Clay Herman
November 9, 2017
Latin America Challenge Center Square 2
The Mayans, Aztecs and Olmecs were Native American civilizations that lived in Central America long ago.
The Olmecs lived as farmers in eastern Mexico starting around 1500 or 1600 B.C. The Olmecs built the first civilization in the Americas. They developed their own written language and built pyramids.
Archaeologists still don’t know a lot about the Olmecs. They lived in villages and farmed. Their diet was very diverse containing lots of different meats, vegetables and fruits but over time corn became a more important part of their farming life. Olmecs were famous for making things out of rubber and for making giant heads out of blocks of stone. Not much is known about the Olmec religion but they did play a ceremonial game with a rubber ball where the losers were often sacrificed.
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They lived in the rain forest of the Yucatan peninsula. They began living in villages and then developed city states. The Mayans came to rule over part of Mexico, Belize and Guatemala.
Mayan people were mostly farmers. They grew corn, beans and squash. They grew their crops using slash and burn farming. This means they cut down trees and burned them and then grew their crops where the trees were. The Mayans were very good at cutting and building stone. They made their city states out of stone buildings. The Mayans believed in many gods and built stone temples. They were a very sophisticated culture and studied the movement of the stars and built complex calendars. They also had a very strong knowledge of mathematics.
The Aztecs moved to Lake Texcoco around 1250 A.D. They founded their capital there and called it Tenochtitlan. It is where Mexico City is now. The Aztec Empire lasted until 1521 when they were conquered by