Cities of Ancient America

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Cities of Ancient America

Overview

Many centuries before the rise of the Aztec and Inca civilizations most familiar to modern students of the pre-Columbian New World, the Americas were home to a number of highly advanced peoples. The Olmec, Maya, and other groups in Central America, as well as the Chavín of the Andes, were civilized in the truest sense of the word—in other words, they built cities. The splendor of their achievements becomes all the more impressive when considered in light of their technological limitations.

Background

Whereas the Olmec of Mesoamerica (archaeologists' term for ancient Central America) dwelled in a land of steaming rain forests and lush, vegetation-covered mountains, the Andean home of the Chavín peoples far to the south was rocky and dry. Despite these differences in environment, however, the two groups had much in common, not least of which was time: the Olmec flourished between c. 1200 and c. 100 b.c., and the Chavín culture during the period from c. 1000–c. 400 b.c.

Among the most interesting features common to the Olmec and Chavín was the practice of building pyramids. Certainly it is a mystery why ancient pyramid-building seems to have taken place primarily in Egypt and in the Americas far across the ocean, though it should be noted that the pyramids of the Americas were places of worship rather than burial chambers. Equally perplexing, however, is the adoption of the pyramid by the Olmec and Chavín, who were not only separated by wide distance, but completely unaware of one another.

Another curious aspect of ancient American civilizations is their relatively low level of technological development in comparison to their achievements as builders. Most notable was their ignorance of the wheel. While it appears that the Egyptian pyramid-builders also had no knowledge of the wheel, they were working some 1,500 years before their American counterparts—and furthermore, archaeologists have found wheeled toys at various sites in Mesoamerica. Why the Olmec did not adapt the wheel to more practical usesemains a mystery.

Furthermore, pre-Columbian America was virtually without domesticated animals. (The sole exception was the llama, domesticated late in the game by the Inca; however, the llama could only carry light burdens—hardly the equivalent of a draft horse or ox.) Nor did ancient Americans possess sophisticated tools. The Chavín became highly accomplished in the art of fashioning objects from gold, but it appears that no civilization in the Americas entered the Bronze Age before c. a.d. 1200. Metal was chiefly for decoration, as with gold jewelry; tools, on the other hand, were of stone. Thus as one contemplates the pyramids of Mesoamerica, it is amazing to consider that they were built by peoples living quite literally in the Stone Age.

Both the Olmec and the Chavín civilizations grew out of agricultural systems that began developing in about 3500 b.c. At the hub of these agrarian civilizations were cities, though the earliest of these were not cities as that term is commonly understood among modern people: rather, they were ceremonial centers to which worshippers made pilgrimages. These first American cities had a static, planned character that distinguished them sharply from contemporary metropolises of the Old World such as Babylon. Whereas the latter had sprung up organically, and within its sprawl encompassed numerous functions, the ceremonial centers of America were almost entirely the province of priests and rulers.

Impact

The principal Olmec ceremonial centers were San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes, all located in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest part of what is today southern Mexico. (The cities' Spanish names were obviously adopted later; archaeologists do not know the names the Olmec used for these centers.) La Venta and Tres Zapotes were on more or less the same latitude, near the Gulf coast on the north, whereas San Lorenzo lay to the south, and the three cities together formed a downward-pointing triangle with sides about 100 miles (160 kilometers) long.

Founded in about 1300 b.c., San Lorenzo was built on a plateau atop a mountain—but the plateau was a manmade one, representing thousands of hours' labor and oceans of human sweat. The ability of their unnamed ruler to command this feat indicates the level of organization in Olmec society: only a nation with a strong central government can successfully call on its people for such massive undertakings. Further evidence of the highly organized Olmec system can be found in the massive public works projects, including drainage systems, water storage ponds, and stone pavements, uncovered by archaeologists. San Lorenzo was a city of houses built in the shape of mounds: at one point, there were some 200 of these housemounds, home to about 1,000 priests and royalty. But just as suburbs surround modern cities, thousands more people—farmers, mostly—lived in surrounding areas.

By 900 b.c. San Lorenzo had declined, and was replaced by La Venta. Both cities were built on salt domes, large deposits of rock salt underneath the earth. But whereas San Lorenzo was primarily a ceremonial center, La Venta apparently also served functions typical of any city, housing tradesmen and people of other professions. In some ways, it was a model for the much more splendid city of Teotihuacán that would follow it: La Venta was built on a grid pattern, as Teotihuacán would later be; and just as Teotihuacán was dominated by the Pyramid of the Sun, La Venta had a main pyramid about 100 feet (about 30.5 meters) tall.

All around the Olmec were other cultures, the remains of which have been found at archaeological sites throughout Central America. The most prominent of these were the group whose presence in Mesoamerica spanned the periods designated as "ancient" and "medieval" among European civilizations: the Maya. They had developed ceremonial centers of their own as early as 2000 b.c., and by about 300 b.c. the Maya populated parts of what is now Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador before moving into what is now Mexico.

