Venta was the most prominent Olmec centre from about 900 BC until it was abandoned around 400 BC, and a great pyramid dominated its sacred core.

Which class of Aztec long-distance merchants doubled as spies and had to hide their wealth from the public?

Pochteca often set out on trading expeditions late in the evening and showed their riches only inside private guildhalls; in time they ranked with the warrior orders.

Which Franciscan friar burned Maya books in 1562 yet also wrote a detailed record of Maya religion and writing?

Diego de Landa put the number of books burned at 27, and one later scholar reckoned he destroyed ninety-nine times as much Maya knowledge as he passed on.

Which linguist showed in the 1950s that a friar's supposed Maya alphabet was really a syllabary?

Yuri Knorozov is the subject of a much-repeated legend that he pulled the book that inspired him from a burning Berlin library, a story he himself denied.

Which crimson dye did Aztec and Mixtec artisans make from insects that live on the nopal cactus?

Cochineal coloured Aztec fabrics, bark paper and manuscripts, and conquered towns in Oaxaca had to send the empire bags of the dye every year.

Which orchid-pod spice, long farmed by the Totonac of Veracruz, did the Aztecs adopt after invading them?

Vanilla served the Totonac as a temple fragrance and a good-luck charm in amulets as well as a flavouring for food and drink.

What was a tzompantli, a wooden structure recorded among the Aztecs and several other Mesoamerican civilizations?

A skull rack displayed the heads of war captives and sacrificial victims, and one unearthed in Mexico City from 2015 has yielded more than 650 skulls.