Course Description

Instructor: Michael McDavid

One of the six “cradles of civilization” was Mesoamerica. That area today primarily includes southern Mexico and Guatemala. As time passed, Mesoamerican civilization was comprised of two main parts: the Maya in the south and a sequence of cultures centered in the Valley of Mexico. All these Mesoamerican states likely had a common origin, the Olmec culture. This course is the third and final installment of a survey of New World civilizations. The previous two dealt with the Maya and the Andean cultures. Here we will survey the development of agriculture-based societies in the Valley of Mexico, beginning with Teotihuacan and ending with the Aztecs. As with the previous courses we will end with the Spanish conquest and its impact on the indigenous peoples.