The modern-day Mexican state of Chiapas on the Guatemalan border, where the majority of the people still speak some version of the Mayan language, contains an archaeological site at Izapa, which may have been a ceremonial center between 1500 and 800 b.c. It is possible that Izapa preserved traditions of the Olmec that later became part of the Mayan culture, including the cult of the rain god. At the outset of the period coeval with the European Middle Ages, a number of Mayan cities, beginning with Tikal in what is now northern Guatemala, began to flourish.

In addition to the Maya, there were the Zapotec, who lived in what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca and established the first true city (as opposed to a ceremonial center) in Mesoamerica, Monte Albán. By a.d. 200 it had become a dominant urban center, containing some 30,000 people, and it survived until a.d. 800. Yet as great as Monte Albán was, there was another city even greater: Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico, near the future site of the Aztec capital at Tenochtitlán, as well as the modern Mexican capital, Mexico City.

Built in about a.d. 100, Teotihuacán was the first true metropolis in the Western Hemisphere, and within 500 years, it would grow to become the sixth-largest city in the entire world. Teotihuacán, which appears to have been a planned city, covered some 8 square miles (20.5 square kilometers), a vast area for an ancient city. It had a population of between 125,000 and 200,000, an astounding figure for its time. (Because of sewage and sanitation problems, among other difficulties, ancient cities were seldom larger than small towns in modern times.)

Like Rome, Teotihuacán was a meeting-place for many cultures, and it appears that people from all over Mesoamerica lived in apartment-like buildings. The "skyscrapers" of Teotihuacán were its pyramids, the most significant of which was the Pyramid of the Sun. The latter stood on the city's main street, which the Aztec later dubbed the Avenue of the Dead. Other great temples lined the avenue, which ended at the Pyramid of the Moon.

Teotihuacán survived until about a.d. 750, when it began to decline rapidly. Archaeologists have suggested several possible reasons for its downfall, including a fire that engulfed much of the city. The fire may in turn have been the result of organized action, either by rebels or outside invaders such as the warlike Toltecs, then on the rise. On the other hand, the end of Teotihuacán may have come because its great population depleted natural resources and created sanitation problems that resulted in widespread disease.

About 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) south of the Olmec lived the people of the Chavín culture, around the border areas of modern Peru and Ecuador. The term Chavín refers to Chavín de Huántar, a ceremonial center that developed in what is now north-central Peru about 1200 b.c. Like the ceremonial centers of Mesoamerica, Chavín de Huántar was a city of pyramids and platforms, including a large structure dubbed the "Great Pyramid" by archaeologists.

Chavín de Huántar was about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) across, and contained a "Great Plaza" in the southeast. To the northwest was the court and temple of the Lanzon, a stone idol representing the supreme deity worshipped at Chavín. Like the Mesoamericans, the people of Chavín revered the jaguar; hence there were also the Stairs of the Jaguars leading down to the Great Plaza from the Great Pyramid.

As with other ceremonial centers, Chavín de Huántar had a small resident population—probably no more than 1,000 people—with thousands more (presumably farmers and laborers who served the priests and rulers) living in surrounding areas. Between 400 and 300 b.c., Chavín de Huántar entered a period of decline, and eventually a less advanced group built a village over the site. Yet its memory lived on to inspire the Inca, just as Teotihuacán did the Maya and Aztec.

Numerous other peoples in the Andes, including the Moche, Paracas, and Nazca (who created the mysterious "Nazca Lines" between 200 b.c. and a.d. 600), were influenced by Chavín culture. Another impressive site near Chavín de Huántar is Tiahuanaco, in the Andean highlands of what is now Bolivia. It was to the Andes what Teotihuacán was to Mesoamerica: a great city, much more than a ceremonial center, which served as a focal point for the peoples all around it. Like Teotihuacán, it was the site of impressive achievements in architecture and engineering, including the massive Gateway of the Sun, cut from a single stone. Yet one thing distinguished Tiahuanaco from Teotihuacán or virtually any other major city, then or now: its altitude. At 13,125 feet (2.5 miles or 4 kilometers), Tiahuanaco was without a doubt the highest major city in history. Though it flourished between 200 b.c. and a.d. 600, Tiahuanaco continued to exert an influence over an area from southern Peru to northern Argentina until about a.d. 1100.

The latter date also marks the approximate founding of Cuzco, today the oldest continually inhabited city of the New World. Located in what is now Peru, Cuzco became the capital of the Inca Empire, which grew over the next 300 years and began to flourish in the mid-fifteenth century. Simultaneous with this Andean renaissance, but independent of it, was the emergence of an Aztec urban culture centered around Tenochtitlán. Both civilizations, which flowered in the brief period that remained for the Americas prior to the arrival of the Spanish, owed an immeasurable debt to their ancient forebears in the cities of the jungles and mountains.

JUDSON KNIGHT