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NASA/JPL/NIMA. “WorldSRTM-noPoles-giant” Online Image. Earth Observatory. 16 May 2005
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/PIA03395_lrg.jpg>
North America: Central America - Largest
This image was created from a larger Public Domain world map produced from data obtained by NASA's
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The world map was cropped to the Central America
and resized to twice normal size using a trial version of Adobe Photoshop. Using Google's free Picasa2 program,
the color and lighting were then enhanced and finally sharpened to obtain the image above. The original
image can be viewed at the NASA link above.
Central America (or Mesoamerica) was the heart of American cultural advancement until the time of
Columbus. The earliest chiefdoms emerged around 1200BC among the Olmec culture of the coast of the
Gulf of Mexico. In 800BC the Mayan culture completed its expansion across the entire Yucatan
Peninsula which they would dominate until 1492AD. Only three scripts have been developed
independently on Earth, the third and final script emerged among the Zapotec culture of the Oaxaca
Valley in southern Mexico around 800BC; it would become the basis of the Mayan alphabet, the only
fully functional pre-Columbian alphabet in the Americas. Their achievements in math and astronomy
were amazing given their social and technological advancement. However, the Sumerians and Egyptians
also accomplished feats little short of miraculous given their technology and it is perhaps
overstating Mayan achievements to consider them much advanced from these early civilizations.
The Zapotec city state, Monte Alban, was the first state to emerge in the Americas around 400BC.
It was eventually replaced by the city state of Teotihuacán around 100AD, located in the Valley
of Mexico. (the present site of Mexico City) which peaked around 300AD. Teotihuacán was the only
city state to exert influence across all of Mesoamerica, even the Mayans recognized their authority,
and this was the “Classic Age” of American civilization when almost all states were hitting their peak.
Yet despite the existence of the Zapotec script, records from this period are non-existent. To succeeding
generations of Americans, it had no history to speak of. The only evidence of Teotihuacán is archaeological.
Its fabulous ruins in the mountains ringing the Valley of Mexico so impressed the Aztecs that they gave the
city a name in their language, Nahuatl, the only name it is now known by, Teotihuacán, “Place of the Gods”.
The subsequent decline of all these civilizations left a power vacuum. Around 1000AD, the barbarian Tolteca
Chichimeca emerged from the deserts between Central and North America (in what is now Northern Mexico), and
spread terror and devastation before them. The Toltecs are the earliest culture for which the Aztecs had
even semi-historical legends of, attesting to the fact that they finally settled and began a brief but
important cultural dominance over the lands of Central Mexico. In 1168AD their capitol, Tula, was sacked.
The diverse states that succeed them were eventually unified by 1450AD into the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs
were still in the process of expanding at the time Europeans arrived.
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